Here are two quotes from one of my favorite movies --
And that's how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of '49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking icy cold Bohemmen style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders, and felt like free men. Hell, we could'a been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the Lords of all Creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.
You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards. Or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again... if only for a short while.
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In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank Prison.
All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock-hammer damn near worn down to the nub.
I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Andy did it in less than twenty.
Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, a million years of mountain-building there.
Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really. Pressure and time. And a big damn poster. Like I said. In prison, a man'll do most anything to keep his mind occupied.
It turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall out into the exercise yard a handful at a time... I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he'd been here just about long enough.
Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine. Or maybe I just don't want to.
Five hundred yards. That's the length of five football fields. Just shy of half a mile.
The next morning, right about the time Racquel was spilling her little secret...a man nobody ever laid eyes on before strolled into the Maine National Bank. Until that moment, he didn't exist -- except on paper.
He had all the proper I.D. Driver's license, birth certificate, social security card. And, the signature was a spot-on match.
Mr. Stevens visited nearly a dozen banks in the Portland area that morning. All told, he blew town with better than 370 thousand dollars of Warden Norton's money. Severance pay for nineteen years.
I like to think the last thing that went through his [Warden Norton's] head...other than that bullet...was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.
Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank. But the postmark said, "Forth Handcox, Texas."
Forth Handcox. Right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it makes me laugh all over again...
Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific.
Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear, the stuff he pulled.
Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are just too bright...and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice...but still, the place you live is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.
Besides all the regular email I get and FrontPage support questions, I also get a lot of people that send me jokes and what not. Diary of a Newbie is one that always makes me laugh.
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