Folsom Prison Blues

We toured old Folsom Prison today. We were told not to bring cell phones so I could only capture this (very recognizable) photo of the prison entrance. I was in awe of the structure and appreciated the history. We walked across the floors of cell blocks where prisoners were writing, watching cable, sleeping, listening to whatever was piping through their headphones, looking out at the crowd, and I even heard a toilet flush in one of the upper cells. This is their every day... crammed in small spaces, many doubled up. While it makes me appreciate my personal freedom and my living space, I make efforts to live by the Golden Rule and keep from ending up in such a confined, controlled condition. Moving on. We walked through the oldest of the cell blocks, still active since it opened up in 1880. At one point I looked over at our tour guide, a former CO and currently manages the plant on prison grounds, and see these eyes peering through one of the small openings of the almost solid metal door of a dark cell. It was disconcerting and a bit creepy to say the least. Alexander had a hat on and he kept his eyes under the brim to avoid any eye contact. 

One of the highlights of our time at the prison was standing in the cafeteria where Johnny Cash performed, among other tunes, "Folsom Prison Blues"! We walked down the same road next to the prison walls Mr. Cash was leaning on in the images starting at 1:16 in this video. Man, I wish I had my camera on this tour... just for the opp to snap a photo of my son leaning on that same wall in his Johnny Cash shirt!

The tour ended with a guided walk through the metal fabrication building where all of California's license plates are created by the inmates themselves. That was kind of a neat experience, albeit sharing an environment of heavy machinery and sharp metal plates with inmates. All my life I've been told license plates are made by criminals (and I thought it was sort of a joke until I became an adult) so it was interesting to actually see this happening. At one point our tour guide had one of the inmates explain part of the process to us. He was wearing his blues with "CDCR Prisoner" printed down the leg of his sweatpants. He was a nice enough guy but I couldn't help but be distracted by my curiosity of why he was there in the first place. And by the way, manufacturing license plates is quite involved and these inmates had their jobs down to the letter... literally! It's loud, it's fast, and it can be tedious! I even witnessed one of the inmates fixing an error by hand-painting parts of the lettering with the dark blue paint you see on our license plates before having to re-bake the plate.

Our guide pointed out one of the inmates who, after 30 years of imprisonment, was about to get out in 6 weeks. His comment was, "can you imagine what he's feeling?" I gave an artificial response because really, I don't know what he's feeling. I would imagine after 30 years this is all he knows and is conditioned to. I don't know if he's excited to finally be free or has anxieties wondering what the hell he's going to do with his life outside of prison. I've heard stories of prisoners having such a tough time out on their own they find a way to get back into their Folsom Prison "Blues".