PERRY ALLEN AUSTIN

PERRY ABOUT ISOLATION:

Last year, for Death Row Souls Collective, they asked us to write about being in isolation and the mental health affects it can have on a person who had spent literally decades in solitary confinement. Just recently, I was asked to write about what coping measures I use to survive being in permanent solitary confinement for decades. That was a hard one to answer because unlike most other guys, and gals, isolation doesn’t bother me. I often sought isolation as a child to get away from the constant bullying and taunting from the older, and bigger, White kids. I was a very lonely child, spending most of my days exploring the heavily forested area around the small town of Cicero, Indiana. Back in the sixties, Cicero was a very small, all White farming community, and being a small child of mixed race, (half Japanese and half White), that didn’t bode well for myself and my well being. So I sought isolation. I was an Army brat, my dad was in the Army, and whenever he was posted somewhere that we could not follow, which was often, he would drop us off in his hometown of Cicero. I remember one late wintery night, one of the drunken yokel locals came banging on our doors, yelling for us „racial expletives“ to go back to where we came from. After that night, I started sleeping with my dad’s two shot .38 derringer under my pillow. Being in the military life, we had a lot of firearms in the house.

PERRY’S CHOCOLATE FUDGE RECEIPT:

One (1) Jar of Peanutbutter.
One (1) Bag of Vanilla Wafers.
One (1) Pack of Chocolate Cream Cookies (Sub any cream cookies).
One (1) Bag of Hot Chocolate Mix.
One (1) Bag of Instant (Powdered) Milk.
Three (3) Snickers (Sub Twix).
Three (3) Chico Sticks.
Two (2) Plastic 2 qt. Bowls.

First step: Wet Ingredients.

Take your Snickers and break them into little bitty pieces into your hotpot insert. Put five (5) heaping commissary spoons of instantly into the same hotpot insert. Scrape all the cream filling from the cream cookies into the hotpot insert. Add water to where it just barely covers the top of the ingredients. It will settle down. Put insert into hotpot and heat up. You want it all to melt. (Chico sticks are part of the wet ingredients, but you have to wait until the stuff already inside the hotpot insert melts down some. While preparing the dry ingredients, go back to your hotpot insert every so often and stir vigorously. You want it all mixed well.

Second Step: Dry Ingredients.

Take your cookies and crush them real fine. You can use an empty corn chip bag for this as it’s stronger, thicker, and can take a beating. I put in about a third of the cookies at a time, then beat it on the floor with my coffee cup. Pour the crushed cookies into a 2qt. plastic bowl. Then take your vanilla wafers and do the same, crush them into real fine powder. Pour this into the same bowl as your crushed cookies. Then pour one commissary cup of hot chocolate mix into the same bowl. Take your spoon and mix it all up well.

All during this time, you’re occasionally checking the stuff in your hotpot insert, stirring it. About half way through preparing your dry ingredients, take your chico sticks and crush them, then put it into the hotpot insert with the rest. It will melt down too.

Once you’ve finished preparing the dry ingredients, take your second plastic 2 qt. bowl and spoon out about two thirds of a jar of peanutbutter into the bowl.

Once your hotpot insert ingredients are well melted down and mixed thoroughly, and hot, pour the wet ingredients over the peanutbutter. Then whip real good until you have a really fine, smooth texture. Then pour, a little bit at a time, the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and mix really good, using your hands. Once you’ve got all of your dry ingredients poured into the mixture, keep kneading the dough with your hands, adding water if needed, which you probably will, but be careful not to add too much water. Add a little but of water, knead it thoroughly, add some more if needed, knead it some more. You’ll know when the consistency of the dough is just right.

Now it’s ready to be broken down and shaped into bars. I make my bars about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The above ingredients will make about thirteen bars. I use typing paper to wrap them. When you grab a handful of dough, shape it into a compact ball first, then shape it into a tube, then roll it back and forth on the paper. This makes the paper oily and keeps the bars from sticking to the paper when it’s opened.

And there you have it, Austin’s Olde Time Brownies. It takes me about four to five hours to make one batch. Last Christmas I made brownies for the entire pod. It took me almost seventeen hours to make. Over 100 bars. I wanted to make sure all the field ministers, life coaches, Self-Harm staff and workers, workers and staff at the chaplain’s office, and the radio station workers and staff got a bar. I was exhausted!!! 🙂

So, a lot of work involved, but the end product is well worth it. Deeeeeelicious!!!! 🙂