By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 8: At Last, I Have a Real Job

The factories were on the other side of the Parade Ground, beyond the Chow Hall and the Training Team—old-fashioned barns with peaked roofs.  They were the kind of things you always see down by the railroad, next to the abandoned tracks.  But there was no rust on them.  They’d been cleaned up, fixed up, and given a new coat of paint—that same sick shade of yellow.  Their windows had been fitted with new steel frames and a light brown tint, to keep the sun out, as well as a full coat of bars, to keep the workers in.  But now their doors were open, and long files of prisoners were marching through them.  The Paris State Penitentiary had brought full employment back to the neighborhood.

Factory 5, the Clothing Factory, was the largest one.  Under its high steel ceiling, ten lines of prisoners, 50 in each line, were sewing pieces of clothes together—collars to coats, buttons to shirts, pockets to rumps.  Every prisoner was seated at a sturdy plastic table with a plastic chair and two plastic baskets attached to it; every prisoner was facing a pale-yellow electric sewing machine, bolted to the table; every prisoner was taking materials from the basket on his left, sewing them together, and passing them to the basket on the right.

Continue reading My Trip to Paris – Chapter 08 →