MY TIME at SAN QUENTIN PRISON in California . . . (MEMOIR)

Hi Blake.

It was in 1961 when I went to San Quetin. I thought leavenworth was where they sent the totally federal bad people to prison.

San Quentin is where they used to send people to the electric chair, later the gas chamber.

I read in the newspaper where some prisoners went and played chess in some town and they were driven in a suv and four of them escaped. Now that was stupid, lack of security.

Thanks for the read and comment.

This is the present San Quentin match now adays. They even let them keep the ties.

                   Hi Check Mate.

It was me going to play chess. I tried to write it like I was a prisoner being taken into prison. Hope you liked it.

        Thanks for making a comment.

 about me i just have parents who lived through the sixties

about the soccer player who got the scholership

thats the way you do it brilliant two exclamation points to him

The general population are the ones that are allowed to play chess. Death Row inmates aren't allowed to participate.

Death Row at San Quentin State Prison is an antiseptic form of hell, nearly devoid of the things, like intimacy and love, that give life value.

Living here is a numbing gray slog for the 647 condemned killers who sit, year after year, waiting to die on the nation's most populous death row.

Behind the prison's granite walls, quarried by inmates more than 150 years ago, is a stark environment of concrete floors and clanging cell doors. It is a monotonous, controlled, alternately boring and spooky place that echoes with the shouts of lost souls.

They have stopped executing prisoner since 2006.

hey dont badmouth texans( sorry its not that i like texas i just lived there so well iguess its obligatorry)

I recently went to visit Alcatraz. It is a place that weighs on you. Can't imagine what it was like to be a prisoner.

http://www.chess.com/photos/view_album/corrijean/san-francisco-2011

Nice photos, Corrijean. If you're 5'10", your husband must be 6'6" or taller! I've never seen this many picures of Alcatraz.

You are correct. He is right at 6'6". I really enjoyed the tour. Lots of interesing information. Truly unforgettable.

And of course the SF Giants won in the bottom of the 12th on a wallop off of the wall with the bases loaded in the home opener where they got to raise the world series flag.

As Isaac pointed out, I did leave out the fact that we went to the opening day game of the SF Giants on the same trip. :)

oh yeah, should have mentioned that did not happen on the rock.

Great story, BTW.

 Nice story

Wow, what an experience that was for you.  It's really cool to see just how universal the game of chess is. 

Well worth the time of reading this, thanks for sharing.

Hi James

Sometimes I think that it's too long and a little like Stephen King's stories with a twist at the end.

               Thanks for your comment.

DENVERHIGH

Well done, on two counts :

1 For a very nice read, in what must have been a goose-pimple situation - or potentially worse - going by BILLWALL's most illuminating piece,  on Chess and Violence.

2 For having had the guts to go in there, and try to shine a little bit of light into the dark tunnel of the inmates there.

I truly loved Johnny Cash's songs and music.  Especially that song he wrote for the San Quentin occasion.  Wonderful.  I play it constantly, for the almost secret thrill it gives me, just to hear it; and, also, just to see the enjoyment of it all on the prisoners' faces.  An occasion which the San Quentin inmates will for ever have engraved on their minds and memories, I'm sure.

I know that the Man in Black had his own personal reasons for identifying with the lot of prison inmates. He also made appearances in other American prisons, didn't he ?  I know that a prison population harbours a lot of very nasty people, with some being less nasty than others.  All the same, it speaks volumes for Johnny Cash that he was prepared to give his time and music, just to bring a little enjoyment into their lives.  And his audiences for those occasions would have been selected audiences who would enjoy the entertainment, while the really hard cases would remain locked up in their cells.

So, chess in San Quentin ?  A leap into the unknown ?  A worthwhile venture ?  Probably the jury is out on that one.

Cheers, and all the best.

 owenwilson
Ireland r

Hello Owen Wilson

San Quentin Prison is just 10 miles north of San Francisco and Folsom Prison it north east of Sacramento, both are in California.

The San Quentin Prison song was written by one of the inmates and given to Johnny Cash to sing. 

Johnny Cash also performed at Folsom Prison and put out the Folsom Prison Blues album.

When I went to play they had just finished bulding the chess room, right next to the GYM. All the inmates could look into the room.

There are many other country singer that spent some time in prison, wrote song and became singers.

Thanks for reading and the narrative you posted.

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by JoseO
Miami, FL United States

Hi Jose.

No I never asked what Bill was in for. If he didn't volunteered it, I wasn't going to ask.

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That to both of you for reading and the comments.

DENVERHIGH

Nice one !  I liked that !!

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