Who, one might reasonably ask, would put a laundry on an island where ALL the water had to be boated in? The US Army, that is who, and the federal prison service kept it there.
Alcatraz had to generate its own electricity, and the dryers used a lot of it. The pressers took steam, which meant fuel consumption to create it. Laundry meant great piles of stuff shipped on and off the island. What was overlooked in pockets coming in? Where did it end up? Not the best for maximum security.
We could go on with this but one surely gets the idea that Alcatraz industries were not well conceived. They were simply inherited from the Army's Disciplinary Barracks, and with some modifications made the best of.
During their Alcatraz years, E. F. Chandler and R.O. Culver designed their idea of a maximum security prison. Basically, it was a high-rise building without windows for twelve stories. Within, the cellblocks were stacked, none touching the outer building. There was no industry, only classrooms.
Certainly, a maximum-security prison should not have families almost within it. Alcatraz had from thirty-five to fifty families on it. No dependents were seized on Alcatraz, but such hostages were believed to have been included in some LATER escape plans.
No doubt, having most of the guard force close-by in case of emergency influenced the decision to have families on Alcatraz. There were times when the seas were too rough and the boats could not run. Occasionally, men or family members were stuck either on or off island. Perhaps those facts at least partly negate the island prison concept.
These days, men sometimes commute hours to and from work, and that should have been the Alcatraz policy. Although most of us liked living in the middle of the bay, families should have stayed off the island.
A more recent photograph of the Warden's home after the Indian (Native American) occupation. The home was a handsome building and was of historic interest (as associated with the prison).
It has never been politically correct to criticize the Indian occupation, but I do, with vehemence. The occupiers promiscuously burned almost everything and trashed what was not flammable. U. S. Marshals should have ejected the rabble the instant they landed.
This view of San Francisco from Alcatraz tore the souls of those confined on the island. When viewed with the natural eye, the handsome city seemed almost within reach. You could look right up the streets and see the traffic moving.
Most torturous of all, when the wind was right, the sweetly delicious smell of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, in early days positioned almost on the city docks, perfumed the air.
So close, but so far.
Chapter 8
No matter what I write here, I would like to say clearly that living as a dependent on Alcatraz was a happy life. There, we were a close custodial family, although on the island, there wasn't much beyond the greater prison family to occupy our minds and time.
I am told that teenagers on the island were discontented. It must have been true that they found few occasions to share. I was too young to experience those frustrations, but unlike these days, when recreation is supposed to be provided by the community, by the government, or by churches and schools, most of us were raised to entertain ourselves. I believe we did that with success.
It was a safe time and place. There was no dependent crime on Alcatraz, and beyond a natural interest in what was going on, the convicts were not on our minds. Because Alcatraz was what it was, we never believed inmates to be a danger to us.
In 1906, San Francisco had been devastated by their most famous earthquake, but even during the quaking, not a quiver struck Alcatraz. The island is, after all, the tip of a rock that is part of the Pacific Plate—the world's bedrock. We had no fear of the earth's next rumblings.
We were also clear of neighborhood troubles that might annoy or endanger city dwellers. It had been fifty years since the Barbary Coast had ceased to exist, and the infamous hatchet men of the Chinese Tongs had been hammered underground until San Francisco's Chinatown was also a pleasant, if mysterious, place to visit.
The island community did provide some entertainment. There were occasional dances and gatherings, such as Halloween and Christmas, and Easter saw programs in the recreation hall.
On some holidays, dependents were allowed into the prison to see movies. The prisoners went in the afternoon, and we attended in the evening. Most exciting to my sister and me was the passage through the locked steel doors to gain access to the chapel—to sit right where "Old Creepy" or "Machine Gun" might have sat. Wow!
From the prison shops came a complete playground for the younger children. I recall teeter-totters, swings, a sand box, and one of the worst slides ever designed. The intent was commendable, but the prisoner-designed and built slide never worked. It was made of cement and heavily waxed. Usually the "slidee" came to a dead stop about halfway down. As is often the case, the simplest things worked the best. The sandbox was always in use.
Prisoners made items for the grown-ups as well. We had checker/chess boards of fitted wooden blocks with Alcatraz on them. Our family still has a cribbage board with Alcatraz inlaid in darker wood in the center of it. Those items were not purchased. They were perks the guards arranged for each other.
On Alcatraz, we were cared for and protected. My sister, Barbara, and I have only good feelings about our four years on The Rock. We believe most of the Alcatraz children feel the same.
Our daily trips to San Francisco to attend school could involve some rough boat rides, particularly on the round-bottomed McDowell launch, but we rode daily during the school year, and the trips became so routine we barely noticed.
The most exciting and inconvenient boat rides were when the wind and water raged and made the regular dock unmanageable. Then we were landed on the island's opposite side at the rough weather dock.
Until dependent quarters were ready, our family lived in a rental apartment on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Dad caught the island boat morning and evening.
My sister and I attended Sherman Elementary School only a few blocks away. Because I was inattentive and overly rambunctious, I was later sent to St. Bridgette's Catholic School, a half mile further away. The nuns cooled me, and I finished my Alcatraz time by opening the brand new Marina Junior High School. Most Alcatraz students followed a similar route and went on to graduate from Galileo High School. We shipped out too young for that.
My mother founded and taught the first kindergarten on the island. It met in our oversized dining room. We had many young families on the island, so Ruth Chandler had enough students.
Alcatraz's first kindergarten class: Left to right the children are, C. Neally, Harry Snyder, Jerry McDiene, Arthur Star, Patsy Gaynor, C. Albrecht, Phylis (Sweety) Hess, (?) Jennison, J. Preshaw, Florence Madigan.
Because he was first on hand, Dad got his pick of quarters. An old army sergeant advised that the best guards' quarters would be in Building 64. The best in that building would be the top gallery corner apartment. It might not be the first re-finished, but it would be large and conveniently placed with good cross ventilation.
The sergeant was right. We had three bedrooms, a huge living room, and a too large dining room. There was a modern bath (very large), and a good kitchen. A corner fireplace was inactive, but it looked nice. Ceilings were very high, and we had hardwood floors. For the 1930's, it was indeed a handsome home.
When our family moved to the island in 1934, our personal belongings were minimal. We moved in before the arrival of our government furniture. A sort of overly high kitchen serving table was our only eating place. We had no chairs. My sister sat on a garbage can with a pillow, and I perched on an orange crate. (Those WERE the HARD years.) Government-issue furniture arrived in discouraging order. We needed living room furnishings and beds to replace our army cots and lawn chairs. After many weeks, the first shipment arrived. Of course, it was composed of end tables, side tables, and nightstands.
Here is one to fill out the records. Prison doctor, George Hess, a general practi
tioner, circumcised me on our too high kitchen table—free of charge. In those simpler days, the prison system still had its perks. I returned to school wearing a Bull Durham cigarette tobacco bag stuffed with cotton to protect my worked-on anatomy. I was ten years old.
When we first arrived, we children had the run of the island—excepting the actual prison complex. We kids were everywhere . . . on the cliffs, fishing off the docks, and along the stone beaches. We were up around the lighthouse and roller-skating the dangerously steep and mostly corrugated roadways. Clifton Michelson was the most daring and the best skater. "Junior" Winehold and Bob Rebholtz built a marvelous soapbox-type car that whizzed down the hills. I had a homebuilt kite-like sail that could zoom its roller-skater across the cement parade ground.
It is often said that Alcatraz convicts and custodial dependents did not encounter or interact with each other. NO CONTACT was always the official position, but in our earliest years on the island there were many exceptions. For instance, children regularly met the crew that cleaned the shoreline—a guard was always present. Convicts worked within Warden Johnston's house and were around the "up top" officers' families. Dependents of officers (lieutenants and above) regularly encountered those inmates. A convict garbage detail made regular rounds within the dependent living areas. Porter, the softball recoverer (doing only five years) spoke with dependents regularly. When we attended movies, a convict operated the projector. Also, each time I went to the hospital for asthma treatment, convict orderlies were in attendance.
New rules began to come down. No children "up top." Up top was the lighthouse, the warden's home, and the prison's main entrance level. No playing in "Chinatown." Chinatown was a three story deep concrete canyon created when the guards' quarters were built. Two stories down there was an iron grating. Beneath the grate were some of the old fortress's storage bunkers. That bottom level was the mysterious (to us) "Chinatown."
NEVER HAVE A TOY GUN! An understandable regulation, it meant what it said. My father threw my cap pistols into the bay. But we made "rubber guns" from 1" x 4" x 12" boards that looked like this:
They, too, were immediately outlawed. Nothing was to remind a convict of a gun.
Dependent regulations continued to tighten, and as you visit the prison's moldering remains, you will see cyclone fences limiting children and adults to small areas near their quarters.
When the prison first opened, there were no metal detectors at the dock. (We delightedly called them "Gun Detectors.") When one was installed, even the children were dutifully marched through, and our tin lunch boxes were searched for dangerous contraband.
My friends and I stole spikes from San Francisco building sites and flattened them by laying them on the Van Ness Avenue streetcar tracks. Some guards let our "knives" through, some did not.
I have always remembered waiting my turn to go through the detector when a convict's visitor turned in his shoulder-holstered, nickel-plated revolver. Wow, what a gun! Young boys dreamed of owning such marvelous things.
Most guards owned an automobile. About two blocks from the Fort Mason dock, where we landed in San Francisco, a large warehouse garaged our cars for minimal charges. When a family came ashore, the father went for the automobile while the rest waited on the dock. Returning to the island, time had to be allowed to get the car safely stowed and hike back to the dock.
There was always a social distance between ordinary guards and lieutenants and above. Off island, Guard Chandler and Lieutenant Culver ignored it, but the pecking order returned at the Fort Mason dock where separate waiting rooms were required.
The Coxe, our larger transportation boat, was a good example of ordered segregation. The Coxe had three cabin spaces. Aft and below rode the enlisted soldiers from Angel Island Army Post—the boat's only other stop. Above aft was reserved for commissioned army officers and lieutenants and above from Alcatraz. The forward cabin was for Alcatraz guards and their dependents.
A very few children of ranking noncommissioned officers from Angel Island traveled up front with us, but in those days most army enlisted men were single and noncoms were few.
During school runs, morning and afternoon, the army assigned an aging buck sergeant to ride herd on the teeming mass of children. He kept us aboard, but little more. One payday, our sergeant fell victim to demon rum and lay sprawled on a seat with his fly open. Thereafter, he was a private performing the same duty. Later, the army withdrew that service.
Although we traveled on the same boats, there was surprisingly little interaction between the children of Angel Island Army Post and the Alcatraz kids. Somehow, we never warmed to each other. Except for one informal softball game, I do not recall our bunch ever going to their island, and I never recall them visiting ours.
Angel Island looms like a mountain behind Alcatraz. Angel Island is much closer to the former island prison than is San Francisco, but in our imaginings, the big city was always escapees' destination.
We were allowed to have visitors in any number we chose, but not many school friends came over. Considering the interest in Alcatraz, that has always seemed odd to me. You would think common curiosity would have brought many across.
Despite the popular press's unflagging interest in Alcatraz, reporters never seemed to find friends to visit on the island. Our grown-ups must have been truly circumspect in their friendships.
Sunday church service was important to mothers on Alcatraz. A nondenominational service was conducted for dependents in the recreation hall by the prison's chaplain, Reverend Wayne Hunter. Wives taught typical Sunday school and the congregation gathered to sing and pray acceptably neutral favorites.
My Sunday School class (Junior boys) in 1937. Left to right, David "Harpo" Heath, Roy Chandler, Clifton (Buster) Michelson, Dick Crabb, Ralph Preshaw, George Steere.
Boys my age twitched and thrashed through the seemingly interminable religious services. I vividly recall an incident that is not worthy of relating, but I will do it anyway.
We were handed a churchy flyer that had a joke included. Although always separated to prevent disturbances, my best friend, "Buster" Michelson and I (on the right) read the joke at the same instant and simultaneously burst out laughing. We suffered for it.
The joke has remained with me.
"On their tandem bicycle, Ike and Mike struggled up a steep hill. At the top Mike said, 'Wow what a hill, I could hardly make it.' Ike answered, 'You're right, I had to keep the brake on the whole way to keep from going down backward.'" Ah well.
Chaplain Hunter and his wife Iola were young and newly wed. They had, as my father pithily explained, "Not a pot to piss in."
In those days, none of us had anything. A junior guard, like my father, received $1,680.00 per year. A senior guard was paid $1,850.00, and a lieutenant received the remarkable sum of $2,300.00. My mother often recalled how she and dad would dream of all they could do it they could ever make $2000.00 per year. What our fathers did have in those Great Depression years was a decent and permanent job. That condition, believe me, was to be envied.
Until their quarters were ready, the Hunters lived in our third bedroom. They shared our lives and remained friends for their lifetimes.
My father and Wayne Hunter argued religion and penology. From E. F. Chandler, Chaplain Hunter learned the guards' points of view. He was a strong chaplain who did not pretend to be a social worker. He labored over souls while advising convicts to obey the rules and not whine over self-inflicted hardships.
Wayne Hunter later served as chaplain at Atlanta Federal Prison and as a Major (chaplain) in World War II. He attained the rank of full colonel, U.S. Army Chaplains Corps. Colonel Hunter died too young of heart disease.
A year before he died, Colonel Hunter told me this Alcatraz story.
"Ludwig (Dutch) Schmidt – number 71, doing thirty-two years for robbery, refused to work on Sunday. He said it was against his religion.
"Associate Warden Shuttleworth told him it was not at all against his religion
to throw Schmidt in the dungeon on Sunday. He did, for fourteen days.
"When he came out, Dutch announced that he had changed his religion to one that allowed Sunday work."
Chapter 9
To the media of the 1930's, Alcatraz, with its sky-pointing lighthouse, loomed mysterious and untouchable, like a giant fist with upthrust finger describing exactly what reporters could do with their prying and demanding.
In the earlier days, when the Coxe docked at Fort Mason, a strange assemblage of characters was impatiently waiting. They gathered at the end of Van Ness Avenue by the railroad tunnel, where government property ended, and where the road slanted sharply upward. A steep concrete embankment on the right and the encroaching chocolate factory on the left funneled us through them.
The hike uphill to city level usually smelled powerfully of eucalyptus, as many of those trees high atop the cement wall spread branches over the sidewalk.
The weekends were most likely to provide interested or concerned boat watchers. A few panhandlers were often present (times were rough in the 1930s) and occasionally some of the simply curious stood around, as if we were something special to see.
Army dependents and girl friends awaited soldiers from Angel Island. Near the first of the month—just after payday—long stemmed and top-heavy ladies of the evening promoted their wares and passed out matchboxes advertising bars, joints, and houses of dubious repute.
The press also made the scene. Alcatraz was secret, and newspapers were aching to discover anything about the place. Adults walked through them, but reporters were not above questioning children.
Alcatraz: The Hardest Years 1934-1938 Page 6
