Alcatraz_ A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years - Michael Esslinger [62]
As I file into the dining hall this morning, I witness a sight never before seen inside these walls. Her soft scent, which has not aroused my nostrils for more than twelve years, reawakens strange emotions long forgotten. In the middle of the mess hall stands the first Christmas tree ever to be erected at Alcatraz.
The culinary detail was a prime work assignment for inmates. The men on this detail were allowed daily visits to the recreation yard, and were allotted daily showers if requested. It was a non-paying assignment, but inmates serving life or unusually lengthy sentences didn’t seem to mind. At Alcatraz, “lifers” had no use for money. Inmates assigned to the culinary detail were also granted benefits that were not always available even to the correctional staff. Alvin Karpis described the access to “unlimited food, ” commenting: “we have our choice of the food supplies and can prepare appetizers whenever we crave them rather than being regimented to strict meal hours like the general population or the guards.” Karpis would also claim that the kitchen detail was a haven for sexual encounters among the inmates. He indicated that the basement was a “labyrinth of vegetable rooms, showers, freezers, and storerooms, where... delights are exchanged frequently and freely.” In the best-selling classic Escape from Alcatraz, J. Campbell Bruce describes the acquisition of alcoholic beverages at Alcatraz:
... generally the inmates had to make their own booze and the best place for such an illicit operation was the bakery in the basement beneath the kitchen. Here the yeasty aroma of a fermenting brew was so akin to that of rising dough that the making of pruno [an exotic prison homemade cocktail] went undetected for a long time... The recipe was simple: put raisins and other dried fruit to soak in a crock, add yeast to speed up the fermentation, and cover the crock with flour sacks. The bakers realizing they had a good thing going, drank in moderation, an aperitif before meals.
Former inmate Darwin E. Coon was also assigned to the kitchen during his incarceration on The Rock, and he recalled some of the special meals inmates were served at Alcatraz in his memoir Alcatraz – The True End of the Line:
Whenever the inmates saw the chef’s meal on the menu board, they knew that they were in for a special dinner. We usually had a chef’s meal about once every three months... Some of the really special meals that I remember were when the striped bass were running in the Bay. The officers caught them by the wheelbarrow load and wheeled them into the kitchen. The cooks cleaned and cooked them and the inmates got all the fish he could eat. We would stuff the small ones, one to two pounders, with a nice gumbo and bake them. The bigger ones were cut into steaks and fried. The bass run would last about a month and since Friday was traditionally fish day, we could have four or five of these fish meals.
Coon would also remember a group of inmates that were nicknamed the “animals.” These men had appalling eating habits, and would always sit at the same table in the Mess Hall. Coon recalled that when these men entered the hall, they would be booed by all of the other inmates.
Warden Edwin Burnham Swope: 1948-1955
Edwin B. Swope was appointed as the second Warden of Alcatraz in April of 1948.
Warden Swope was known as a tough taskmaster and strict disciplinarian. But despite his authoritarian reputation, he also initiated a variety of inmate reform programs. He is seen here in a meeting with staff members.
Swope facilitating a meeting with his supervisory staff.
Warden Swope and his wife sitting in the rounded parlor of the Warden’s mansion at Christmas in 1954.
On April 30, 1948, Edwin B. Swope was appointed as the new Warden of Alcatraz at fifty-nine years of age. He would replace Warden