Scruggs won't serve time in Panhandle prison due to fears he will air mail himself out of the country
OK, I said blogging would resume July 22. More like July 23. Sorry for the delay, but the workload that was interfering with blogging has now eased, for the time being, sufficiently to allow for life's necessities -- such as blogging -- to resume.
This story from Patsy Brumfield -- I had a sixth-grade teacher named Michelle Brumfield, I wonder if they are related somehow (that's typical of someone from North Dakota, we had so few people we figured everyone was related somehow) -- on Dickie Scruggs' not being assigned to a prison in the Florida Panhandle. Scruggs is a former Navy flyer and famously has his expensive Air Scruggs ride, and apparently officials don't assign people to the prison if they have or have had a pilot's license. (Rumor has it his ride is so nice it is being featured in an upcoming episode of a new reality TV series, "Pimp My Escape Plane").
Question: where's he gonna go? Cuba? Is the fear that all of a sudden we'll see Dickie Scruggs wearing fatigues and smoking a cigar on a podium next to Fidel and Raul? Actually, it might solve the question of who is to become Fidel's successor: with his dough, Scruggs could instantly energize the Cuban economy. With his ego, Scruggs could also instantly fit in as the ruler of a country, and let's face it, even Scruggs is bound to be an improvement on the Castros. His first act as El Presidente would certainly be to file a massive class action lawsuit in Miami against State Farm, the U.S. Attorney's Office and Tim Balducci.
Fortunately, prison officials have thought this all through, and have come to the conclusion that while a guy who can fly is a great escape risk -- he might walk away from his job hoeing peas and sweet potatoes and steal a plane from a nearby military base, I guess -- a guy who can merely ride in a plane, boat or car is no threat at all. I mean, they've probably got all kinds of statistics that show the vast majority of people who escape from prisons do so by getting behind the controls of a conveniently parked nearby escape plane. Come to think of it, you ever been to Alcatraz and taken the tour, where they talk about that famous escape by the three guys who were never found? Of course they weren't found! Everyone was looking for them in the water. Instead, based on this new information, I'm thinking it's likely they went air mail.
Of course, this new data means we must come up with a theme song for Scruggs' prison sentence, and after some thought, I believe there is only one choice: the gospel standard "I'll Fly Away." I mean, it's got to be, doesn't it: "Like a bird from these prison wall I'll fly, I'll fly away/ No more cold iron shackles on my feet, I'll fly away."
WELCOME BACK! Excellent post---as we all knew it would be!
Dickie is going to Ashland, Ky. Zack is going to Florida
So glad to have you back! By the way, did the Scruggs boys get over to Starkville to hear you on Insurance Day?
As I remember, Ashland is in the heart of coal country, and has some of the worst poverty in the US, and is a great hiking area. It isn't clear if this Federal prison is the "soap on a rope" kind of prison or it's got HBO and a law library with Westlaw on line....It's not just coincidental, is it, that Mr.Scruggs, who in his Lear, spirited away Wigand (who was under a Court Order not to speak) finds that the same coup (Kentuck) have the same chickens coming home to roost in Kentucky? I can't help but think that living in the poorest area of Kentucky isn't just one thing for management of legal remorse to ponder, but Kentucky never got the chance to "catch" the Wigand/Scruggs flight out of the Louisville airport, which was part of the Medicaid Lawsuit "scandals". Repetition is part of the music of memory. It isn't lost on my recollection that the "Wigand
lift" (like a whiskey run in the 20's),
actually made history "rip a new one" for law, and Kentucky law didn't cry fowl as did Alabama. It is ironic that the super tenders of the law made history and histrionics in the Wigandism of the "Insider" mythology, heroics in a brown bag on the wings of a 1976 Lear. Dickie once said "I won't ever go into that jurisdiction," meaning he wouldn't go to Kentucky. He did go when he was the lawyer for Wigand, and they flew the coup, flying against the law of Kentucky, which is best remembered as the flight of the household name - and I'm not forgetting that Moore didn't have any less an interest in getting the whole thing on TV. Not to forget this, but it's similar to the Rigsby bum bum.
I don't know. What is this that comes around, goes around - or is it the other way round? Dickie, I promise to visit you. Also, if you're not pardoned by "W", remember that you're right there in tobacco country, and those tobacco farmer's love Brown and Williamson. Just up the road. Near the University of Kentucky Tobacco and Health Research Building, ya know? Life is hard there.
Brush up on those law books and help out a stranger. It's not from dust to dust, but if it is, it's coal dust not gold dust up there. It's not called Ash land for nothing.