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Folsom-“Stop
no visitors beyond this point” warn the sign overlooking the hand-hewn
gray granite walls. Vaulted gate and peaked Gothic guard tower of Folsom
State Prison. It’s an intimidating view of the lockup where nearly 100
men were hanged and guards and inmates died in spectacular escape attempts
that included a runaway railroad engine and homemade diving suit. Yet the
warning sign is posted at a “picture spot” where about 9,000 tourist
each year snap photos of the prison made famous by country singer Johnny
Cash and his “Folsom Prison Blues” Visitors can explore a nearby scale
model of the wall, tower and No. 8 gate from California’s second oldest
prison. They can view a replica cell featuring mildly risqué pinups on
the wall and watch a videotaped tour of the prison, which sits on
now-valuable acreage in an increasingly affluent community next to popular
Folsom Lake. The Folsom Prison Museum offers a look at torturous prison
conditions in decades after the California Gold Rush populated the Sierra
Nevada foothills that start here, 20 miles east of Sacramento. It’s a
novelty, anytime you have a museum about a prison. It opens the door to
secrets they had not experienced, said John Fratis, treasure and
operations manager of the nonprofit association of retired guards that
runs the museum. “We thought we’d educate the public, because people
don’t know what it’s all about.” Prison construction began in 1878
on the site of the ram shackled Stony Bar mining camp along the American
River. Early guards spent their spare time sifting sand for gold flakes;
the land under the prison is said to be veined with gold. These were the
days when gold stone 4-by-8-foot cells were lighted and heated with
candles or oil lamps, and water was hauled by wagon. Inmates spent much of
their time in the dark behind solid iron cell doors, peering out through
6-inch eye slots. Air holes were drilled in the doors only in the
1940’s. The cell doors are still in use.
Tales
of those days of hardship are told at the museum by “Sam” a life
like-size Charles Bronson look-alike talking doll dressed in
black-and-white striped inmate clothing. Other exhibits offer mute but
chilling testimony to life at the prison into the early 29th
century. Just inside the door are two thick hemp ropes that actually
hanged inmates. Each rope was pre-stretched to minimize the bounce; each
rope was used just once, then tagged and stored with the dead man’s
inmate number. The hangman’s knot was custom-tied for each condemned
inmate; based on his neck size, with the intention that large knot would
knock him unconscious on impact.
From the first execution on
Dec 13, 1895 to last on Dec 3, 1937, 93 men hanged at Folsom California
switched to a gas chamber at San Quentin. A canvas-and-leather straitjacket
was deemed so cruel its use of “The Iron Claw” a sinister-looking
restraint device. Troublesome inmates were strung up by their thumbs from
iron rings set in the walls for that purpose, or hobbled by ankle weights or
a ball-and-chain. A World War 1.30-caliber water cooled machine gun was used
until the 1950s to protect the prison armory. Guards fired a belt of
ammunition the first day of each month “to keep it in operational and for
the psychological effect” according to the museum. It replaced a
hand-cranked Gatling gun that was set at the prison boundaries to guard
against mass escapes before the high stonewalls were completed in the 1920s.
Conditions had improved by the time Johnny Cash recorded His “Folsom
Prison Blues” album at the prison in January 1968. Inmate’s shouts,
curses and the sound of slamming cell doors accompany an album centered on
seven songs about prison life and death. Johnny Cash is traveling overseas
and could not be reached to reminisce. In the liner notes to the album,
Johnny Cash writes that, “I have been behind bars a few time. Sometimes of
my own volition, sometimes involuntarily. Each time, I felt the same feeling
of kinship with my fellow prisoners”
Today, nearly 4,000 inmates
can relate to Cash’s lament, “I’m stuck in Folsom Prison, And Time
Keeps Draggin On” Folsom, which shifted to housing medium-security inmates eight years ago, started as one of the nation’s
first maximum-security prisons, built to house those serving long term, the
condemned, and the incorrigibles. Those inmates were desperate to escape. In
1920, three convicts hijacked a prison train used to move materials smashing
it through a prison gate. Only two where recaptured. Another inmate tried to
escape in 1932 using a diving suit fashioned from a football bladder,
goggles lens and other scrounged materials, and “He only made one mistake,
He didn’t make his breathing tube long enough” says Floyd Davis, a
prison guard for 13 years who now volunteers at the museum. Guards had to
drain the power house mill pond to recover the inmates body. Another inmate
carved a wooden semiautomatic pistol for a 1937 escape attempt in which
Warden Clarence A. Larkin and two others died. Next
to the weapon in a prison display case is material used to make bombs. A
wall of the museum is lined with dozens of crude inmate-made knives, known
as “shanks or shivs,” including are two spears with shafts made of
tightly rolled newspapers hardened with a soap-water solution. “I quests
when you’ve got nothing to do all day you can come up all kinds of neat
things” said John Spotswood of Folsom, who brought his visiting parents to
see the displays. Nearby is a crude but working toaster made of wires
installed inside a card board box.
John Moore, who retired 22
years ago as a prison lieutenant and now and now volunteers at the museum,
says inmates used to tear asbestos insulation off steam pipes and use the
heat to cook strip of meat. The ends of each steak remained raw, however,
because the inmates couldn’t hold cook them without getting burned; those
portions were fed to the prison’s cats. The prison museum is the only one
operating in California, and the one of few in the nation, though San
Quentin plans to reopen its museum shortly. “It’s a once in a life time
opportunity to see the tools of the trade, so to speak,” says Sharyn
Ahlstrom of Folsom “I bring all my out-of-town visitors here. They all
want to see Folsom Prison; Every time I go around the country, people ask
where I’m from> I say Folsom; they say, Oh, you live by the prison?
Johnny Cash made famous. Her brother, Bob Wade of little Rock Art, said he
struck by the model prison cell’s stark confines. “You saw that think,
If that’s a consequence of doing wrong, you’d better do right,” Wade
says. The Retired guards opened the museum in the late 1980s and pay rent to
the prison. To make their money, mush of which goes to charity, from
donations and selling souvenirs such as T-Shirts and sweat-shirts labeled
“Folsom Bed And Breakfast” “Hard Rock Hotel-Folsom Prison” “ Bad
Boyz” on a replica California license plates are manufactured
inside.
It’s up to volunteers such
as Moore, who spent nearly 33 years as a guard, to break, the news to
visitors that while Folsom best-known publicist served time in jail , he saw
the inside of prison only when performing for inmates. “Everybody always
wants to come see where Johnny Cash did time Moore said “when I tell them
Johnny Cash never did any time in any state prison or federal prison, they
get mad.
Johnny Cash sang about in
Folsom Prison
Blues and recorded a live album there in 1968. But what is this where you
might get sent if you say shot a man in Reno just watch him die?
Note: Place:
Folsom State Prison, California, 23 miles outside
Sacramento.
Date Opened 1880 It's Calif. second-oldest
prison
Prisoners
Currently Held 3,880 Inmates it's first inmates
were transferred from San Quentin - where Johnny, coincidentally
recorded another live album in 1969
The
Shackles Of Myth: Contrary to popular belief,
The Man In Black was never actually sent to prison, although he did spend a
few nights in local jails during the wild days of his youth.
Hello
I'm Johnny Cash
I
hear the train a comin' it's rollin' round the bend
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on
But that train keeps a rollin' on down to San Antone
When I was just a baby my mama told me son
Always be a good boy don't ever play with guns
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and I cry
[ guitar ]
I bet there's rich folks eatin' in some fancy dining car
They're probably drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars
Well I know I had it comin' I know I can't be free
But those people keep a movin' and that's what tortures me
[ guitar ]
Well if they freed me from this prison if that railroad train was mine
I bet I'd move it on a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom Prison that's where I want to stay
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away
Revised: September 03, 2007
On September 12, Willie Nelson will release his first .
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