This Late-Night “Grown-Folks” Soul Music Broadcast Serves as a Lifeline for Inmates at a Fort Stockton Prison

The stack of letters is about an inch high. Most are handwritten in black ink on lined, three-holed notebook paper, with A-plus penmanship. Curlicues, stars, and graffiti-style lettering are reserved for signatures, although the writers typically sign off with something other than their given name: Boo, Mr. 18, Yishai, Mr. Palmer, Your Boy L.A., Dan D Man.For the past decade or so, inmates at the James Lynaugh Unit, a state prison outside Fort Stockton and some eighty miles from Marfa, have written letters to David Beebe, a man they’ve neither met nor seen. They know his raspy voice and his drawl, y’all, as the deejay on the Night Train Express, a radio show that airs Tuesday nights, from nine until midnight, on Marfa Public Radio.…

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