http://www.prisonguardtoday.com Do you want to become a corrections officer? Here's a discussion about it. Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:35:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/09/tragic-events-yield-strong-personal-details/ http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/09/tragic-events-yield-strong-personal-details/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:47:14 +0000 admin http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/09/tragic-events-yield-strong-personal-details/ By Kevin S. Giles

Readers often ask how I found the high level of detail that appears in Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance.

The short answer is this: from people who were there. The longer answer is a bit more complicated.

Calamities yield personal stories big and small. In major influential tragedies such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the resulting impressions, reactions and eyewitness accounts might stretch to infinity. And what older American today can’t remember exactly what he or she was doing when President Kennedy was assassinated?

The riot happened 49 years ago this April. To people who were involved, inside or outside the walls at Montana State Prison in downtown Deer Lodge, the riot happened yesterday. That’s how clearly they remember it. But like in any calamity, people remember best what was right in front of them. It’s the author’s responsibility to assemble the memory fragments into whole cloth.

In researching Jerry’s Riot I conducted hundreds of interviews. Almost all of those people remembered details that emotion had branded to their brain. Guards remembered dripping water, the warden recalled being served slices of cake after being taken hostage, and women described watching the prison for hours on end for sign of their husbands. Inmates gave me first-hand accounts of the takeover.

I corroborated the personal stories with legal documents such as affidavits taken from inmates in the weeks after the riot. It became easier to see the total picture, especially as details brought history to life. While many people involved in the riot had died long before I started my research, many others remained. In some cases relatives of people who had died remembered critical detail. Most of it turned out to be credible and accurate, to the extent that an author can determine such things more than 40 years afterwards. I discarded some of what was described to me as fiction.

Capturing genuine detail is a race against time. Several people I interviewed for the book are now gone as well, including some of the guards held hostage, wives of hostages and a National Guard commander involved in the rescue efforts. But since 2005 when the first edition of Jerry’s Riot was published, more people with personal stories have stepped forward to offer even greater detail.

As I concluded in the acknowledgements portion of the book:

In some interviews, tears told the story when words failed.





By: Kevin S. Giles ]]> http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/09/tragic-events-yield-strong-personal-details/feed/ 0 http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/08/a-curious-mothers-day-story/ http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/08/a-curious-mothers-day-story/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:30:36 +0000 admin http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/08/a-curious-mothers-day-story/ SALOME and HERODIAS,

A CURIOUS MOTHER’S DAY STORY©

Reprinted with permission from The Perspicacious Woman OnLine©

April, 2003 issue, Volume 3:Number 2

Publisher, The Daisy Shop, women’s couture resale

http://www.daisyshop.com

Barbara Nell

First, a disclaimer:

This article requires information about John the Baptist, whose life and works and words are holy, divinely inspired, to Christians. The sources I’ve accessed are religious, historical, literary, exegetic, and anecdotal. In order to avoid disrespect for the sacredness of the words and concepts with which Christians hold The Gospels and with which Jews hold The Torah, I’ve renamed both ‘translated redactions.’ I also use the euphemism, monotheistic god, to avoid any disrespect to any deity and religion. This is an essay designed to entertain and inform you, Dear Reader, not to cause any religious discussion or foment.

Second, a thank you:

To friend Pam and friend Vanessa, both of whom got my research juices going on Salome, whom, I believed, was trivial, too trivial even for our newsletter. It boiled down to “Who did she do the belly dance for?” I hadn’t a clue, because I didn’t think she was real. They both assured me she was a real person. I checked it out. Yup, she was real and…

…she may have danced or may not have danced. But, if she did dance, it wasn’t a belly dance that she did, nor was it a tap, the tango, or the quick step. The belly dance aspect was imagined in the late 19th century by some artistic guy, and we’ll get there, later, when it’s timely. She did perform, that much is true, and she performed for the host, her stepfather, at the instigation of the hostess, her mother, and their banquet guests.

It was an entertainment interlude, and it occurred about the 1st century AD in a castle located in area called The Galilee. She may have performed in a play about some Greek mythological character or she may have been the one non-Bedouin ( a guest) in a troop of Bedouin entertainers who did folk dances that non-Bedouins enjoyed seeing. If it was the former, the structure of the play was rigid: it was a pantomime, with stringed instrumentals to keep the story line going, mime actors of both genders, all adults, and young children acrobatics of both genders. Everyone was masked. This was a troop of professional entertainers on the payroll of biggies, not a traveling group (a type not yet invented). They were probably on the payroll of her stepfather and she had time to practice with them before the banquet.

If it was the latter, it was a dance, one with a lot of whirling and head tossing, by females in heavy blue robes with cowls, and there was a flute accompaniment. The company did not live in The Galilee, but were nomads from the desert between The Galilee and Arabia, who had come by request of the biggie. It is unlikely that Bedouin dancers were involved in this banquet, for they had to walk a fine line in their desert migrations, land that abutted both The Galilee and Arabia at that time There was bad blood between Aretas IV King of Arabia and Antipas, stepfather of Salome, Tetrarch of The Galilee, the place where the banquet and the entertainment took place and the place where Salome lived. And, Salome would not have had time to practice the whirling and head tossing before the banquet.

So, it was a Roman style play about Greek mythology that was probably performed as the intermediate event between courses or the closing event of a posh banquet. The host, her stepfather, was a Herod we’ll call Antipas, (not as high as a King) and the hostess, her mother, was named Herodias (a former Queen, divorced from her 1st husband, Phillip, a King, and now married to a mere Tetrarch, making her a Tetrarchess, I guess). These were minor players in the times’ political stage and the definition of ‘posh’ was relative to their stature…minor. The guest list contained: nobles visiting from Rome, Roman nobles stationed in The Galilee by Rome, aristocrats from The Galilee and maybe Judea, and Antipas’ Steward, Chuza. Some sources say the banquet was thrown by Herodias because it was Antipas’ birthday, an unnecessary embellishment, to my way of thinking. Most sources are silent about the reason for the banquet, so I tend to go with most when it’s a fact such as this kind.

Any banquet takes preparation, whether you’re a Queen, a Tetrarchess, or merely the wife of a mope. So, along with the timing, guest list, menu, food preparation, and seating plan, Herodias prepared for the entertainment. She had to decide that Salome’s participation in the entertainment would be the thing to do long before the banquet took place. Herodias is described as a savvy kind of gal by the benign tellers of the tale (she’s vilified by most) and Salome was her only child (by Phillip), so she probably made time to watch Salome rehearse. A lot was riding on Salome being real real good. Nothing anywhere says whether Salome wanted to be a part of the entertainment or was unwilling to be a part of the entertainment.

Herodias planned a staid, Roman affair. It could not have been a bacchanal type banquet (similar to the present Wild On’s on E!), as some sources suggest. There were stringent Roman rules about highborn women and what they can attend and do in while in attendance. Herodias was high born and from Judea. (Antipas, her second husband, was not as high born, coming from an Idumean father and possibly a Samarian mother.)

Salome was just a kid at the time of the banquet. Some sources say she was a teenager, but they have to in order for other parts of the legend to fit. (We’ll get to the other parts later.) I doubt if she was a nubile teenager. She was royalty, a Princess, in fact, with very good blood on her mother’s side, Maccabean blood, which was respected even by Rome, who, by the way, had conquered Judea (and The Galilee) long before this time and made this area a part of their Empire. Modesty and chastity were required for this type female from a Roman standpoint and a Maccabean standpoint (her bloodline was matriarchal). She had to be dutiful, respectful, and learn at her mother’s knee, an important custom amongst the Maccabean women. She was a good kid. So, she couldn’t have been a teenager and allowed to perform. It would diminish her future value in the marriage market, Roman or otherwise, and it would have been a sin. I would opine she had to be less than Nadia Comaneci’s age when she blew away the Olympic judges in 1976, but she was probably just as agile.

It’s probable that Herodias recognized her daughter’s agility long before the banquet, for kids have a tendency to display what they’re good at long before there’s a use for the tendency. It could have been a genetic throwback to the time before the Maccabees were promoted to highborn, the time when the men were just about the best guerilla fighters in Judea and found the mountainous regions around Judea excellent terrain to entice their foes into combat. She was probably proud of this tendency and tedious of this tendency (”Watch me, Momma,” once too often can be tedious.) and savvy enough to see a utilization for her own good. This also pre-supposes that Herodias might have had more contact in Salome’s upbringing than Roman highborn mothers, for Maccabean women were responsible for (both gender) children to ‘learn at their knee’ a minimum of 613 rules the monotheistic god required of adherents, or that there was a lot of contact between highborn mothers and their daughters at that time. In either case, Herodias planned the banquet and the entertainment and included her agile daughter in the entertainment, making sure Salome rehearsed and would do a good job in the acrobatic kid part of the troop…a multi-tasking woman for sure.

Protocol at posh and formal banquets where Roman mucky mucks were invited was stringent. This would have been very important to Antipas, also. He had been raised in Rome (maybe even a hostage child) and the land he administered at the time of the banquet had been bequeathed to him by Rome. Augustus (of the Cleopatra story) had handled the apportioning of Antipas’ father’s enormous estate when he, known as Herod the Great, died. Antipas was not happy with the way Poppa’s estate was apportioned, felt he had gotten the short stick amongst his four brothers. (He had.) He would have been very, very Roman at this Roman banquet in order to make nice and have this get back to Rome.

The men would have reclined on the equivalent of 1st century Barco-Loungers and ate lovely things and drank lovely wine moderately, while trading amusing stories and quips and bantering amongst each other. I’m not sure just what bantering is, but I am sure they bantered. They would have been arranged in a horseshoe U pattern. The women guests and their hostess would have sat on chairs and I couldn’t figure out where the chairs were placed, within the horseshoe in a line or outside the horseshoe in a line. But in any case, they would have sat on fancy, but hard backed, chairs in a line and would not have eaten or drunken wine, but I suggest they may have bantered. Their job was to just sit, all gussied up and smellin’ good. (They would eat and drink, later, when they got home or when the guests left, depending on your perspective.)

Salome could not have been invited. If she had been invited, she would have left her fancy, hard-backed chair vacant in order to get into costume and perform. Antipas would have noticed the empty chair and have asked someone, “Where did the kid go?” And, someone would have said, “She’s going to perform.” That would have taken the drama out of this next part of the story. Let’s agree; she was not invited to the banquet.

At the proper time, the play was performed, and the audience clapped after it was over. Antipas complimented the performers, then singled one out. Because it was Salome that was singled out, I believe she was one of the masked acrobats. It only makes sense. Antipas apparently didn’t recognize the stepdaughter he had raised since infancy as the excellent acrobat in the play. Rather, he thought her one of the professionals, for if he had recognized her, he wouldn’t have offered the gift eward. He just would have said, “Good job, sweetie. Go get washed. You’ll catch cold.” Therefore, because he didn’t recognize her, he made a magnanimous gesture (It’s not unlikely that he was showing off for the guests, for Antipas was a doodle-head, didn’t think things through. We’ll get to that, later.), and he offered the acrobat-Salome anything she desired as a gift from him for her fine performance. This is exactly what Herodias had planned to happen. She knew her guy pretty well and she knew her little girl real well. The benign tellers were right: she was a savvy gal.

Since all sources attribute what comes next as engendered by Herodias, the acrobat-Salome had to have asked him to wait a minute and had to have gone to the chair line, where her mother and the other women were sitting, otherwise Herodias would not have been associated with what comes next. (It would have been only Salome who would have been associated with what comes next.). So, the mother and daughter had to have conferred quietly, while Antipas (and the guests) watched. Perhaps, Salome said, “Euwww,” as kids do when they hear something revolting; or perhaps, not. She was a 1st century kid and they may have been different from 21st century kids. I think not. Kids are kids. She said “Euwww.” Dutifully, she listened closely to what her mother told her and she probably repeated it back to Herodias, so that she got it right and straight. Then, she, the acrobat-Salome, came back to Antipas with the gift idea: the head of the long time prisoner John (who later became John the Baptist, but who was merely the prisoner John at this time) on a platter (which was probably not a platter, but a charger).

It’s possible that he recognized Salome at this point. It doesn’t really matter. I do know he knew he had been set up by his wife, Herodias, via this acrobat-Salome, when he heard the performance reward. And he was startled and embarrassed and in a public quandary. It’s possible he questioned the acrobat-Salome with an ‘are you kidding? kind of question, while looking in Herodias’ direction, who either shrugged her shoulders or nodded ‘yes.’ From a legal standpoint, he did not have to honor this acrobat-Salome’s request, for it wasn’t hers. It was Herodias.’ It is possible that Chuza, his Steward, jumped in at this point, for he had been financing John’s nascent ministry through his wife, Elizabeth, but it’s just as possible, he did not, for that’s not how it went down.

Everyone at the banquet knew there had been a big mad between Herodias and Antipas regarding John for a long, long time. She had wanted him killed outright for talking often and badly about her and her marriage to Antipas to everyone and anyone who would listen to him. John had labeled it incestuous and it was, kind of, but by only a technicality, the small print in a big, long contract. Herodias’ first husband, the Herod we’re calling Phillip, was Antipas’ half brother. They shared the same father, Herod The Great, but had different mothers. Phillip was still living in Judea where he was King (Rome gave him a large portion of his father’s estate, larger than Antipas..) and as long as Phillip lived, Herodias and Antipas had an incestuous marriage. As soon as he died, it would be an okay marriage. But, he hadn’t died, yet.

Although it was the gossip that bothered Herodias (A good spin doctor would have helped, but they were 2000 years down the road in development.), it was the religious twist John put on the technical incest that bothered Antipas. John attributed all the stuff that had gone wrong in The Galilee since they married (and stuff had gone wrong, for Antipas was a doodle-head) to the marriage. And, John said that the monotheistic god was angry with her, more than Antipas, because of her good Maccabean blood (a mix of Idumean and Samarian blood results in a person that the monotheistic god doesn’t expect much from), and would stay angry with her and get more so, so the anger would spill over to the whole of The Galilee, until she and Antipas split (or, I guess, until Phillip died, a factor that was out of her hands).

People listened to that kind of stuff at that time and in that place and they got real scared. A monotheistic god’s anger was a terrible thing. Famine, drought, disease, pestilence, flood, invasion, even eclipse – anything could happen when a monotheistic god was angry. While there hadn’t been famine, drought, disease, pestilence, flood, invasion, or even an eclipse in The Galilee, Antipas had lost a war, his first, with Nabatea, their neighbor in Arabia.

Herodias could have been a vulnerable position should important people have listened to John’s predictions. Luckily for her, the important people had other things on their mind. Antipas said ‘no’ to killing John and ‘yes’ to imprisoning him, believing that would shut John up. Some sources said Antipas had a feeling that John’s predictions were true; others said he had a feel for the monotheistic deity. Still others say he was merely acting like a political animal, notably, a fox. At any rate, John was not killed, but imprisoned, and he had been languishing in the prison for many years at the time of the banquet.

Now, killing a local prisoner was no big deal anywhere in the 1st century world of the Roman Empire and having a prisoner killed to reward an agile acrobat was stretching the reward idea, but… it could work. The thing is that the head on a plattercharger was the note that made it a bigger deal. This touch was a gruesome, certainly barbaric, dramatic thing and would cause a scandal and gossip all over Judea and in Rome, what Antipas did not need if he were to ever get any more land from his dead father’s estate from Rome. (And it did, for Flavius Josephus in his book, “Antiquities,” writing to and for Rome about 100 years after the event ,included the event for it was still so juicy. This, by the way, is how we know about some parts of it.) (An important question occurs to me and that is this: How and where did Herodias get this notion? Two ideas come to mind: (1) the Greek myth of Perseus and Medusa and their fight to death: Perseus won. He decapitated Medusa and waved her head around and took it a bunch of places as a talisman. It must have been awful after a time. Maybe that’s where she got it, for she was well educated. (2) A similar event took place in Rome 50 years earlier: Pemejus, a political competitor to Julius, lost his political battle, and his foes brought Julius, the winning Caesar, his head. She might have heard this gossip. Perhaps, she then pragmatically adapted decapitation to the situation at hand. Beheading was a popular type of death and an honorable type of execution for criminals and warriors amongst the Romans and the Maccabees and the Arabians. This, I discovered, from plunking around on the Internet to some very weird websites. I don’t recommend you check this out for yourself. Truthfully, I cannot imagine where she got this embellishment. One of these weird websites calls her talented.)

The doodle-head complied.

A messenger was sent to the fortress named Macharerus (now called Mukawir) in an area called The Perea (now part of Amman, Jordan) where John was imprisoned. A nameless guard cut off his head, and got a messenger to convey it to the castle somewhere in The Galilee, where the banquet guests were waiting, the males still bantering with one another, I guess, to pass the time; the females still sitting quietly on their hard chairs, smellin’ good. The acrobat-Salome probably went off somewhere to bathe and change clothes, then returned to the banquet room to stand next to her (talented) Momma or stand with the performers. The guards put the headless body somewhere, waited for further orders.

I couldn’t find out how far away the area The Parea was from The Galilee, for I couldn’t pin down exactly what city the castle was located in the area known as The Galilee, then, the area where the banquet occurred. Let’s believe it wasn’t terribly far, so the messenger conveying the head could get from there to there quick. He arrived and a kitchen servant brought a plattercharger (No one knows if it was a platter made out of silver, gold, porcelain, or stoneware. In fact, no one cared. Furthermore, it may not have been a platter, but a charger, which is larger than a plate and smaller than a platter and rested under a plate at a table service and was often of precious metal. Since it’s a Roman banquet, people took morsels of this and that from servant-held chargers, didn’t have a table service at all. They were reclining.) Another servant, a serving type, brought the head to the banquet hall and stood in front of Antipas. It’s possible he directed the servant to acrobat-Salome, who took the plattercharger and gave it to her Mother. One redactor source makes Herodias even more gruesome stating: she got a sword and stabbed the tongue. This is an embellishment that even Flavius Josephus didn’t believe, so he doesn’t mention it. What she really did with it, I don’t know. (People who thought John had a direct line to the monotheistic god requested his body and his head from Antipas, who released both parts to them. They took it to an area called Samaria, which was close to The Perea, and buried it.)

What happened after this part of the banquet took place, I don’t know. I imagine some guy yawned and said, “It’s been quite an evening. I think it’s time to get going.” And the guests all went to their lodgings. It’s probable that Antipas and Herodias had a long conversation, after the guests left. When they were alone in their private rooms, he probably opened the conversation with: “We never talk anymore, Herodias. Tell me what’s going on with you.” Salome, who had been up long past her normal bedtime, was probably overtired and went to sleep or was put to sleep immediately.

And there you have it. Salome didn’t dance, didn’t wear veils, and had a strong bond with her Mother.

To discover how the belly dance became associated with Salome, we have to veer away from her. It’s Herodias and John who carry the story line forward.

At the time of the banquet, Herodias was the 2nd wife of Antipas, and they had been married for about 10 years. (Antipas was the only father Salome had known.) Salome’s biological father was Phillip, who was King of Judea, a large land mass, much larger than the area called The Galilee, and he and Herodias were divorced when Salome was about 1 year old. Herodias had been an important wife when Phillip was first made King by Rome because of her Maccabean blood. The Maccabees had been rulers of Judea long before Phillip came on board, but through a lot of circumstances, Judea was ruled by the Herod bunch and had accepted Rome’s yoke by that time. The Maccabees were prolific (as was Herod The Great), and there was a large pool of eligible Maccabean women for rulers to marry. It was a stable region in Rome’s empire. In any event, the divorce was with Rome’s permission. Phillip was allowed to marry some one else with Rome’s permission, and I didn’t check out whom. He never asked for visitation rights.

Some sources say Antipas first met Herodias when Herodias was on a trip to Rome with Phillip petitioning Rome for something or another at the same time that Antipas was in Rome (alone) petitioning Rome, yet again, for the title of King and more land from his father’s estate, neither of which Rome never granted him in his lifetime. I don’t think it matters how they met. They met, they talked, a deal was struck.

I don’t know why Herodias left Queenship of Judea to become a Tetrarch’s wife. There are always sources that attribute lust to this sort of situation, and these sources do arise in this story, some attributing lust to Herodias, others attributing lust to Antipas. Personally, I find lust a poor reason. A Queen, one of royal blood, just doesn’t think lust. She thinks power and lineage. A tetrarch, although not as powerful as a King, doesn’t have to go far from his little castle, even as far as Judea, to satisfy a lustful thought. An unhappy Tetrarch thinks power and lineage, too. Maybe it was her Maccabean blood and her Maccabean ties that Antipas thought would help him become a King of a landmass that included Judea, which her ancestors ruled before Rome put the Herods there. Maybe she thought The Galilee plus Judea is bigger than just Judea. Maybe she thought that The Galilee plus Arabia, which abutted The Galilee, is bigger than Judea should Antipas go to war for the Arabian territory. In any event, she left Phillip before the divorce (which came through quickly) and went to Antipas’ puny area, The Galilee.

She also jumped the gun. Antipas was not yet rid of his first wife, Phasaelis, when Herodias and the baby arrived. And, he hadn’t petitioned Rome to get rid of Phasaelis and marry Herodias. Although Phasaelis was a Princess by blood and the daughter of a powerful neighbor and King, Aretas IV of Nabatea (Arabia), Antipas decided to circumvent Rome by merely ‘putting her aside,’ an ignominy. This was not nice. Phasaelis went home to Poppa (and took the kids, if there were any with her and Antipas) who bided his time a bit, then attacked The Galilee, because of the dishonor.

Troops from all of Herod the Great’s sons (half-brothers to a man) jumped in to help The Galilean troops, even Phillip (inherited family land was a big thing; a former wife was nothing) and Roman legions jumped in to help, too. But land was lost and that, by definition, means The Galileans lost the war. He never did divorce Phasaelis and she never returned to him.

Herodias stayed put and she and Antipas married (with Rome’s permission, whose attitude toward provinces was very pragmatic: the war is over; they lost; let ‘em marry; who gives a damn) and lived in a castle somewhere in The Galilee with the baby.

Antipas’ reputation went from an annoying pest to miserable in Rome’s eyes because of this double screw up (stupidly and unnecessarily dishonoring a neighbor’s daughter thereby incurring an unnecessary troop expense on Rome’s tab and loosing land to a King who was not conquered by Rome). He decided to Make It Better. Tiberius was now the Caesar and Antipas decided to build a city to honor him. He commandeered land in The Galilee and his construction people began building a city. But, Antipas and his building contractors either didn’t do their homework, or if they did, they didn’t think it through. The land upon which the city was being built was a cemetery, sacred ground to every person in the world then as well as today. There was an uprising amongst the folk that local troops could not quell. Again, Rome had to help Antipas out, for Judea wouldn’t, since they sided with the people, not Antipas. The people were quelled and the city was built. It remained uninhabited. No one would go there to live no matter how sweet the pot Antipas created (free homes, free land, tax abatement). Rome had to send troops to forcibly move families to Tiberius and to guard them so they wouldn’t move out in the dark of the night. Flavius Josephus liked this morsel a lot when he heard of it. He checked around and then comments that riff-raff were recruited to populate the city. He observes that even the riff-raff were afraid of the monotheistic god, so local holy people made a rule: the new settlers would only be defiled for 7 days, then everything would be okay.

And life went on in The Galilee.

John, during some of this, had been going about his business in The Galilee. One particular thing he did caught on amongst the folk. No one knew what to call it, so it had two different names: sprinkling and lave-ing, both of which were already accepted cleansing rites in most, if not all, religions before that time and during that time in that area and most of the known world. Water was always the cleansing agent and John

used the nearby Jordan River as the sprinkling and lave-ing site. What John did was total body immersion, a new twist, one the people liked a lot, for it made sense to them and made them feel good and purified from sins committed previously. This total body immersion always occurred after John would talk about sinning and give definitions. He would call for penitents, people who wanted to cleanse themselves. They would step forward and get in a line, so he could do them one-by-one. He had set himself up as a person who knew what the monotheistic deity expected of good folk (mostly it was to stop acting like Romans and revert to the Galilean ways, the ones prevalent before Rome took over the area). While he was in prison and after his death, other people did the immersion for him. What he had said before he was imprisoned was credible to the folk.

But then, John was imprisoned and killed years after he was imprisoned.

Very soon a very lot of other things happened in The Galilee. These events were written down and pondered and interpreted by brilliant, eloquent, and sincere men, three of whom decided that John and what he said and his immersion twist was a ceremony that would be important to incorporate as a ritual for their testimonials. They were the redactors whose words have been translated and pondered for centuries. Their decision caused his death to be discussed (and his childhood, parents, vocation, inspiration, relationships, etc. to be determined) and this is how Herodias’ name was never forgotten.

The earliest redactor, a stickler for details, had a problem with her daughter’s name, when he read Flavius Josephus, who says ‘a damsel, the daughter of Herodias, brought the head…’ in his book to Rome. This was not good enough for him. He did some easy homework, for Herodias’ royal lineage was known and available. He determined that Herodias’ daughter was named Salome. This was not good homework. Herodias was Maccabean. No Maccabee, male or female, would ever name a child for a still living person, let alone the actual name of a relative, this case, a blood aunt, who was living at the time of her daughter’s birth. But, it’s all we have, so she must remain misnamed Salome (which means ‘peace,’ a nice touch, don’t you think?) when John’s beheading is talked about and when Herodias’ progeny is included.

And this is how Salome and Herodias and John were tied together forever more. Many centuries have to pass by before the triangle comes into focus again. We have to wait for society to go from antiquity all the way to modern…at least 1,970 years or so. More specifically, we have to wait for a religion to formalize; we have to wait until John’s contributions become important and incorporated; we have to wait for churches to be invented; we have to wait for representational art to be used for something other than decorative purposes; we have to allow for the Bubonic Plague interlude when absolutely nothing happened except the death of millions; we have to wait for literacy to occur; we have to wait for Gutenberg and his printing press; we have to wait for portraiture to be invented.

Once churches were invented, representational art was applied as a method to tell the stories to the illiterate devout people. The triangle story was not as popular as other stories, so it was represented only some times. The scene chosen was most always was when the plattercharger is proffered takes place. No one character of the triangle is more important that the other. It’s the story behind the scene that’s important, and that is John’s death (but not as a martyr, I don’t think, but I may be wrong). Typical friezes and frescos from churches in the early 14th show the scene with figures that are medieval in demeanor and costume. That’s what the medieval people needed; that’s what they got. Their eyes could roam the church for something to center on, if their attention drifted from the devotions at hand.

Everything gets pretty quiet everywhere, beginning 1330, when the first Bubonic Plague episode begins and we have to wait a long time, about 150 years, for normalcy to occur.

In 1485, the beheading surfaces. Portraiture had been invented by then, and art has gone into homes of wealthy people, who ask artists to do pictures for them, often of them and their family members. One type of portraiture allowed the viewer to be a voyeur, to glimpse an intimate scene, a freeze frame, if you will, from a larger story, if the artist was good. Religious art was a popular theme. The artist selected the motif and there was a lot of symbolism to get the whole story line into the canvas. It’s Salome and the plattercharger that’s chosen, when this subject is chosen at all, and truth be told, it’s lousy, static portraiture. She’s not portrayed as a child, but she’s not portrayed as a woman, either. “Damsel,” was apparently interpreted as that twilight zone a female has between childhood and woman. I don’t know why the subject matter was chosen by the patron or the artist, who apparently just couldn’t get into ‘it.’ I guess my opinion was shared by the patrons from 500+ years back, for this theme dies out.

John and his sainthood, not his death or Herodias or Salome, become the theme of most art, and we have to wait until 1630 to find the others of the triangle depicted again.

In 1630, a blockbuster piece of art is produced (my opinion) that asks you to consider Herodias, not John. It’s my absolute favorite, by a guy named Francesco del Cairo, “Herodias with Head of John the Baptist.” It is so different from all others than came before (and after). Is she exhausted, meditative, musing, or in a trance? A closer look might surprise you. Could she possibly be holding his tongue while on the verge of stroking his hair? I believe she is. What could del Cairo have been thinking? What is he asking us to believe about Herodias? Frankly, I don’t wanna go there. No one else did either, for depictions of Herodias (and Salome) simply stop until the 1800’s and John in his sainthood continue…with one exception.

Because of a single painting of Herodias by Paul Delaroche in 1843, it’s the literary arts, the poets and authors and playwrights, who pick up the story and fiction supercedes reality. Herodias, first, and Salome, next, sans John, are the motifs for the first time. They move from real people to fictional characters.

Delaroche shows Herodias as exotic (read, non-European) (The euphemism used for most any type non-European at that time was Occidental.), regal (He did his homework.), authentically dressed (more good homework), and very, very lovely. The look on her face is open to interpretation. Has the grotesque event occurred or not yet? Is she serene or is she challenging us to question her? I don’t know who is represented in the background, for it certainly cannot be Salome. Herodias is a person in her own right. I would like to tie Delaroche’s interpretation to having viewed del Cairo (although I don’t know if this occurred, not having the resources to track the provenance of the del Cairo picture to align its location with Delaroche’s life).

Apparently Heinrich Heine, a German poet of some renown, was enchanted by the picture. He wrote a poem in 1843, “Atta Troll,” which sources say is a mock epic about Herodias. I was unable to find an English translation, so I have to accept what sources say as true. What I do know is that an epic is a very long and twisted story (the Iliad and the Odyssey are epics) about fanciful adventures of a protagonist (usually heroic) in pursuit of good end. How Heine got enough ideas about Herodias, who was minor in the first place and arcane by this time, to go on and on about her pursuit of an end, good or not good, I don’t know. I guess that’s called talent. In any event, he catapults Herodias (and the triangle) back into the minds of artistic people and they make her (and the triangle) interesting enough for public contemplation.

This mock epic and Delaroche’s painting next enchanted Stephane Mallarme, another poet of some renown, a Frenchman. He got his juices flowing and wrote a poem in 1869, “Herodiade,” whose English translation I was unable to find. I have absolutely no idea what his poem says. Critics say she described sultry (for the first time). I have to believe that Mallarme associated Occidental with sultry, not an uncommon association amongst fanciful European guys. Herodias is changing to heroic (maybe if Heine’s epic shows her to be this), Occidental, and sultry (read sexy).

All this got a French artist (of some renown) all excited. Gustave Moreau pondered the triangle and centered on Salome, instead of Herodias. He figured if Herodias was sultry, then Salome was more sultry. I don’t know why, but that’s what he did. He worked and worked this theme and ended up with a bunch of pictures with her as the (undressed) focal point, a first in Salome’s depictions, and threw in John’s head to make it all understandable. They were finished in 1876. All are amazing. The very last time Salome was the chosen subject matter was in 16th century (bad) portraiture. She’s always holding the plattercharger and has a boring look on her face and is all dressed up in 16th century costume. What the hell did Heine’s mock epic and Mallarme’s poem allude to with regard to Salome? I don’t know.

Anyway, Gustave Flaubert, a French writer of some renown, apparently read Heine and Mallarme and saw the picture interpretations of Delaroche and Moreau. All inspired him to write a short story in 1877 about Herodias, which indicates excellent homework, by the way. This, I read, and in this short story, she is called a Jezebel, albeit an aging one, for the first time. Her daughter is described as resembling her mother in her youth. You can read it, too. Go to http://www.classicbookshelf.com/library/gustave_flaubert/herodias/0/. It’s now fictional open season on Herodias and by association, her daughter, Salome.

Then came Joris-Karl Huysman, who liked what Heine, Mallarme, and Flaubert wrote and liked Delaroche’s and Moreau’s pictures. He went with Salome, not Herodias, in 1884, for his essay, “Against the Grain.” The essay is really prose poetry in the style of “The Song of Solomon,” real, real sexy. The essay was labeled decadent after it was published. You can read it, too, if and when you get in the mood for 19th century decadence. Go to http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/salome1.html.

In the 19th century, certain people loved decadent stuff, especially the artistic types who felt stultified with conservative stuff and who felt they had to push the envelope of public taste. This decadent Salome idea percolated for ten years in Oscar Wilde’s mind before his play, “Salome,” was performed in 1893. An interesting touch was his collaboration with Aubrey Beardsley to do playbill artwork. Wilde was jailed it was so damn decadent.

Within a year after Wilde’s play, Beardsley came out with a folio of images of Salome. It’s racy for the bare breasts and belly button, but it’s also a curiously clunky, non-sexy posing of Salome. Why is her midriff covered? Why is she wearing high heeled shoes with bows at the ankle? What the hell is going on here? Mere titillation, nothing more. Shame on you, Beardsley.

Everything rested until 1905, when Richard Strauss, a German of music renown, chose Salome as his opera subject. His librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an Austrian poet of some renown, put words to the decadent musical motifs. A costume designer, whose name I could not find, turned her eastern Byzantine and gave her a harem twist and a costume of 7 veils. A choreographer had her shimmy (belly dance). In the first performance of “Salome,’ Marie Wittich, described as an ample soprano Salome, refused to do the dance or wear the costume. A nameless ballerina accommodated the scene and this became a tradition each time the opera was performed. One critic, a word wizard, called Strauss the apostle of decadence. This made the people want to see it for themselves. Strauss’ “Salome” was performed 50 times in the first two years after it was written in opera houses all over the world.

This chronicle has ended.

PS. A beheaded John, not yet a saint, is so very popular that I had to find a depiction of John with his head on. Caravaggio was quite taken with him and did a lot of versions of John with his head on.

PS. One female artist, Fra Lippinni, an Italian woman, did work on the triangle. I am disappointed with Fra. Although she chose Salome to be focal, she dressed her modestly in Medieval costume, twirling her skirts. It’s a pretty nothing picture that says more about Lippinni and her lack of inspiration and imagination (She is technically apt, I think.) than the subject matter. I think she should have tried harder to ‘get into it.’ She was a daughter once and may have been the mother of a daughter at the time the picture was painted.





By: Barbara Nell ]]> http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/08/a-curious-mothers-day-story/feed/ 0 http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/07/how-to-disappear-alcatraz-style/ http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/07/how-to-disappear-alcatraz-style/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:31:32 +0000 admin http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/07/how-to-disappear-alcatraz-style/ How to Disappear… Alcatraz Style

Those of you who recognize my name know that I am a skip tracer, one who finds people; however, more interesting, I teach people how to disappear. About a year ago, I met up with some famed Hollywood Producers about creating a show about me finding people who have disappeared – titled Missing.

The producers were interested in doing cases where it was possible the missing people maybe alive. Like Whitey Bulger leader of the Winter Hill Gang, DB Cooper skyjacker and bank robber, Lord Lucan British high society and suspected murderer, Moana Pozzi Italian porn star. Out all the cases that were kicked around they were interested in brothers Clarence & JW Anglin the famed escape from Alcatraz, made popular by Clint Eastwood in his portrayal of Frank Lee Morris one of the escapees.

My attitude was negative I figured there is no way the Anglins or Morris made it out the dark waters with their makeshift rafts, boy was I wrong. Therefore, the journey of locating the Anglin brothers begins, I started my search by locating family.

The Anglin name is somewhat of a common southern name, most searches on line brought me to IMDB.com the movie site that linked the movie Escape from Alcatraz. I located an old book written titled Riddle of the Rock by Don Denevi, an interesting book that discusses the escape in detail – unlike the movie that simplified the break out.

The theory is that Bumpy Johnson a notorious Harlem mob boss assisted in the escape by having a boat out in the bay waiting for the escapees. However when I did my research on Bumpy Johnson he had no power left and no money to finance such a feat. In addition, the environment on the rock was hostile, amongst the different ethnic groups, though some believe that the escape plan united the groups and kept it a secret from the guards.

The vital hope amongst the prisoners was that if the escapees made it out alive, they perhaps would shine light on the horrible conditions in Alcatraz. The big house was filled with small cells, no exercise and high carbohydrate diets to keep the inmates lazy although the Warden allowed painting on canvas.

After days of spinning my skip tracing wheels, I was unsuccessful in locating any of the Anglin family members. Sometimes when one skip traces the simple things are forgotten. I finally hit www.ancestry.com and start posting that I am a writer searching for Anglin family members. A few days later, I get an email from a woman who knows the oldest brother and patriarch of the family. I will refer to him as Man a family nickname.

I dial Man’s cell phone number and an easy southern voice answers. I tell him my story that I am working with some producers who want to do a TV show about his brothers. Of course, I leave out the part that we are looking to capture them. Man agrees to meet me at a nearby Arby’s restaurant the following day.

The next day I arrive at the Arby’s restaurant about forty minutes early, checking out the scene. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Man or other family members. When you’re a skip tracer being paranoid at times is your best tool. The paranoia can keep you one-step ahead. After assessing that, all was cool I walk in a sit down, shortly after walks in the kindest looking person I ever met, Man brother to JW and Clarence.

As Man was sitting down, he asked if I was going to make him rich and famous, I laughed. Although Man was not joking, he told me how the media pretty much used him and spit him out. He told me everyone else made money off his brother’s infamy but the Anglin family never received a dime from books, TV shows and movies made. My answer was simple, how bout we start with a cup of coffee I am buying. Man smiled, he preferred bottle water.

I wanted to know about the brothers, how they found themselves in a place like Alcatraz. Clarence and JW robbed a bank in Alabama, what most people do not realize is a third brother was with them and the supposed ringleader Alfred Anglin. Man told me that Alfred was always in trouble and prior to the bank robbery in Alabama Alfred was on the lamb for several years living in the middle of Florida working a farm picking fruit and vegetables.

While hiding out in Florida Alfred fell in love with a sixteen-year-old beauty named Jeanette. Like Romeo and Juliet it was a forbidden love, the couple crossed the state line and married.

Not far from the Arby’s restaurant is a small graveyard with Alfred’s headstone and an old photo of Alfred and Jeanette announcing their marriage for all to see, quite brazen for a man on the run. That was just the way Alfred was, he feared nothing and wanted to give his new bride more in life so he devised a plan.

While Alfred was picking fruit under the hot Florida sun, Clarence was working a road gang somewhere around Ft. Meyers. Turns out Clarence’s mother Rachel and another of her sons’ went to visit Clarence in the jail. Clarence told them not to come next week that he would be visiting them at home. The mother and brother shrugged it off to Clarence’s usual banter.

The following week, Clarence true to his word escaped the road gang with two other prisoners. Clarence was barefoot and made his way up the Gulf Coast, wading and swimming for more than sixty miles.

Man told me that Clarence and JW were thick as thieves and since childhood, they had a unique way of communicating between each other, secret destination to meet up at, phone calls with certain amount of hang-ups determined locations. JW received such a message and met up with Clarence when he escaped the Florida road gang and took him to stay with Alfred on the farm. Farm life was no life for Clarence, he had a tough edge to him and preferred easy money for the day as opposed to a weekly paycheck also picking fruit never paid that much.

The plan, Man told me that originally, Clarence and Alfred were going to rob the bank in Alabama, and originally JW wanted no part of the crime. JW was a ladies man, sharp dressed and loved fast cars. A fast car was needed for the bank robbery, JW refused to lend his car and eventually decided that he would go along and drive the getaway car. What the brothers did not know was Alabama supposedly still had the death penalty for bank robbery.

My meetings with Man became weekly, more like a Tuesday with Morrie but in an Arby’s sipping bad coffee and him the usual water. Man was always cautious about how he answered my questions; in his late seventies, he was sharp. One time he was bold and told me he had to watch what he said, he didn’t want to get in any type of trouble. Not sure, what he meant I pushed on, but his big southern smile always brought the conversation to another topic.

In another meeting with Man, he implied that I might be a US Marshal trying to capture his brothers and wanted to know if I was wired. I told him I was not, he asked me to take off my shirt and prove it to him. That afternoon in the Arby’s I stood and took off my shirt as the patrons looked at me as if I was crazy. Man, pulled out a business card of a US Marshal, forty years after the escape the US Marshals actually approached Man and asked him to take a polygraph test. They picked him up from his small lot where several trailers housed Man and a few siblings. The Marshal drove him to an office asked him thirteen questions, drove him back home and never discussed the results of the test.

The bank robbery, JW drives his brother up to the bank door. Clarence and Alfred enter the bank a toy gun is used a woman near faints. The two brothers stop the robbery and give her a glass of water – about 19k is stolen. Eventually the brothers are apprehended in Ohio. Less than 600 were spent from the loot. All three brothers were found guilty. Alfred was sent back to Atlanta since he owed the state time for his prior escape. JW and Clarence went to Leavenworth and eventually Alcatraz because of a foiled escape.

Fast forward Alcatraz June 11, 1962 Allen West the mastermind behind the Alcatraz escape is unable to exit his cell, JW, Clarence and Frank Lee Morris escape into the dark waters supposedly never to be seen again.

After the escape, Man told me that he was visiting Alfred in the penitentiary and in the prison bathroom Alfred said he received a message from Clarence and that he knew where the brothers were holed up and he was going to break out and meet up with the pair. Alfred true to his words attempted to escape prison only to be killed by electrocution.

Long after the Alcatraz, escape there have been several sightings and assumed correspondence from JW and Clarence. The smoking gun by Hollywood standards would be a postcard that arrived one day from Brazil, written in Clarence’s writing. Every year on the mother’s birthday, she received two dozen red roses with unsigned cards. The roses stop upon her death.

At times Man would open up and bring me closer to a world he shared with no one, not even his own siblings. They joke about if anyone knew the whereabouts, Man would know. I asked to see the postcard from Brazil, however, a week later Man told me the card is gone no one can find it. I offered him twenty thousand dollars just to look at the mysterious correspondence. Man smiled and again in that polite southern voice – it was misplaced.

Some years ago, Unsolved Mysteries did a segment about the Anglin brothers; I had the good fortune of meeting the Director of that segment who was now one of the producers I was working with. We flew together to meet up with the US Marshal that worked the tips from Unsolved Mysteries.

1. A woman called in claiming to have met Clarence Anglin after the escape at a barbecue. She claimed he was with a teen girl named Rachel, strangely enough that was the name of the Anglins mothers. The woman claimed that she also visited the home of Clarence in Georgia and mentioned particular features about Clarence that only would have been recognized in person.

2. In the same area of Georgia, a bank was robbed and the MO was similar to the Anglin bank robbery in Alabama. What is so interesting is the Georgia bank robbery is in the same town where the Anglins hail from. Mike the producer told me when he was shooting the Unsolved Mysteries segment he had the wanted posters of Clarence and JW faxed to a hotel managers office, the manager remarked that the faces looked like the guy who robbed the bank a few years back in Georgia.

3. The US Marshal met with another woman who claimed she was on her father’s ranch in Texas when several men showed up who were assisting a man being smuggled into Mexico. Her father claimed it was one of the Anglin brothers.

4. We learned that only a few years back the US Marshals received a tip that one of the Anglin brothers was in Brazil. The US Marshals went down to Brazil and got a confirmation from a local bartender that one of the brothers was there. Eventually the trail went cold.

Mike and I eventually made our way to meet Man but first stopped in a local diner. We started talking with a few locals, one specifically who knew the family well. He told us what most people do not know is that one of the Anglin siblings was out in California during the escape and not far from the rock – information not in the FBI file.

The FBI file is an interesting piece of work, the attitude is summed up that most likely the trio drowned in the bay. Across the bay was a community of people known as the colony, these were family members of inmates locked up in Alcatraz. There is no record of the FBI ever speaking to members of the colony.

We picked Man up and he gave us a grand tour of where the Anglins grew up, from back woods swimming holes, to back roads where JW raced his Thunderbird. Man told stories of JW being a ladies man, dressing like a fancy preacher, Clarence being tough as nail and Alfred, well Alfred was just destined for trouble. Mike and I were hoping to get that smoking gun it never came.

Either way Hollywood passed on my show titled Missing, to them there was no smoking gun. The secret of Clarence and JW still hide behind the kind smile of a gentle man named Man. Through my search, I learned of things that are best left unsaid, things that imply or point to the strong possibilities of life after Alcatraz for JW and Clarence.

To me it was a great experience to dive so deep in the world of such a mystery – that will never be solved or at least not yet! That was the last time I saw Man and that’s how you disappear Alcatraz style.

Frank M. Ahearn

www.disappear.info





By: Frank M. Ahearn ]]> http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2009/07/how-to-disappear-alcatraz-style/feed/ 0 http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2008/12/chapter-1-of-jerry%e2%80%99s-riot-the-true-story-of-montana%e2%80%99s-1959-prison-disturbance/ http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2008/12/chapter-1-of-jerry%e2%80%99s-riot-the-true-story-of-montana%e2%80%99s-1959-prison-disturbance/#comments Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:22:14 +0000 admin http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2008/12/chapter-1-of-jerry%e2%80%99s-riot-the-true-story-of-montana%e2%80%99s-1959-prison-disturbance/ Chapter 1 of Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance

A GHOST’S WHISPER

A board falling flat to the floor is thunder to the heart. And so it was that when prison guard Clyde Sollars heard a hard clap, he stiffened in fear. For a few seconds he listened, breathless. Sollars looked at his wristwatch, an anniversary gift from his wife. The hands showed almost four o’clock. He reached into the canvas bag he had carried into the prison from the main office across the street. Inside the tiny mailroom that was nothing more than a cubbyhole with shelves, wedged at the end of a short hallway, he sorted the day’s last letters. That noise, sharp and urgent, echoed in his head. The convict carpenters working with hammers and saws near the deputy warden’s office must have dropped a board. The day suddenly felt used and cold, like frost on a flower. Feeling a chill that he couldn’t understand, he worked faster.

An hour earlier, Sollars waited outside the prison’s rock walls, across the street, while his wife Helen censored the last letters. She was the new matron in the Women’s Unit, a small stockade behind the main prison. They told her that if she worked with the mail superintendent for a few weeks she would know the prison better.  Every morning she and another matron marched eleven of the thirteen female prisoners from their quarters to their jobs in prison offices outside the walls. Clyde felt lucky to see her during working hours. He was one of two mail and transportation officers, alternating with another guard on road trips to return parole violators to Deer Lodge. The most recent assignment had been to North Dakota. The other guard asked for it, hoping to visit relatives along the way.

On this Thursday, April 16, 1959, Clyde Sollars might have been driving hundreds of miles to the east, free as a bird on the perpetual plains of eastern Montana. Instead he stacked mail into a bag, looked at his watch, and decided that before he ended his shift he would walk one more time into Montana State Prison. “See you at home, Mom,” he had said to his wife. That was what he called Helen sometimes. They had two daughters, grown and gone, and it felt good to speak to his wife as if the children were still at home.

He had come to the prison in 1957. Like many of the guards before him, who found their way to Deer Lodge from the sawmills and the mines and the timber crews, he arrived at the prison with dirt on his heels. After leaving the Army after World War II he went to work in the grain elevators in Charlo, Ronan, Polson, Pablo and Paradise, all towns in northwestern Montana. Sollars was an ordinary blue-collar worker, as unadorned as the other guards who filed in and out of those imposing sandstone and granite walls. He was about to find out how plain men take on new worth in a crisis.

He swung the canvas sack onto his shoulder and walked forty paces across Main Street and into the lengthening shadows of two mighty cell houses. The fortresses stood four stories high. Castle-ike turrets clawed at the pale sky from each of the eight corners.  One cell house had been built before the turn of the century, the other, during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency. They made an awe-inspiring sight to travelers who drove into town on Highway 10, a two-lane ribbon of asphalt, and stopped and pointed their Brownies to snap pictures. The forbidding prison, by some accounts one of the worst in the country, made for interesting vacation snapshots next to the more pastoral elements of Montana, like steaming geyser spray from Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.

Like most prison guards, Sollars saw little romance in the rugged architecture of the cell houses. He thought them ugly and wretched because he knew of the misery that they hid. He felt them staring at him with their troubled swollen eyes. The prison had eyes everywhere. The hundreds of prisoners watched and remembered all they saw, as did the guards if they knew what was good for them. The seven wall towers watched what was inside, and everything inside stared back. Eyes watched from everywhere. It was said that the prison’s ears heard all, even a ghost’s whisper.

Wind swept the scent of spring snow off the mountains that loomed like a painted backdrop behind the prison. The scent stung his nose but felt fresh and clean. Only when Sollars arrived at the looming stone entrance did he shiver. Instinctively he zipped his blue uniform jacket. He tilted the bill on his police-style cap to shut out the sun, which already was fading behind the prison. Then he looked up. On the wall outside the tower, known as Tower 7 or the main gate, a guard stood with a loop of clothesline rope. He uncoiled it and let it drop twenty feet or so to Sollars, who unclipped from it a brass key that filled his hand. At the front of the tower, standing almost on Main Street where the cars rolled past, Sollars unlocked an ornate black grill door to enter the base of the two-story tower. Here, the easy innocence of small-town Deer Lodge dissolved into a dark cave of sandstone rock. A naked bulb cast dull yellow light that didn’t penetrate the corners. The room was cold and drafty. Sollars felt a change in him as he always did when he went inside.  He locked the grill door behind him. This time, the rope dangled through a round opening in the ceiling. The guard who had stood on the wall a minute earlier was now inside the tower, up in the eagle’s nest where he could see the guts of the prison through its broad windows. Sollars attached the key, tugged on the rope, and the guard above pulled it back. Seconds later the rope returned. A new key rattled inside the tin tube. Sollars used it to unlock a wooden door, as thick as his hand was wide, on the opposite side of the tower. He swung open the door, stepped into the prison yard, and locked it again. The other guard, standing outside on the wall again and facing the prison now, dropped the rope. Sollars surrendered the key.

He crossed a short courtyard to ten steps that led upward to another barred door. Behind it was Inside Administration, where guards brought their prisoner counts. Convicts came for medicine, or to get their teeth pulled in the dental office, or to shine the guards’ black leather shoes. In the photo office, they took pictures of the “fish,” the new men who arrived through the main gate and wrote descriptions of their scars and tattoos in case of escape. The visiting room was here, too. Inside Administration was the business district of this town of criminals.

The cell houses, like big brothers, pressed against the chalk-white Inside Administration on either side, dwarfing it. On the south end, to Sollars’ left, was the 1896 version. This cell house had buckets for toilets. Despite all the technological inventions before its construction, it more resembled a Civil War-era fortress with its galleys of wood and its cell doors that had to be locked individually.  It was made of dark brick, the color of dried blood. Its round turrets had roofs that came to a point, where in the early days big flags flew. To the north, the 1912 cell house was much the same in its rectangular construction, although its brick looked more orange by contrast and its square turrets flared at the top. Even forty-seven years after it was built, guards called this building the “new” cell house because it had plumbing and interlocking cell doors. None of the guards would doubt that this was Floyd Powell’s prison. The new warden from Wisconsin State Prison, a champion of reform, had proclaimed at his arrival eight months earlier that he would change this reputed hellhole into a model institution that would be the envy of every prison in America. Not everyone shared his enthusiasm. Some residents of Deer Lodge greeted his presence with skepticism, others with disdain. The town wasn’t accustomed to a warden of such outward determination, and the prospect of an improved prison was a new idea. In Wisconsin he had a reputation as a bit of a daredevil because he was willing to go into prison cells to talk inmates out of knives or other weapons. From childhood he lived a hard life and was determined to overcome it. As a boy, and the oldest son, he took over the family farm when his father became disabled in a car accident. He also hired out as a laborer to bring extra money home. He was a driven, determined self-made man.

The new warden arrived in Deer Lodge to repair decades of decay and mismanagement at the only prison in Montana’s vast landscape. It was an outpost of sorts, planted in a town of fewer than 4,000 residents in a tall empty county – Powell County, coincidentally – where Hereford cattle outnumbered people. The prison had stood at that spot along the Clark Fork River since Montana was a territory, when sluice miners crawled the snow-fed creeks and road agents fleeced them of their gold nuggets. It had been a familiar face to three generations of Deer Lodge folk who worked there. The old prison was a tolerated place, if not tolerable, a dark ripple in the stream of a good life. In a wide lonesome valley that felt like cupped hands beneath the heavens, the prison’s purpose was a spoiling, a footprint of humanity’s inevitable sorrowful deeds.  Montanans liked their prison kept quiet, much like ignoring a sleeping dog for fear of its bite. With Floyd Powell’s arrival, that was about to change. There, between folds of the Rocky Mountain Front that wore some of the best forests in Montana on its flowing cape, his agenda for reform took shape.

As summer waned, Powell charged ahead with uncommon energy, trying to change everything at once. He recruited Ted Rothe, his friend and ally, from Wisconsin State Prison. To make the prison safer, he hired more guards. To know the troublemakers, he started classifying prisoners by crimes and behavior. He even fired the “con bosses” who had supervised their peers in the industries and shops. Powell was a whirling dervish. In his quest to bring the prison into modern times, he was upsetting the balance of power inside of it.

Clyde Sollars felt a haunting at the prison. The prison felt dead and ugly. Knowing the men held inside was like ripping open a psychological veil. Behind it were the inmates’ victims and their personal agonies. Civilization built prisons to hide what they didn’t want to see. Sollars and all the other guards discovered that in the midst of convicted men they met hell, exposed and raw and full of pain. Guards coped with two evils: real dangers and apparitions. They sensed in Floyd Powell’s vision a change in wind direction. It felt like a storm building on the mountain. To many Montanans, prison reform was worse than a futile gesture. It was a violation of faith.

If anything, a guard’s life was a fertile field for conversation. On the outside, off shift, guards cracked their foaming Great Falls Selects and smoked their unfiltered Camels and ranted of how it was, how it really was, and lamented Powell’s policies and the joint and the torment of their working lives. At the top of the steps at the barred door into Inside Administration, Sollars pushed a button that sounded a buzzer.  Officer James “Little” Jones, the second-shift turnkey, appeared at the door. He was as short as his nickname implied, but a muscled, wiry man, and his hair was thick and black. “Last trip for today?” he asked Sollars. He opened the door for Sollars to pass and then swung it shut. Metal crashed against metal. He turned the big key until the lock slid closed with a thunk. Jones made small talk before Sollars entered a little hallway to his right. He had been sorting the mail for fewer than ten minutes before he heard the noise that scared him.

Jones worked two grill doors that day. On the west side of the building, opposite from where Sollars had entered, two grill doors spaced twelve feet apart created a vestibule, where on most days one door would be locked before the other was opened. Those doors admitted convicts from the yard. Usually a second turnkey guard worked between the doors and had to work them with care to avoid being trapped with both sets of keys. Today Jones was working alone. On such days when the afternoon shift was short a man, the outside grill door was left open. Convicts who had business to do came up the steps from the yard on the west side of Inside Administration and walked right up to the second grill door in the vestibule. As a matter of policy, Jones would order them to step back before he unlocked the door. Standing now inside his claustrophobic mailroom, Sollars was thinking again about the noise that bothered him. Like other guards he had become accustomed to listening beyond clanging doors and crude language for true and ominous signals of trouble. This noise had ricocheted around the jungle of concrete rooms like a clap of thunder. Had he heard a board falling flat to the floor, blasting the air away? Or had he heard something else? His suspicion grew.  For a few moments only silence came to his ears, and in prison, silence deafens. Here, a dictionary of sounds lay open in Clyde Sollars’ mind, as it did for every guard, ready for quick reference. In this prison of a thousand eyes, danger usually came first to the ears.  Sounds that fill the prison alarm new guards. As months pass those sounds become a pattern of routine. The prison at its safest was a numbing routine and a guard was soon to learn that he should listen close when the routine changes. From somewhere in the maze of rooms came an urgency of shoes on tile. They weren’t squeaks of new shoes but the warnings of a struggle. Sollars felt curious and then afraid. He crept into the lobby. Here in this gloomy room, where convicted men had tromped a trail in the linoleum, he saw no carpenters, nor did he see anyone else. Where was Jones, the turnkey guard? And why were both barred doors to the yard standing open? That very second, as Sollars comprehended a guard’s greatest fear, a squat and sweating convict rumbled into the lobby from Deputy Warden Ted Rothe’s office. His big fist clutched a thin ugly knife, red with blood.

Sollars recognized him at once. He didn’t know the man well, in fact couldn’t recall a conversation with him, but in an instant Sollars sensed the man’s frightful confidence. Like a mad bull, Jerry Myles snorted through a flattened nose that listed to the left. Rivers of purple and red ran across his flushed face. His bully scowl, accentuated with heavy eyelids and full pouting lips, promised trouble. His high forehead, where only a tongue of wavy salt-and-pepper hair remained, shined with sweat. He tilted his head backward a bit, daring Sollars to defy him. Sollars had heard this man was nicknamed “Shorty” and could see why. Myles stood only a shade over five feet, and despite thick arms and a chest as round as a rain barrel, his feet were dainty like a woman’s. His shoes seemed too petite for a man who propelled his stout body with such authority. He was a bull on tiny feet.  Although a common burglar, Myles had a reputation among the guards as a jocker, meaning he stalked young men for sex. They also called him “Little Hitler,” alluding to his remorseless and domineering behavior in the cell house. He courted violations of the rules in an effort to draw attention to himself, and when he was caught, tried to make amends in pitiful ways. At 125, his IQ was far higher than most of his fellow convicts.  He wrote poetry, enjoyed the strategic challenges of chess, and had learned to play the violin. Had he not been a psychopath, he might have been a scholar. Little good had come from his intellect. Other than occasional regret over his troubled loveless life, he reserved most of his thinking for petty hates and distorted illusions.  Sollars thought he saw a flicker of compassion in the eyes of this mad bull before him. When Myles spoke, his voice came softer than Sollars had expected. “This is a riot and if you want to live, Cap, do what I say,” Myles advised him.

At first Sollars didn’t understand that Myles was even more dangerous than he appeared. Prison was his home. Now forty-four years old, he had spent most of the past twenty-five years at Alcatraz Island and five other federal and state prisons. Mutinies came to him as second nature. He thought he knew prison life better than anyone who had guarded him. Myles was determined to impress on his captors that because of his long history of confinement he deserved special privileges. It soon would become clear to everyone in Montana that he desired to run the prison.  Myles stepped toward Sollars. He guided the knife in front of his short bulk like he was trying to clear a path with it. Sollars didn’t doubt that Myles would kill him. He raised his hands in surrender.

Sollars had been to war and seen a few fights at the grain elevators but knew nothing about confronting armed convicts. Behind Myles came Lee Smart, the kid with eyes of ice. Sollars knew him as the teenage murderer. He was skinny and had a girl’s countenance but everyone knew he was a psychopath and gave him room. Smart had a sassy defiant way about him. He walked around the prison with his trousers drooping. Between Myles and Smart stood Sergeant Bill Cox. Blood soaked the shirtsleeve on his left arm from shoulder to wrist. He had a jaw of rock that made him look fierce but now his strength was gone and his face white and dazed. Cox worked in the captain’s office between the lobby and Ted Rothe’s office. As Sollars tried to understand what he was seeing, he wondered for an instant why the scene didn’t include Deputy Warden Rothe. Then he looked closer at the boy. Smart pointed a lever-action rifle at Sollars. He gripped the barrel not as a hunter would with a thumb on one side and fingers on the other for a clear view, but with his fingers wrapped all the way around. The ominous opening at the barrel’s tip looked larger than life. Sollars smelled gunpowder. He saw Smart’s other hand at the trigger, coaxing it. Sollars felt a violation of the basic order of life. He blinked hard behind his glasses. He wouldn’t forget Lee Smart’s blank cold face.

Further information about Jerry’s Riot is available at http://www.skybluewaterspress.com





By: Kevin S. Giles ]]> http://www.prisonguardtoday.com/2008/12/chapter-1-of-jerry%e2%80%99s-riot-the-true-story-of-montana%e2%80%99s-1959-prison-disturbance/feed/ 0