Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison

[first lines]

Narrator - Personification of Folsom Prison: I am Folsom Prison. At one time they called me "Bloody Folsom."

[laughs slightly]

Narrator - Personification of Folsom Prison: And I earned the name. I've been standing here in California since 1878. My own prisoners built me, shutting themselves off from the free world. Every block of my granite is cemented by their tears, their pain, and the blood of many men. This is a story from my rough, tough past. It happened not long ago after the turn of the century. At the time I tell about, I had within my walls a thousand dangerous men that other prisons couldn't hold. But I held them. If I couldn't break a man's spirit, I broke his bones. I kept many of them in a cellhouse that wasn't fit for animals, let alone men, It's cells were more like tombs, and the doors were made of solid iron, secured by bars that only dynamite could budge. Two men, and often more, were crowded into those airless crypts. They slept, when the could sleep, on mattresses alive with vermin, They froze on winter nights, and their bodies were drained of sweat in the breathless heat of summer. Every morning, while it was still dark, my guards made the rounds, turning out the inmate kitchen workers, so they could cook the slop that was fed my prisoners under the name of "breakfast."