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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 intention might have been to do no more than to carve his initials 

into the wall where the poster of Rita Hayworth would soon be hanging. His initials, or 

maybe a few lines from some poem. Instead, what he found was that interestingly weak 

concrete. Maybe he started to carve his initials and a big chunk of the wall fell out I can 

see him, lying there on his bunk, looking at that broken chunk of concrete, turning it over 

in his hands. Never mind the wreck of your whole life, never mind that you got railroaded 

into this place by a whole trainload of bad luck. Let's forget all that and look at this piece 

of concrete. 

Some months further along he might have decided it would 

be fun to see how much of that wall he could take out. But you can't just start digging 

into your wall and then, when the weekly inspection (or one of the surprise inspections 

that are always turning up interesting caches of booze, drugs, dirty pictures, and 

weapons) comes around, say to the guard: This? Just excavating a little hole in my cell 

wall. Not to worry, my good man.' 

No, he couldn't have that So he came to me and asked if I could get him a Rita Hayworth 

poster. Not a little one but a big one.