By: George Feigley,
Cofounder
 Like the Yeti or the Sasquatch, the Fracks is an almost monstrous breed. One would hardly believe that the Fracks exists at all if he hadn't experienced them for himself. The Fracks are throwbacks, psychological freaks. They are regressed from a once decent, even laudable people, the diligent immigrants who settled around Frackville.
Frackville is a quaint, albeit has-been village in Schuylkill County in rustic East-Central Pennsylvania. There was a time when Schuylkill was a bustling hive of decent immigrant miners and laborers. They were mostly old-world peasants from Ireland and Eastern Europe. Most were proud, courageous and hard-working. They daily risked their lives by descending into the abysmally unsafe deep mines. (What ever happened to that hardy, honest people?) That was then. This is now. After so many have regressed into Fracks things are very different. Now, Schuylkill County is not a place you'd want to go to. It's a place you'd want to go through. Something happened. The once decent people morphed into Fracks. The mines are gone. The Fracks abandoned honest employment. They flocked into do-nothing jobs as prison guards. A Fracks is an unfortunate evolutionary throwback, abusive, foul, uncouth, self-important, drunk and often an addict. What happened were prisons. Prisons have a nasty way of corrupting the peasants who are employed in them. Prisons debase the whole community. Today, Schuylkill County's financial heart is a pair of state prisons. They have badly tainted the community. The one at Frackville is by far the worst. Sadly, descendants of the Irish seem to have sunk especially low. Early in the twentieth century one Irishman, the novelist, John O'Hara (1905-1970), gave Frackville its moment of fame. Living in the area, he made it into "Mountain City" in his short stories. In O'Hara's day, the area Irish were coal miners. They lived by drudgery, drunkenness, poverty and grime. Then, as now, some of them were infected with an unfortunate gene of vicious violence. It was the Molly Maguire gene for murder and bullying. In the old days, the gene was focused on survival. It was a useful strength against oppression by exploitative Republican industrialist and mine owners. Nowadays the folks have been abased by the state prisons. The prisons subsidize the area's whole dilapidated economy. The people, at least those employed at the Frackville state prison, have regressed into bullying thugs, cowardly, lazy and, as a group, dumb as a peanutbutter cracker.
Ordinary Frackville prison guards behave so badly because the administration is utterly incompetent. Mismanagement by cowardly bullies is the example which ordinary guards emulate. A Frack is weak-minded. He or she is easily mislead by authority figures. Oddly, the ordinary people in the community, those who aren't directly involved with the prison mentality, are really a decent sort. They still enjoy firehouse breakfasts, church picnics and school celebrations. The old folks bus to Atlantic City to gamble and the cultured visit Philadelphia and Washington. History is as much a staple as beer. It's only those who are employed in the prisons who have cultivated the very worst parts of their personalities. In my long years, I've been shipped from prison to prison. I've come to know hundreds of guards and prison employees. Some were decent persons. The Fracks at Frackville are different. They are a kind of cross between 1950s Alabama rednecks and intoxicated 1940s Nazis. Most have a generous measure of mental deficiency gilding the dung. Almost to a man, they are bullies. Coping with this modern breed of Molly Maguires is like warding off a fart in an elevator. One's only defense is fortitude. In this section of the website, I and others share with you normal people a taste of the unsavory nature of the Fracks. If you're given a choice, pick a dentist before you pick a Frack.
"Beer! Now there's a temporary solution," You are welcome to use or republish any of our material.
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Admittedly, most (but by no means all) guards in all prisons are pretty much the dregs of civilization. I mean, who would willingly earn a livelihood by imprisoning others? Admittedly, all prisons have evil, even demented "screws." Frackville is different only in how many guards are so bad and in how extremely poor the staff, especially the management is. They comprise a separate subspecies, Fracks!