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A couple of stories for ya's, somebody pass that jug of wine.

Not strictly an escape story, but a friend of mine gave me a little book his father printed about his experiences in prison as a conscientious objector in Canada during world war two. He was in a low security prison, if I recall correctly, full of other men who refused to fight for one reason or another.

My friend's father was something of a mechanical genius, and after some time being bored, as one is in confinement, he made himself a set of calipers out of some parts broken off his bed frame by rubbing them against the wall. Using these calipers, he measured the pins in the lock on his door and made himself a key, again out of a piece of his bed and a lengthy period of manual grinding. He wasn't actually interested in escaping the prison, but he wanted to be able to come and go from his cell as he pleased. Once he had a key to his door, he'd go visit other prisoners.

At the end of his cell block was the meal room, he noticed that the door to said room wasn't pinned to its hinges, so in the middle of the night he and some other prisoners (I think he picked the locks on their cells as well) lifted the huge door of its hinges and hid it under a mattress in an empty cell. They also opened another empty cell and moved a bed to the meal room so they would have a sort of couch to lounge on. The door was eventually found and replaced, if I recall correctly the bed stayed in the meal room for a while longer.

When the war ended, he and the other conscientious objectors were released. He left his key behind a broken brick in his cell, hoping that someone else would eventually find it.

Such is the story of old man Michael's time in prison. One of the lessons here is that it's sometimes easier to attack things than defend them. Obviously security in prisons varies from place to place, and things have changed a lot since the 1940s. I still hope that people can leverage weak spots and design flaws.

Got some more for ya's, can somebody roll me one of those butts?