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kentuckytotheworld.org 94 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.17 Down the line Continued from page 71 He'd gotten caught in what he calls "the madness." He says he was selling crack and "orange sunshine" (LSD). Crack was every- where in the West End, in the housing proj- ects that have since been demolished. "e madness. 1985 and everybody freebasing," he says. "Richard Pryor caught on fire. Next thing you know — crack. New Jack City." It was smooth rollin' until omas accidentally sold crack to an undercover narcotics officer. en it was the slammer and all that starchy food and the Bible and weights. He served three years total in three different facilities while his friends were caught, shot or still sell- ing on the streets. Now, omas says, "I just stay out of the way and pray." He takes care of his 13-year-old boy — his inspiration to stay straight — on the weekends. When omas got out, he heard JBS would hire people with a criminal record. A second-chance company. Britt Pitcock, who is no more than skin and bones and tattoos on his arms, had been clean two months when he applied to JBS. "Was the first drug test I'd passed in 13 years," Pitcock says. "I said, 'Give me two.'" He wears rubber gloves up to his elbows and stands on a slippery catwalk over the 138-degree scald tub, fishing the pigs out when they fall from their ankle chains. "Noose becomes loose and they just slide right off," he says. For Pitcock, it was the mess of meth. e drug grabbed him so hard it turned him blue — two overdoses. Woke up in the hospital confused as hell, seeing light. e 29-year- old lived that first summer at JBS in survival mode, knowing he needed to keep a job. He has found peace in the physicality and the solitude, nobody else coming back to the scald room because it's so hot. Pitcock gives speeches now about his experience with drug abuse, and he'll run through lines on the line. "I basically get to meditate all day," he says. "Center myself through it all." Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith, whose district includes JBS, says, "We don't have near enough second-chance companies — companies that employ immigrants, folks that are transitioning out of the prison system — in this community. To me, it helps reduce the violent crime rate. If people are working, have money for food, clothes and shelter for their families, they're not going to resort to crime to meet basic human needs." She adds that it deters people from the drug epidemic, too, which she says is "heating up." She asks, "If they didn't have that, where would they turn?" e line extends long, reaches far from its beginning. It grows, with its tangents and triumphs and troubles. en, it ends. All lines must end. A round of goodbyes and shaking hands and signing papers on Lynn Fields' last day. He's been at JBS for 19 years and it'd be longer if it wasn't for his bad back that's had him out since last July — disks in his spine wearing on one another, the need for physical therapy, abrasion shots like "ping pong in the body," the possi- bility of surgery. Nineteen years at JBS and 17 at Fischer's, the other long-standing butcher in the neighborhood that closed in 2003. A long history in the life of a 61-year-old.