Carry ON Tuesday

Alcatraz

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.  At the begining is where I start but then again isn't the begining where I decide to start . This story is from a time when I visited Alcatraz remembering just a few who'd been there before me and thank god I wasn't there near as long as they were.




As I walk through the old prison I imagine I can hear the jail cells slamming shut and the man from alcatraz watching me as I set my pace. Walking toward him, I also believe I hear Charles Manson screaming his lyrics at the top of his voice.


Manson has always been kind of crazy, always talking out his ass because he never had the back bone to do anything on his own, he always had someone doing the dirty work for him. I remember when I was a young child he and his gang lived not very far from us in a rundown old shack that looked as if it would fall down anytime. The town was Trona, California. It was, in my opinion, the armpit of the world, the sulfer smell was extremely strong in the town.



The Son of Sam is sitting against the wall in his cell drawing pictures of the naked bodies he tormented at one time. His vivid pictures reflect that he remembers every detail of what he had done to all the women he had killed. He once said they were nothing but dirty whores who deserved exactly what they got. That anybody could feel that way toward another human being is morbid in my opinion and anyone who could do the things he did to young, innocent women didn't deserve to live a minute longer once found guilty for the deaths he had caused.



Then you have Al Capone sitting in his cell as if waiting for someone to throw dice with him just one more time and of course popping open a bottle of wine to cherrish the money he had made for himself, his brothers and the rest of his gangster family. As I come out of my reverie I realize that all of these are a part of the long ago past. I see the government workers who now inhabit the old building doing their research, replacing the old memories with today's new technology.