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Sam. And some don't, and never will. 

That's what I know; now I'm going to tell you what I think. 1 may have it wrong on some 

of the specifics, but I'd be willing to bet my watch and chain that I've got the general 

outline down pretty well. Because, with Andy being the sort of man that he was, there's 

only one or two ways that it could have been. And every now and then, when I think it 

out, I think of Normaden, that half-crazy Indian. 'Nice fella,' Normaden had said after 

celling with Andy for six or eight months. 'I was glad to go, me. All the time cold. He 

don't let nobody touch his things. That's okay. Nice man, never make fun. But big 

draught.' Poor crazy Normaden. He knew more than ail the rest of us, and he knew it 

sooner. And it was eight long months before Andy could get him out of there and have 

the cell to himself again. If it hadn't been for the eight months Normaden had spent with 

him after Warden Norton first came in, I do believe that Andy would have been free 

before Nixon resigned. 

I believe now that it began in 1949, way back then - not with the rock-hammer, but with 

the Rita Hayworth poster. I told you how nervous he seemed when he asked for that, 

nervous and filled with suppressed excitement. At the time I thought it was just 

embarrassment, that Andy was the sort of guy who'd never want someone else to know 

that he had feet of clay and wanted a woman ... even if it was only a fantasy-woman. But 

I think now that I was wrong. I think now that Andy's excitement came from something 

else 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