The partial title of the song by Garth Brooks captures both the tone and story of my time in the winter months of 1994.

From January, 1994 through almost the end of April of that same year, I spent my time learning what it was like not to be free.

But this podcast is not about that so much as it is about the experiences I had and the people I met. Some of their names are now gone from my mind. Others I could shout out at once. I have forgotten none of them.

I never saw it coming. The last place I wanted to be was also the last place I expected to find nice people even a measure of kindness.

President Carter once started a commencement address at Emory University by telling the graduates there were three important lessons to know in life...there was kindness, then kindness again, and finally kindness one more time.

This is a story, not often told by me, of what I saw and learned years ago.