Pinstripes to Pen Stripes for Milken : Securities: The former bond king enters the federal prison in the Bay Area. Taco salad and meat loaf are on the first day’s menu.

Junk bond king Michael Milken spent his first full day in prison Monday, rising early on a rainy day and being led through a daylong orientation before receiving a work assignment.

Milken reported to the Federal Prison Work Camp at Pleasanton after dinner on Sunday, a day before the court-imposed deadline for him to present himself at the front gate of the minimum security facility, Associate Warden Monica Wetzel said.

As first days go, Milken’s was uneventful, she said.

“I’m sure he didn’t feel that way. But we have a certain process for all inmates, and that hasn’t changed any,” Wetzel said.

Milken’s day began about 6 a.m. As always, breakfast and the day’s other meals were dished up cafeteria-style to the prison’s 80 inmates.

The morning meal Monday consisted of pineapple juice, cereal, hard-boiled eggs, link sausages and toast. Lunch was taco salad, brownies, soup and milk or Kool-Aid. Dinner included meat loaf, mash potatoes and gravy, peas and carrots, and milk or Kool-Aid.

Milken, who created Drexel Burnham Lambert’s junk bond operation in Beverly Hills, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year after he pleaded guilty to six counts of securities violations. He will be eligible for parole after serving three years in prison.

Milken shares a room with three other men in a whitewashed barracks at the Camp Parks Army Base. He is allotted 90 square feet of space, a locker and a metal bunk bed, plus a desk that he must share with his roommates. Most of his fellow inmates are serving time for drug dealing.

For after-hours, there is a room with a television, a few chairs, chess and Scrabble games, a stationary bicycle and a treadmill for exercise and a few worn paperbacks. One title was “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

Wetzel said she did not know what job Milken would be assigned, though his opportunities are limited: the kitchen, vehicle repair, maintenance, construction or landscaping. Milken, who made $550 million in salary and bonuses in 1987, will receive 12 to 40 cents an hour for his work.

Milken spent his last day of freedom with family in his Encino home and arrived in the Bay Area aboard a commercial jet Sunday. Upon his arrival, correctional officers went through his personal belongings to make certain that he had no items that were prohibited.

Wetzel did not know whether Milken wore his toupee to prison. If he had worn it, officers would have removed it because such items “can change one’s appearance,” Wetzel said.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman in San Francisco contributed to this story.