Salt Lake Tribune | 2000-09-24 | Page 149

The Salt Lake Tribune TRAVEL Sunday, September 24, 2000 California Prison Memorialized by Johnny Cash Drawsthe Curious BY DON THOMPSON ‘THE ASSOCIATED PRESS one operating in California — and made of tightly rolled newspapers FOLSOM, Calif. — “STOP: No visits beyond this point.” guard tower of Folsom State Prison. It’s an intimidating view of the lockup where nearly 100 men were centered on seven songs about prison life and death. Cash is traveling overseas and could not be reached to reminisce. In the liner notes to the album, Cash writes that: “I have been behind bars a few times. Sometimes of my own volition, sometimes involuntarily. Each time, I felt the samefeeling of kinship with my fellow prisoners.” Today, nearly 4,000 inmates can hanged ipts, volved a runaway locomotive and another a homemade as suit. Yet, the warning sign at a “picture spot” whee about relate to Cash’s lament, “I'm stuck in Folsom Prison—and time keeps museum in the late 1980s and pay hardened with a soap-and-water solution. “T guess when you've got nothing to do all ey you can come up with all kinds ofneat things,” says John Spotswood of Folsom, who fone his visiting parents to see ie Nearbyiisa crude but Coen toaster made of wires installed inside a cardboard box. John Moore, who retired 22 one of the few in the nation — “Tt’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the tools of the trade, so to speak,” says Sharyn Ahl- years ago as a prison lieutenant strom of Folsom. “I bring all _ and now volunteers at the museum, says inmates used to tear asbestos insulation off steam pipes anduse the heatto cook strips of meat. The ends of steak remained raw, however, because the inmates couldn’t hold them without getting burned; those portions were fed to the prison’s cats. The prison museum is the only out-of-town visitors here. They all wantto see Folsom Prison. Everytime I go aroundthe country, people ask where I’m from.I say Folsom; they say, ’Oh, you live by i prison?”| Johnny Cash made it jus.” Herbrother, Bob Wade of Little Rock, Ark., says he was struck by the model prison cell’s stark confines. “You see that and ie if that’s a consequence of doing wrong, you'd better do right,” Wade says. Theretired guards opened the all state license plates are manu- factured 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’s bestknown publicist served time in jail, he saw the inside of prisons only when performing for inmates. “Everybody always wants’ -to come see where Johnny Cash did his time,” Moore says. “When Itell em Johnny Cash never did any time in anystate or federal prison, they get mad.” " on.” Folsom, which shifted to hous-oldest prison. They can view replica cell featuring mildly risque pinups on the wall and watch a videotaped tour of the prison, whichsits on now-valuable acreage in an increasingly affluent community next to popular Folce. The Folsom Prison Museum offers a lookat torturous prison conditions in the decades after the California Gold Rush populated the Sierra Nevada foothills that start here, 20 miles east of Sacramento. “Tt’s a novelty, anytime you have a museum abouta prison.It opens the doorto secrets they had not experienced,” says John Fratis, treasurer and operations managerofthe nonprofit association of retired that runs the museum. “We thoughtwe'd educate the public, because people don’t know whatit’s all about.” Prison construction began in 1878 on the site of the ramshackle Stony Bar mining camp along the American River. Early guards spenttheir spare time sifting sand for gold flakes; the land under the prison is said to be veined with gold. Those were the days when cold ‘stone 4-by-8-footcells were lighted ‘and heated with candles or oil ‘lamps, and waterwas hauled in by wagon. dust inside the door are two thick hemp ropes that 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. Fromthefirst execution on Dec. 13, 1895, to the last Dec. 3, 1937, 93 men were hanged at Folsom before California switched te a gas chamber at San Quentin. A canvas-and-leather straitjacket was deemed so cruel its use was banned in 1912, as was the use of “The Iron Claw,” a sinisterlooking 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 I .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun was used until oe 1950s to protect the prison arm Guards fired a belt of ammunition thefirst day ofeach month “to keep it operational and for the psychological effect,” according to the museum.It replaced a handcranked Gatling gun that was set at ing medium-security inmates eight years ago, started as one of the nation’s first maximum secu- Book Your Winter Vacation Today at Funjet rity prisons, built to house those serving long terms, the condemned,and theincorrigibles. Those inmates were desperate to escape. In 1920, three convicts hijacked a prisontrain used to move mate- Veacerit rials, smashing it through a prison gate. Only two were recaj Another inmate tried to escape in 1982 using a diving suit fashioned from a football bladder, gog gle lens and other aus material. “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. 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