Saunders: Mama Dip serves up just what these folks need

By a show of wrinkled, gnarly hands, how many of you have worked as dishwashers?

I thought so. Of course, most of us were busting suds merely while waiting for something better to come along.

Talk to Paul Scott, a pot washer at Mama Dip's restaurant in Chapel Hill, and he'll tell you emphatically "This is something better."

No, Scott, of Durham, didn't grow up wanting to be a world-class suds buster, but when he thinks about where he's been - heck, where he is - busting suds six days a week is a step not only up but in the right direction. "This gave me an opportunity to get my foot in the workplace. I'm grateful for Mama Dip. This is my first job."

You read that right. Scott, 32, never had a real job - unless you count "just on the streets" and dealing drugs - before seven months ago, when he started at the restaurant many consider to be an institution.

The place where Scott lives is an institution, too - a correctional institution. Scott and several other Mama Dip's employees reside at the Durham Correctional Center and work at Mama Dip's as part of the prison's work release program. Scott has about a year and a half left on his original sentence as a nonviolent habitual felon for possessing crack cocaine. This is his first time in prison, and he intends for it to be his last. "I'm not trying to come back here. Seven years, 10 months is all I plan to give the state of North Carolina."

But he said he may come back to work at the restaurant, as have many of the countless inmates who've worked there. "I want to go back to school and become a heavy equipment operator," he said. "Until then, I want to keep working for Mama Dip, but I may step aside and let somebody else in my situation work here."

Somebody else who is in his situation is Leroy Rodgers of Siler City. Rodgers, 55, who works as a kitchen helper, was peeling onions with a very big knife when I interviewed him Friday. "C'mon back here and cry with me," he said. He was joking about the onions, because although Rodgers has 14 months left on his 46-month sentence for selling dope, he doesn't feel that he has anything to cry about. "I love working here," he said. "It's a good way of getting back into society and getting used to being around people. People here don't look at you like an inmate; they look at you like you're another person."

That's precisely what they are to Mildred Council, owner of Mama Dip's. She's been taking in inmates and helping them get re-acclimated to freedom for so long that she couldn't even remember who was governor when she first started. "I think it was Holshouser," she said, referring to former Gov. Jim Holshouser.

For the past 30 years, she has been taking in inmates from the Orange Correctional Center, but about a year ago she began taking them from Durham Correctional, Mac Fennell said.

Fennell, program supervisor at the Durham prison on Guess Road, said, "We're always looking for jobs for these gentlemen when they're close to getting out ... to teach them how to support their families and themselves. They seem to love working there and love her. ... It helps boost the inmates' confidence that she's willing to take a chance" on them.

It's an oft-uttered cliché by some inmates, that getting locked up was the best thing that ever happened to them. Scott won't go that far, but he did say, "If I'd given work a chance, I might not ever have seen the inside of a prison. This job is a blessing. Mama Dip is a blessing." He called and wrote letters to prospective employers for a year before contacting Council. "I went on interviews for a year before I got this," Scott said. "A lot of people don't want to take a chance on us.

"I don't blame them," he said, even though he swears, "I wouldn't dare try to mess this up for the guys coming next. If one of us messes up, it's messed up for all of us. We know that."

Council doesn't judge the dudes who work for her, which may be the reason they seem to appreciate her so much. "I don't ask them what they've done, but sometimes they tell me. They're not all bad people. Most of them are locked up for drugs. If you could take a broom and sweep out all of the drugs, ... you'd be surprised at what you might find."

'We need to talk to them'

Council, 81, is proud of seeing the inmates learn - many for the first time - what it means to earn a paycheck and be a responsible citizen. "We're scared of these children, but we shouldn't be," she said. "We need to talk to them. A lot of young people don't want to work. They just want to walk the street with their britches hanging down." Most, though, would work if they could find jobs.

Sort of like, say, Paul Scott, who got his first job ever with Mama Dip at age 32. If Scott wants to continue working there when he finishes his prison sentence, she said, she'll gladly keep him and all the others. "I done trained these rascals," she laughed, "but if they can get something better, fine."

As Scott said, if he finds something better, he'll step aside and let somebody else in his situation have his current job busting suds. There will always be, unfortunately, someone else in his situation, because as Mama Dip said, "These are the lostest people on Earth - our young black males."

They are, indeed, but I have no doubt that if she could, Mama Dip would save each of them - one pot, one onion, one broom at a time.