se altogether.
What was responsible for the hole that Warden Norton eventually found behind the
poster of a girl that hadn‘t even been born when that photo of Rita Hayworth was taken?
Andy Dufresne‘s perseverance and hard work, yeah - I don‘t take any of that away from
him. But there were two other elements in the equation: a lot of luck, and WPA concrete.
You don‘t need me to explain the luck, I guess. The WPA concrete I checked out for
myself. I invested some time and a couple of stamps and wrote first to the University of
Maine History Department and then to a fellow whose address they were able to give me.
This fellow had been foreman of the WPA project that built the Shawshank Max Security
Wing.
The wing, which contains Cellblocks 3,4, and 5, was built in the years 1934-37. Now,
most people don‘t think of cement and concrete as ‘technological developments‘, the way
we think of cars and oil furnaces and rocket-ships, but they really are. There was no
modern cement until 1870 or so, and no modern concrete until after the turn of the
century. Mixing concrete is as delicate a business as making bread. You can get it too
watery or not watery enough. You can get the sand-mix too thick or too thin, and the
same is true of the gravel-mix. And back in 1934, the science of mixing the stuff was a
lot less sophisticated than it is today.
The walls of Cellblock 5 were solid enough, but they weren‘t exactly dry and toasty. As a
matter of fact, they were and are pretty damned dank. After a long wet spell they would
sweat and sometimes even drip. Cracks had a way of appearing, some an inch deep, and
were routinely mortared over.
Now here comes Andy Dufresne into Cellblock 5. He‘s a man who graduated from the
University of Maine‘s school of business, but he‘s also a man who took two or three
geology courses along the way. Geology had, in fact, become his chief hobby. I imagine
it appealed to his patient, meticulous nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A million
years of mountain-building there. Tectonic plates grinding against each other deep under
the earth‘s skin over the millennia. Pressure. Andy told me once that all of geology is the
study of pressure.
And time, of course.
He had time to study those walls. Plenty of time. When the cell door slams and the lights
go out, there‘s nothing else to look at.
First-timers usually had a hard time adjusting to the confinement of prison life. They get
screw-fever, they have to be hauled down to the infirmary and sedated couple of times
before they get on the beam. It‘s not unusual to hear some new member of our happy little
family bang on the bars of his cell and screaming to be let out ... before the cries have
gone on for long, the chant starts up along the cellblock: ‘Fresh fish, hey little fishie, fresh
fish, fresh fish, got fresh fish today!‘
Andy didn‘t flip out like that when he came to the Shank 1948, but that‘s not to say that
he didn‘t feel many of same things. He may have come close to madness; some and some
go sailing right over the edge. Old life blown away in the wink of an eye, indeterminate
nightmare stretching out ahead, a long season in hell.
So what did he do, I ask you? He searched almost desperately for something to divert his
restless mind. Oh. there are all sorts of ways to divert yourself, even in prison; it seems
like the human mind is full of an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to
diversion. I told you about the sculptor and his Three Ages of Jesus. There were coin
collectors who were always losing their collections to thieves, stamp collectors, one
fellow who had postcards from thirty-five different countries - and let me tell you, he
would have turned out your lights if he‘d caught you diddling with his postcards.
Andy got interested in rocks. And the walls of his cell.
I think that his initial intent

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