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As a kid I was a ferocious reader. I read anything and everything; the library was my best friend. Somewhere along the way I hooked onto reading prison stories and I ended up reading everything I could get my young hands on. Papillon, Escape From Stalag 13, and countless books on that most notorious of island prisons, Alcatraz.
And so it was with great anticipation that I waited for the ferry to Alcatraz Island on the afternoon of August 3rd, 2013. The terminal was packed and if not for booking the tickets well in advance there would have been no crossing for me that day – Alcatraz is a very popular attraction and despite the large boat making multiple departures daily it’s virtually impossible to walk up and get a ticket.
Disembarking on the island, the first thing I encountered was an employee welcoming the new arrivals with a megaphone. The Alcatraz tour is self-guided; after a momentary pause I gleaned that this was an unnecessary carnival-barker type of scene so I left the crowd behind and started up the hill. As I walked away I heard the carny-guard ask if any of the visitors were from out-of-town and I turned to see a family of four step up, “Yes, we are from Denmark.”
It’s interesting how much of the tour is dedicated to the native takeover of Alcatraz that began in 1969, an occupation that lasted almost two years. This was mostly new information to me. The prison-break stories had either glossed over the illegal action or didn’t mention it at all, much like books on the native protest would probably make only passing mention to, say, the Birdman of Alcatraz.
As I turned a corner in the main cellblock area I saw the Danish family, each of them decked out head-to-toe in brand new black & white striped prison clothes. The son and dad were wearing shorts and polo shirts while the wife and daughter were sporting stylish skirts and blouses, and all of them with matching striped hats. I don’t know if they bought them at the gift shop or if they were offered these crazy duds at the welcome show, regardless it was absurd, embarrassing, and definitely not very reverent.
Actually, the whole tour was more Disneyland than mausoleum. After experiencing the solemnity of Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was held for almost three decades in South Africa, the informality and push for “entertainment value” on the Alcatraz tour came as a bit of a shock.
I really enjoyed it though. Among the artifacts on display were lots of old newspaper articles along with the papier-mâché heads that Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers had used when they made their escape. Walking through the “hole” was really interesting and in a fluke of timing I found myself standing all by myself outside in the vast exercise yard, which was pretty nifty. The cafeteria was a popular stop on the tour, with its ominous web of gas lines running through the ceiling ready to mace the entire prison population at once with the pull of a lever, and the Hitchcock-esque silhouettes of knives and cleavers painted on the kitchen walls to show which sharp objects might be missing at the end of each shift.
As I meandered the grounds I kept running into that family of Danes, and the shock of seeing them dressed in their campy prison outfits never wore off. Countless people took surreptitious pictures of them.
One thing that surprised me was how close to shore the island is, and while the water is undeniably cold, choppy, and quite sharky, seeing it in person made me think that those guys in their makeshift raincoat-raft might have actually made it. I was also surprised to see artifacts from the many children and families of the guards that also lived on Alcatraz, with the kids getting ferried to-and-from school every day. There was a story about how the kids would stand outside the prison windows on Christmas Eve and sing carols. The children intended it as a small gift of holiday joy to the inmates but in actual fact they were singing the loneliest songs of the year.
Overall it was a really interesting visit, and one that confirmed what was made clear in every book I had ever read about Alcatraz: that it was a horrible, hellacious, and inhumane place to cage people. Somehow I doubt that today’s prison-system-for-hire is that much better, but I’m still glad that Alcatraz is now open only to tourists.
Todd Man Out 