There are easier ways to lose fifty pounds. You can join a gym, hire a trainer, or count calories on a phone app that judges you. Or you can spend almost two months in the Jefferson County Jail. I do not recommend that last option. The results were impressive. The customer service was terrible, and there was no way to cancel the membership.
I lost about fifty pounds in there, and my blood pressure came under control. Those were real benefits. But I did not get there through discipline and a balanced menu. I got there because I was hungry. Please do not ask me for the plan. There was no plan. There was bologna.
My cellmate Ray Ray told me he had worked in the kitchen. He said the meat products were stamped “not for human consumption.” I never saw those labels myself, so I cannot verify it, and Ray Ray was a gifted storyteller. What I can say is that the bologna looked awful, the other meat looked worse, and I could not bring myself to eat either. My mother raised me not to be picky. She did not anticipate this menu.
That left vegetables, when there were vegetables, which was not often. Maybe potatoes. I cannot even swear to the potatoes. And there was cake, if you could call it cake. Some days it resembled a gnarly piece of foam. Other days it looked like a block of cardboard that had been told it was dessert and believed it. I admired its confidence.
Breakfast was grits and a hard-boiled egg. I was hungry enough that I sometimes ate the egg shell and all. Someone had told me the shell held most of the nutrients. I believed it at the time. Looking back, that tells you more about my desperation than about nutrition. It also tells you I will believe almost anything said with enough authority before 6 a.m.
I had no money for what everybody called store, the commissary, where you could buy Cheetos and honey buns. I later learned that honey bun could carry a second, less innocent meaning in jail. I was already struggling with the regular menu. I did not need a second vocabulary course.
Every time the trays arrived, a small stock exchange opened for business. I will trade you my biscuit for your eggs. Anybody want carrots for corn? Men negotiated over their trays like brokers on Wall Street, only with better instincts and less regulation. The market opened at mealtime and closed when there was nothing left to sell. I was a poor trader. I have always been a poor trader. My sales background did not help. If anything, it gave me false confidence.
But one question rose above all others, every single meal, from somewhere in the room: You gonna eat your cake? You gonna eat your cake? You gonna eat your cake? It was the anthem of the place. Most of the time my answer was yes. The cake may have had the texture of packing material, but it was mine, and I was hungry, and a man has to draw a line somewhere.
The highlight of the week was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We got them once or twice a week, as I remember it, and everybody looked forward to them the way children look forward to Christmas. In a place where most of the food turned my stomach, a PB&J felt like a gift from heaven, delivered by a guard who did not seem to be in the Christmas spirit.
At one point I tried fasting for spiritual reasons. I wanted to pray and focus and get my mind right. I lasted about a day and a half. Normally I could go longer, but in there I was already weak. There is a difference between choosing to go without food and having no good choice to begin with. One is a discipline. The other is just Tuesday in Jefferson County.
It is easy to make the trading floor funny now. It was not funny to be that hungry. I can be glad my blood pressure improved without pretending the way I lost the weight was healthy or humane. It was neither. It was just what happened.
Hunger does something to a man’s dignity. On the outside I had never really been hungry. Inconvenienced, sure. Late for lunch, frequently. But real hunger, the kind that follows you to sleep and greets you when you wake up, was new. It changes how you see everything. A biscuit becomes currency. A cake becomes a negotiation. A peanut butter sandwich becomes the high point of your week, and you start planning your emotional life around Thursdays.
Every tray was a reminder that somebody else decided what I ate, when, and how much. That is a strange thing for a grown man to live with. It also made me think about what it would mean to give something away in a place like that. Generosity means more when it costs something. A man who shares his last biscuit is giving more than a man writing a check from a full account. I saw a few men share their last biscuit. I am not sure I ever did. That is one I am still thinking about.
Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. I used to read that as a miracle about multiplication. Now I read it as a story about compassion. He looked at a hungry crowd and did not send them away. He fed them first and preached second. There is a lesson in that for anybody who wants to help people, including people who run websites about Good Works. Start with the plate.
There are people in Birmingham who are hungry tonight. Not in jail. In apartments, in cars, under bridges. I have walked past people like that without thinking much about it. I do not want to walk past them the same way again. Hunger has a face, and for a little while, it was mine, and it was not a good look.
These days, when I sit down to a meal, I try to slow down. I notice the flavor. I notice the warmth. I notice that I chose it, which is a freedom I never once thought about before. I say grace like I mean it, because I do. And if anybody ever offers me a slice of real cake with real frosting, I will say grace twice and eat every bite of it slowly. I will not trade it. Not for eggs, not for corn, not even for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And if you hear me say I am going to eat my cake, believe me.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Matthew 6:11 (KJV)
— JC
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