Who’s to say if this helped lighten my anxiety. All I knew was that sometime ago with the church I’d nonchalantly signed up for my first prison visit, thinking little that that day of service might actually come. And now - tada! - here it was. 

Our car carried us mind-numbingly up 23, toward our dreaded destination. Jess sat passenger, warming up her voice with the songs on the radio. She’d agreed to sing at the prison church service and would be the only female on stage. For all I knew, it’d been months since the prisoners had last laid eyes on a woman. I chose to think about Johnny Cash, instead.  

I dimly remember having a slightly selfish motive for going. Somehow, someway during the trip, I hoped to build more compassion for the downtrodden and for humanity, in general. What better way to do so than to toss myself into the center of the dregs of society.

Once there, I half-expected the prison chapel to be a dingy gymnasium. There’d be a makeshift stage and some plastic chairs set outside a beat-up, chain-linked fence for containing the prisoners. I imagined the guards occasionally clubbing a prisoner on the head if one tried to reach through and grab a piece of one of us. Innocently, having never set foot in a prison, I knew only this kind of scene. Perhaps, it came from too many movies, from the various concoctions of jailhouse life Hollywood has served up over the years. 

But, things looked a bit differently. The prison chaplain, a quiet bearded priest with a collar and a ball of keys on his hip, led us through several prison gates, closing each behind us with a definitive clank. Through the network of iron bars, I watched for signs of chaos or take-over attempts. I saw no prison riots, no Hannibal Lectors, either. Oh, you had the prison bars, the razor wire, strung along the compoud walls like deadly tinsle, and all of that, but minus these minor distratctions, the prison chapel looked, well, like a church. The room was spacious, the ceiling rose several feet, and an aisle split two lines of wooden pews.

Hmm…where do the prisoners sit? I saw no fences, no cages, nor anything else to keep us safely secluded.  Maybe they’d come chained together in black and white striped singlets, as was George Clooney and his buddies in Brother Where Art Thou? and forced to sit in the back with stern-faced guards in sunglasses standing over them.

“How many women you got coming?” asked Pastor Buddy, the prison pastor, a bald, friendly man who had used a cart to help transport our band equipment across the prison.

“About five or six,” I said, unsure. Although I tried to act indifferent, my eyes must have given away my thoughts: why do you ask?

“They won’t hurt anyone. Most of the guys are Christians. But keep the women seated inside of you. Some like to ask for phone numbers and addresses. Don’t give it to them.”

 Don’t worry, Pastor Buddy, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Before I could raise the long list of other concerns I suddenly had, such as prisoner-to-guard ratios and where the best place to go incase of a tornado, Pastor Buddy had moved on, leaving me alone to consider the increasing horror of my thoughts.

For the next half hour, I sat stiffly in the front pew, watching Jess and the band set up on stage. I considered the endless dangerous possiblilites of sharing a pew with convicted criminals. Would they start pushing me around about where I live? I shivered at the thought, or was it from the icey draft from the open barred windows.

Then, I worked through several scenerios of muscle-bulging inmates, smiling menacingly as they carried Jess away. Trying hard to squelch any instinctual thoughts of every-man-for-himself, I turned my focus to how, if the occassion called for it, I might protect my wife. My muscles suddenly felt useless and weak. Chaos was inevitable.

Like Jason Bourne, I scanned the place for useful objects to defend Jess with - a music stand, a microphone, my belt? How much more effortlessly could an inmate turn the same objects on me? I wouldn’t stand a chance. Suddenly, I pictured myself on the ground, helpless, arms covering my face, at the receiving end of a keyboard, a crash of dissonate chords breaking the air with each blow.

But then something gave me a moment’s relief: on my side, would be the adrenaline of pants-wetting fear. This promised an element of superhuman strength to my flick of a body, the kind that gives a toddler the strength to lift a car off his pinned parent. Wild with fright - this was my only means of defense.

To get a grip, I went exploring. The service was scheduled to start in an hour. To set up, the band and I had arrived two hours before the other church volunteers, so besides us and a few nice volunteers in navy pants, the room was empty.

In the back of the chapel, I found some christian literature available for the inmates. I leafed through a few pamphlets. Then, before venturing out, I poked my head outside the room. I scanned the solid block walls and linoleum flooring of the hallway to make sure no prisoners had got loose before it was time. I did not want to end up a human bargaining chip for some desperate criminal trying to bust out of the Big House. Hey, I must admit, stereotypes I didn’t even know I had filled my head. I’d seen Shawshank Redemption and various scenes of Cool-hand Luke; I though I was wise to the going-ons in prison.  

My hallway adventure lasted only a minute before I made my way back to the safety of the chapel room. In the doorway, I ran into a bright, cheerful man who I’ll call Roy. He was on his way out, without a trace of fear in his face. This put me slightly at ease. I laughed inside, feeling ridiculous for overreacting all this time.

“Hi, I’m Roy,” he said, offering a friendly handshake.  Roy was lanky and bald, and wore a tightly-trimmed gray beard with a matching gray sweatshirt. His face beamed. He wore navy pants, so right away I pegged him for a volunteer. Although, I did not know what church he was with. 

I introduced myself and reached for his extended hand.

“I’m looking forward to worshipping with you today,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said, awkwardly.

Then, he took off happily down the hallway in search of a friend.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed before I saw my new friend Roy again, lounging in a pew and chatting with other volunteers in navy pants. I joined Roy and his friends, took a seat in the pew behind them. Roy turned and gave me a warm smile, which instantly included me into the group. I got some more questions ready to ask him, such as what church he went to? and, how long has he served in the prison ministry?

I figured, as long as I stuck with Roy, when the prisoners rolled in, I’d be okay. He really seemed to know his way around. 

“I’ve never been to prison before,” I confessed (like he couldn’t tell).

My words surprised me halfway out my mouth, because suddenly something clicked. I understood something I had missed earlier.

“What’d it feel like when those gates closed behind you? Weird, huh?” said Roy.

“Yeah, it was kind of weird…”

Wait a minute…navy blue pants… Nearly everyone around me has them on. I’m a volunteer, and I’m not wearing navy blue pants. What’s Roy’s tag say: I-N-M-A-T-E…ooh!

“I’ve been here sixteen years,” said Roy. “When I first got here, it was a very dark place. Of course, I was a heathen then. But God is doing great things in here. You can feel his Spirit at work.”

A young man sat next to me, clutching a Columbus State University class scheduling booklet.

“I get out in ninty days,” he said.

He planned to go to college and get a degree in business management. Then he told me about his plans to one day open a ministry for the youth called 3-to-6 - the peak time when kids got into the most trouble. Nonprofit businesses need managers, too.

“But the main goal is to save souls,” he said.

When the rest of the church finally arrived, many wore the same nervous, unsure faces I must have worn. Won’t they be surprised to learn about the good men who live here, harmless, loving, ready to serve, filled with a thirst for God, identifiable only by their navy pants and their broken hearts.

Nonetheless, my heart went out to my fellow church members. I sympathized with them as they absorbed their cold new surroundings with wide eyes and uneasy smiles, trying to pick out the inmates from the rest of us, trying to crowd out the piercing question with an open mind: Are the prisoners dangerous?   

“Can I get you some coffee? water?” Roy asked me.

“No, I’m okay, Roy. But thanks for the offer.”

Its operations are housed in a low building directly off uptown Westerville’s main drag, tucked away in a small slumbering neighborhood. Through its doors are a handful of counselor rooms, a larger room for holding meetings, a waiting room for clients with appointments, and the inventory room, complete with donated shopping carts and canned and packaged food filed away on shelves in orderly fashion. A recently painted mural by volunteers decorates the back wall where food donations are deposited into a metal drop slot.     

We were assigned our positions beforehand via email, and I was given partial responibility for parking cars. The other parking attendants included my friend, Ben, and a spry older fellow named John, who wore an Ohio State cap and was very glad to meet us. Jess was especially pleased with her lot, for she was handed a camera and instructed to fire snapshots of the event at will. And Kelly, Ben’s pregnant wife, who is due with her second in less than a month, was placed in charge of greeting the clients and handing out pies until they ran out. 

Before the event took off, the staff and volunteers opened with a prayer, which Jess and I gracefully stumbled right into the middle of, because we were late. After the “Amen’s,” the woman in charge ran down the attendance list, and deciding that all but three of us were present, sent us directly to our stations.

 Ben and I were ripped away from our wives, who had long forgotten about us and were eager to get right down to business, and led outdoors to the frigid parking lot. Jess was nice enough to lend me her mittens. Here we were given complete reign over the parking lot, with nothing more than our arms for waving, our fingers for pointing, our mouths for screaming incase we got hit, and the specific instructions to park cars.     

A mother and her daughter were set up at the parking lot entrance for gaining the clients’ attention and to funnel them through to a smiling Ben, who would direct them my way. We stood like a bunch of winding clocks, waving our arm in a circular motion, guiding the general flow of incoming traffic. 

At first, it was widely held that my job was to throw the drivers into utter confusion and to obstruct any of their efforts to get to the W.A.R.M facility before the Ohio State-Michigan noon kick-off. I nearly arranged for a head-on collision between two cars, and, unknowingly, there was a further attempt on my part to lure a woman in a minivan into a defected parking space, containing a nasty looking piece of wood.

“I saw that wood,” said the lady out her minivan window, parking anywhere but the spot I was leading her. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I ran over and moved it to the side.

With time, however, the communication between Ben, John and me improved and it wasn’t long before I felt like I’d been parking cars all my life. “Got one coming your way,” I’d shout to John, confidently.

“Got ’em,” John would say, beaming, his left arm straight out, pointing the way like the North Star, his right bringing the driver home nice and steady. It was just like clockwork. At the bend, Ben was looking quite comfortable, too, and when a homeward bound car tore past him, attacking him with an emphatic ”O-H,” Ben fired back an “I-O” without so much as a hitch in his wind.

The clients were an exceptionally nice group, and almost everyone pulled up wearing Ohio State gear and joyful smiles. When the drivers got out, we’d converse in the universal language of Ohio State football. Then they’d go their way smiling and shouting “Go Bucks,” leaving me to think how great God was for creating sports and food for bringing together people we’d normally never meet.       

After it was all said and done, I’d managed to wolf down a brownie offered to me by the W.A.R.M. staff and a cup of hot coffee. Things got slightly more challenging with a cup of coffee in hand, but by that time, I’d already mastered the art of parking cars one handed.

When 11:00am rolled around, we reconvened back inside where it was warm and listened to some of the stories shared about the day. The strong staff-client relationship was clear. There had been hugs, discussions of blessings, and an exciting annoucement by one lady about landing a steady job.

A good time was had by all, and we were glad we had volunteered.  

 It was perfect weather for wandering the neighborhood in costume, banging on strangers’ doors for sweets. Personally, I think it’s a rather rough ultimatum: trick-or-treat. A tough decision, we opted for the later of the two, and my wife, Jess, and I sat ready with treats to quench the fiery demands of these tiny masked marauders.

We set up camp on the front porch ten minutes early of standard trick-or-treat time (that is 6pm). The Jesus fish pumpkin we’d carved earlier in the week and were quite proud of was lit and hoisted onto the flower stand and positioned just so for the whole world to see.  We sat straight as sticks in our canvas folding chairs, on watch for our first customers. Books sat on reserve beneath our chairs, incase conversation somehow grew stale or the night’s festivities failed to live up to expectations.  A large Tupperware bowl’s worth of candy sat between us.

It was 6:05pm. The wait was eating me alive inside. Just married and new to the neighborhood, it was our first trick-or-treat as hosts. The excitement rushed through my veins like lava. Where is everyone? To pass the time, we fell to discussing such important matters as who’ll be in charge of passing out the candy. ”One per bag” - these instructions were strict but fair. Although, one tiny caped crusader would try for two, only to be denied by his slightly older brother, who, it was clear, was responsible for his little brother’s good conduct.   

My red sponge nose from the Kroger Halloween aisle, together with my painted-up rosy cheeks, now smeared because of an itch, transformed me into a clown. Early on I had trouble keeping my Kroger clown nose on straight, and as time went on, my nose grew extremely warm and sweaty. Jess was a cat, nothing fancy, her face meticulously marked with a set of whiskers and what was meant to be a feline nose. Our otherwise friendly mutt, Phoebe, was herself. Unfortunately, she acted badly and got herself put up early. All the dreadful looking intruders just weren’t sitting well with her and she was only able to cope by growling and barking her head off.      

As the evening light faded, the excitement sort of fizzled out. The first wave of trick-or-treaters was spotted huddled around a door some few houses down. They squealed in delight, wildly exclaiming something about receiving money. Money? Seriously? I didn’t even know money was an option, let alone a treat. What kind of house deals out money on trick-or-treat? Must be the house of a banker. I was about to go over myself and get my hands on some. Our mortgage was due the following day.

Who could live up to the money house? All we had were packs of candy corn with Bible verses printed on the back. I tried to regain my focus: That’s okay, heavenly treasures, right? To pass the time, I read one of the wrappers. Jess and I had been excited at this discovery when we had first stumbled upon them at the local Christian book store. The kids, we knew, would only be in it for the candy, so we had ruled out the possibilty of any shared enthusiasm over a John 3:16 verse. But what the heck.   

Our first trick-or-treaters! They scurried up to our porch, shy faces, eyes down, bags held wide open, mumbling something about treats and tricks. It was obvious for some that this was their first time and they hadn’t quite got the hang of their lines yet. ”And what are you?” I asked one knee-high, little girl.

“A princess?”

“Princess Jasmine?” Jess asked. Jess taught pre-school, and was eager to show-off her knowledge. She knew all the cartoons and toys that were popular with the kids.

“No,” barked the disgruntled princess, “Sleeping Beauty.”

“Darn! I always get the princesses mixed up,” said Jess. I learned that there is a cartoon featuring the Disney princesses that the kids watch. All night, a revolving door of girls under the age of five made bashful appearances  in lacy gowns of all colors. 

Wisening up now, the next little princess who blessed us with her royal presence I guessed to be Jasmine. Her little face lit up. “See,” said her daddy, “He guessed who you are.” I couldn’t help but be awfully proud of myself.

 I also couldn’t help but feel slightly subversive as we slipped God’s Word into each trick-or-treat bag, dangling below either a smiling or frightened face, depending on the age. Parents loitered around the driveway or the sidewalk, checking their watches, waiting for their kid to hurry up and get the candy so they could get on to the next house. If any grabbed candy without verbalizing their appreciation, the parent’s would bark at their child’s lack of manners, and they’d show back up offering a mumbled thanks. Then they’d disappear forever into the deepening night. 

By the night’s end, I was wiped out. I’d seen a lot of princesses and Scream masks - which surprised me, because, didn’t Scream come out over ten years ago? Must still be popular. Anyway, about a quarter till eight, Jess and I broke down camp, blew out the pumpkin and went back inside where Phoebe was whining and wagging her tail to be thrown out into the strange night. We told her no, and just as I thought the night had come to an end, the door bell rang, throwing Phoebe into a blood curdling fit of barks.

 With my foot, I nudged the small dog aside and opened the door to a pink girl no taller than a girl Tom Thumb. She had on one of those stage microphones that rest on your head and free up the hands for dancing. The little girl introduced herself matter-of-factly as Hanna Montana. She had more confidence than any five-year old I’d ever seen, more confidence than me, even. For all I knew, it might have really been her - the real live Hanna Montana on my door step - even though later I had to ask Jess who in the world Hanna Montana actually was. I tossed the girl a pack of Bible candy - a sugary little message from Heaven. She thanked me, then shot off into the dark.

Besides a few stragglers showing up past 8 o’clock, that was it - Jess and mine’s first Trick-or-Treat.