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Spending the holidays with family behind bars

Frankie Franco

Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Receiving a letter or a phone call from a loved one who’s incarcerated is bittersweet. Sweet, because you know they’re alive and doing as well as they can be. Bitter, because it reminds you of where they are and the pain of not being able to hug them. Letters, phone calls and visits are what a family has to speak with their loved ones. At the time I was writing two letters, one to my older brother and one to my younger brother. Both were incarcerated at the same time at Worcester House of Correction. Double the letters and double the pain. My older brother growing up was the person I wanted to be, while I shared a room with my annoying younger brother. Due to personal decisions and the many factors that impact lowincome families of color, led both of my brothers to be locked up and it’s always around the holidays that their presence is missed most.

Visits at Worcester House of Correction are only about an hour long and scheduled twothree times a week. My mother and I went together most of the time to see both my brothers. Everyone must be searched before entering the visiting room and follow a strict dress code. No sweatpants, no

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A 3-D mural on the side of the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts by Greek artist Insane 51, with 3-D glasses installed by Michael D’Angelo. TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF/VICTOR D. INFANTE

A fresh look at some downtown discoveries

Victor D. Infante

Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK

Having stopped for lunch at the Theatre Café Thursday while meandering around the city, I decided to walk around the corner and look at the 3-D mural on the side of The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts. I’ve done it before, of course, but it had been a few months. The mural is by Greek artist Insane 51, and if you look at it through a pair of 3-D glasses, it looks different depending on whether you’re looking at the red or the blue lens.

Better still, there is a giant pair of 3-D glasses mounted on the fence, which makes the experience amazing, being able to easily see the mural’s transformation from lens to lens. A young man in a hoodie saw me, and asked what I was doing. I told him to look through the lenses, and he exclaimed out loud in surprise at what he saw. A cop on the other side of the street saw us and said, “Have you never seen this before?” The young guy hadn’t. A guy in a suit and tie who was parking his car heard the conversation, and stopped to take a look himself. He, too, exclaimed out loud.

The glasses are just one of numerous little things that make Worcester an awesome place to live. And I say live, because most of these things, you have to spend some time here to find. You can drive by that mural every day and never realize there are a pair of giant glasses there that transform the experience. As I was talking about the mural and the glasses with its new admirers, it occurred to me that the glasses had actually been installed later than the mural, but I couldn’t remember when. As I often do in these situa-

Franco

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jewelry, no hair-buns. Sometimes the rules changed and my mother would have to go back to the car and change. One week is no hair-buns and the next would be no loose-hair. She wanted to look pretty in front of her sons.

Once we passed the search, we’re allowed into the visiting room. It’s a row of chairs in a fluorescent lit grungy room. In front of each chair is a window and a payphone. All visits regardless of the crime is through a payphone, so no long hugs or any physical touch. Before sitting, my mother would go to the bathroom and use a wet paper towel to clean the payphone, “we know they don’t clean it right,” she would say. We wait for about five minutes and out they come, a group of inmates rushing to see who came to visit. Sitting next to my mom we each would have our own payphone. Then they appear, my brothers wearing matching dingy inmate clothes with big smiles on their faces, ecstatic to see my mom and I. Whoever got to my mom’s phone will be the first to speak with her and I was the backup. We picked up the phone and they always asked us “how are you doing?”

Any updates about our lives or news of the outside world provided an escape from their current reality. I shared anything I could think of to entertain them and so would my mom. The room filled with all the mumble of conversations between inmates and their loved ones. We switched seats mid-conversation at times to explain a story or a joke. Both my brothers laughed and their funny stories made my mom and I laugh. We avoided any tragic/bad news because seeing them like this was painful enough. Next thing you know a guard will yell out “five minutes!” It was time to wrap up our stories as fast as possible, say our love, when’s the next time we visit, they will call, or we will write. Our goodbyes meant me putting my fist on the glass and my mom’s palm on the glass. My brothers on their end will do the same and that’s as close we get to touching. On the way out, my mom would either look happy after our visits or she would break down crying for having to see her sons like this. Then the cycle will continue, even on the holidays.

I wrote this piece in honor of the families having to experience this on the holidays. Though their loved ones are behind bars, they are not forgotten. Also, I want to acknowledge the strength it takes to support those behind bars. My older brother is free, but my little brother is not. I love you little bro and soon we will be able to hug again and spend quality time together not through a phone or express our love not through letters.

Frankie Franco is a youth worker, community organizer and longtime Worcester resident.

Inmates walk outdoors at the Worcester County Jail and House of

Correction. T&G FILE PHOTO/CHRISTINE PETERSON

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tions, I called up Nikki Erskine, of Worcester’s Cultural Development Division and Worcester Cultural Coalition, to see if she knew the answer. She had it in moments: They were installed in April of last year by Michael D’Angelo. She also confirmed that the mural itself came in with Pow! Wow! Worcester in 2018.

I asked her where she was looking that up, and she pointed me to the website http:// www.worcesterma.gov/cultural-development/cultural-projects/public-art, an interactive map of public art in the city, including murals, statues and installations. In hindsight, I think someone had mentioned it before, but I had never looked at it, and had no idea how fun it was to use, especially if you want a free, outdoor activity while COVID is making indoor activities dicey. It’s an exciting tool, one which, in hindsight, deserves more exposure. But it’s that little irony of being a great little hidden gem that makes the site itself very … well … Worcester. This city is full of tiny, enormously cool details that are delightful when you find them.

I’d found many cool little things I’d either not noticed or not looked closely at before on this particular meander, including the lovely white “Esther Howland Bench,” outside City Hall, and right near it, the Little Free Library, but on this trip, the most personally interesting gem had a tie to my past at the Telegram & Gazette. When the T&G was on Franklin Street, one of the windows in my office looked down on Allen Court Alley, which I did not know had a name until today, and pretty much the only thing that happened there was inebriated fights and drug deals. Now, there’s an amazing neon art installation there.

Still, it occurred to me that I had never actually walked down that alley, in large part due to my previous knowledge of what occurred there, so I decided to go ahead and do it. It is pretty much just an alley when the neon’s not lit. Still, I was struck by the details on the ramp access into what was once the old T&G building. The metalwork was meticulously, beautifully stylized. Erskine informed me that it was built and designed by Randal Meraki, of the WorcShop and Eternity Ironworks. I think Meraki had mentioned it once when I talked to him for a story, but it’s different seeing it in person. It’s gorgeous, and it’s in a place where few would ever see it, indeed, where most people are even reluctant to look. If that doesn’t scream Worcester, I don’t know what does.

Beautifully stylized metalwork by Randal Meraki. TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF/VICTOR D. INFANTE

The “Esther Howland Bench,” outside City Hall.

TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF/VICTOR D. INFANTE The Little Free Library outside Worcester City Hall.

TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF/VICTOR D. INFANTE