Lunch at the Crossroads

Concord, Mass.

About a mile up Elm Street from quiet neigborhoods full of multimillion-dollar homes, MCI-Concord, a medium security state prison, sits stubbornly on the outskirts of this bucolic New England hamlet like an unwanted houseguest. Watchtowers rise like ugly lighthouses from the ends of its long, gray walls, which are surrounded by a second tier of chain-link fences trimmed with menacing spirals of barbed wire, making MCI-Concord distinct from other residences in town -- except, perhaps, for its talent for insulating occupants from the outside world.

I've driven past the prison hundreds of times over my 17 years living here. Though it is located on the periphery of town, MCI-Concord sits adjacent to the Concord Rotary, a nexus of local traffic that connects a number of main roads. You can't get to Acton from Concord, for instance, without connecting to Route 2A at the rotary. While it is possible to find your way on backroads, it is easy to get lost, and chances are you'll wind up back where you started.

Across the rotary from MCI-Concord, a dirt road winds through a soggy sweep of pasture land to a small cluster of buildings and a rusty grain elevator. This complex, which straddles the line between the stark, rigid motif of the neighboring prison and the pastoral aesthetic of historic Concord, is the Northeastern Correctional Center, a sort of halfway house for inmates preparing to transition back into civil society.

Driving past NECC -- or the "Farm," as I called it growing up -- I had always thought it strange that a prison facility would also have cows, gardens, and a two-rung white fence serving as the sole barrier between convicted felons and Concord's idyllic suburbs. One can imagine my surprise, then, when I learned that the prisoners at the Farm operate a public restaurant where, five days a week, the inmates cook for, serve, and wait on paying customers from the general public.

My friend Ben, with whom I had driven past the Farm dozens of times during high school, had recently found out about the restaurant. He had visited it the previous week to report a freelance piece for the Boston Phoenix. Impressed by what he had seen and learned, Ben asked me if I wanted to go back with him and some friends for lunch.

I pulled up the dirt path, self-conscious because I was driving my father's BMW. In accordance with Ben's instructions, I was wearing khakis and brown loafers -- they don't allow jeans or sneakers -- and I left my cell phone in the car, because electronics are also banned. The ceilings inside the building were tall, and the laughter and conversation of several men wearing white, Department of Corrections jumpsuits echoed up a staircase as we relinquished our driver's licenses to a uniformed guard at the check-in kiosk. "He buying for you?" The guard asked, nodding at Ben. I said yes. "Hey, why not?" he said. "Best deal in town."

The restaurant, called the Fife and Drum (presumably an homage to Concord's colonial history), was aesthetically similar to the Farm itself: neither entirely cozy nor completely sterile. The tables and chairs were simple but functional, like in a school cafeteria, and the walls were mostly stark, except for the one nearest to the kitchen. That one was decorated with cape-style wood shingles, a sign that read, "Never trust a skinny cook," and a window looking into a managerial office, making it look like a rustic shack. The tall windows and natural light also contributed warmth, as did the fact that the Fife and Drum was well-populated. Each of the ten tables already had patrons. So after paying the $1.42 flat dining rate, the six of us split up, and Ben and I sat at the table closest to the shack/office with two men -- each aged about 50, I guessed, give or take. We were easily the youngest customers in the place by several decades.

The menu was simple, but it covered all three courses: Split pea soup and garden salad (with our choice of balsamic vinagrette, French, or Bleu Cheese dressing) to start. Then chicken or tuna fish sandwiches (with fries), or roast beef with peas and mashed potatoes. Finally, vanilla almond cake and pina colada squares for dessert. We were supposed to write our orders on post-it notes labeled with numbers corresponding to our table positions for the waiters to take to the cooks. As a vegetarian, there wasn't much there for me, but I elected not to ask my tattooed, jumpsuit-clad waiter if I could see the non-meat options. Instead, I wrote "Mashed potatoes and peas (no roast beef)" on my order slip. When our waiter came and took the slip I averted my eyes, fearful that I might anger him and the rest of the cooking crew by foisting my special needs on them. To my relief, he took the paper without hesitation.

When the conversation between the two men at our table reached a hiatus, we did introductions. One of them, Bill, told us he was a chaplain over at MCI-Concord. Bill was a stocky, rotund man with round-frame glasses and a look of perpetual concern befitting his profession. The other introduced himself as Dennis, a taller, bespectacled pastor from Nashua, N.H., who worked part-time at Concord and other regional correctional facilities.

It was from them that I learned MCI-Concord was not a typical medium-security prison; it was the nexus of the state's entire prison system. Every criminal sentenced in Massachusetts, they explained, passes through here for "classification" before being either kept in Concord or shipped off to some stronger cage, such as the maximum-security slammer in Walpole. It is, like the traffic circle adjacent to it, a crossroads.

Bill and Dennis were used to dealing with inmates who were at crossroads -- spiritual ones, mostly, but practical ones as well. Ben told them he had written a story about the Fife and Drum for the Phoenix, they became excited and started talking about how important the restaurant is to helping inmates develop the interactive and job-based skills that they will need when they get out of the prison system. This restaurant, they said, serves as a connector between life on the inside and life on the outside. Thrown into the world without this sort of direction, the ex-cons tend to get lost, resort to backroads, and wind up right back where they started.

As I nodded, I saw our waiter wheeling around the corner. His hitched-up sleeve revealed a muscular forearm adorned with arabesque ink patterns, and at the end of that forearm his hand grasped a small piece of paper: my order slip. I instantly regretted by decision to request a meatless entree. Surely, that was the issue here. I had confused the cooks. No -- I had angered them. I turned in my chair and faced the waiter.

"Peas and potatoes?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Do you want gravy on those? It has meat in it too."

"Oh. Um, no. No thank you."

The waiter nodded politely and returned to the kitchen.