DannyBoyinExile

When you ask someone what they’re serving for chow and they say “Wagon Wheels” – you may as well just go back to sleep. I personally NEVER get up for breakfast (no matter what it is), but 4am is just too early for anyone to be traumatized with TDCJ pancakes. Since I’ve been in prison, I learned the secret of smearing peanut butter atop my pancakes (ahem… wagon wheels), and they are much better that way – but, alas, they don’t do that very often. Usually they’re just plain, dry, and cold – although they do give us a pat of butter on occasion. That makes them not so dry, but just as cold, hard, and crumbly.
Years ago, TDCJ started a tradition of serving us breakfast for dinner each Sunday – and ironically, they’re much better at 4pm, instead of 4am. Especially combined with the oven-cooked potatoes and peanut butter to top them with – which they NEVER serve at breakfast.
They generally try to alternate between eggs, French toast, biscuits, and pancakes – but it’s not a BALANCED rotation, by any means. TDCJ is wagon wheel country, more often than not.
Now that we’re on lockdown, I couldn’t help but notice that over a week went by without a single egg being found in our breakfast sacks! I was beginning to wonder if the chickens were on lockdown too (they raise their own chickens, after all) or if maybe the chickens had joined the auto workers on strike – but they came through in the end, and we started receiving two boiled eggs in our Johnnies. (Along with the pancakes, of course!)
What’s sad is that on lockdown, they quickly run through their stocks of bread, due to having to make thousands of sandwiches for every single meal. So some sadistic genius figured out that you can make a sandwich just as easily with… you guessed it… wagon wheels. We receive so many cold, wagon wheel PBJ sandwiches now that I can’t even GIVE them away! My neighbors act like they get offended just by my offering the wagon wheels to them. Invariably, they’ll say something like, “Are you trying to play with me?” haha So I simply toss them on the run – along with the others that everyone else has already jettisoned!
As a wise man said, “This too shall pass.” I know that it’s only temporary, and before long we’ll be back in the chow hall, eating hot meals again, and complaining about that, too. One thing is certain: the wagon wheels will be waiting for us then, too, so we may as well get used to them. So says DannyBoy.