Livin' the Dream 2: March 2011

11 March 2011--Our original plan for today was to go to a plantation, but seeing as we had already been to one in South Carolina we decided to go to the Angola State Penitentiary Museum instead. This prison has been on plenty of those late night TV shows, so as a minimum you have probably seen it for a minute while flipping channels.

Angola is the only maximum security prison in Louisiana and houses just over 5000 prisoners, 86% of whom are violent offenders and 52% of whom are serving "life, without the possibility of parole"! They have 84 men and even 1 woman on death row. So, needless to say, this place is no walk in the park.

The brochure told us the prison sits on land that was previously several privately-owned plantations, that it is 18,000 acres of "the finest farmland in the south," and is named Angola after the country in Africa that most of the slaves who lived here came from. They wrapped it up by saying that it is situated perfectly for a prison, in that it was in a rural area and surrounded on 3 sides by the mighty Mississippi!!! Not much chance of escape, I guess!

I tried to get Cathy to act all mean like she was the overseer of the prison sitting out on the porch, but she doesn't look very intimidating here.

I am prisoner #5522, while Cathy is #5533...if you are playing the lottery maybe you should keep those numbers in mind.

I kept thinking of the movie "Cool Hand Luke"...Can't you just hear the overseer saying to Paul Newman, "What we have here is a failure to communicate"!

You enter the museum thru the gift shop and the 1st pics on the wall are of these generations of families involved in the system...just seemed a little odd to me.

Several movies have been made here. NOTE: If you have never seen Monster's Ball, don't! It is horrible!

These are pics of the bathroom and shower areas in 1940. Keep in mind that the Louisiana prison system was placed under federal receivership from 1983 to 1999...I wondered what took them so long?

A quick story: We were at about this point in the museum when a guy came up to me and asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I was pleasantly surprised and happily said yes. With that, he sort of pointed around the corner to where Cathy was, so I called out and asked her if she wanted some. Cathy said no, and that is when this guy said "come with me". As I turned and looked more closely, it dawned on me that this approximately 30 yr old guy was dressed all in white and was actually what they call a "trusty"...a prisoner who works outside the fence. If you know me at all you know that at this point I was almost immobilized with fear, but I also didn't want to offend him (how stupid!), so I gingerly complied as he said a few times "follow me". I lagged a few steps behind him, so when I turned the corner into the next room (empty) I was able to see him go down a hallway and into a little side room, once again saying "follow me", and "do you want some cream"? I couldn't move!!! I saw a table in the empty room in front of me and pretended to go over there as though there was something on the table I was looking for...if you had put a gun to my head I was not following that prisoner down that hallway! As it turned out, that was where the coffee pot was, so the prisoner eventually came up behind me and passed me an empty cup and some creamora. I swear to God, I was so scared I couldn't move my feet. I sort of bent at the waist to reach out for the cup and creamora, my heart pounding, and hoping Cathy would turn the corner and come to my rescue. I finally poured some coffee, said a couple words to the prisoner about how hot the coffee looked (again, stupid!), and left, giving him a wide birth, to find Cathy. I don't know if that guy was up to no good, or if he was just being nice and my fertile imagination got the best of me, but I was a nervous wreck by the time I got back to Cathy!!!

Anyway, here is a pic of some of the weapons the guards have used over the years, from Tommy guns to shotguns, followed by the proverbial 50 lb ball and chain.

And a couple of the homemade guns the prisoners used...they actually had a homemade shotgun on display but I couldn't get a decent pic of it thru the glass.

A few more confiscated weapons. One of the books is a bible, one of the knives is made from headphones, and I love the one the inmate claimed he was just using as a "Duck call"! haha

The coffee pot was made into a whiskey still, and the end of the comb is a key that fit into all the cells...are some of these geniuses, or what?

Look at the guys feet sticking out of the tank on the left side.

I am sure a lot of desperate people did a lot of desperate things in here over the years.

A copy of the 1860 census showing how one of the slave women prisoners had given birth here, and the policies on slave children born/living here.

This guy, Leadbelly, was an inmate here from 1930 to 1937 and became a famous blues man. Most interesting was that one of his famous songs was "Goodnight, Irene"...does anyone remember that? I know I heard my mother sing it, and I think it was either Helen King or Sis Hayhurst that used to sing it when we were young.

Angola is really a multifaceted facility; it not only has a 9-hole golf course on it (don't know how you sign up because it is actually on the prison grounds), it puts on a big-time prisoner rodeo every Sunday in October and one Sunday in April. It has been doing the rodeo since 1965. They also farm 1 million lbs of vegetables that are fed to the inmates, and sell corn, cotton, soybeans and wheat to the public thru "Prison Enterprises". They said they do the farming to keep the prisoners busy.

Here are some of the prisoners that have been previous rodeo champs!

The guy shown is the actual builder of the hearse.

The Death Row inmates called the chair "Gruesome Gertie". I just know I could not maintain any dignity when they were putting that hood on my head!!!

And back out thru the gift shop. This was on one of the t-shirts for sale...pretty witty, huh?!

10 March 2010--I found a better license plate today, and also found out a bit more about the state flag. We were told that not only was the pelican the state bird, but that in times of famine the pelican will literally pick off pieces of its breast to feed its babies. So on the flag, the more modern of which show 3 drops of blood around the beak of the pelican as it pecks its breast, the mother is feeding the 3 babies, and that is emblematic of the lengths to which Louisianans will go to help their fellow citizens. How true that is in reality I don't know, but a nice sentiment nonetheless!

We went to downtown Baton Rouge this morning to see some of the historic sites, the 1st one being this State House that was built in 1850. It was in use till 1862, when Union forces occupied it during the Civil War.

The entrance and circular staircase leading upstairs are really pretty and quite colorful.

I put these 2 pics, one on top of the other, to give an idea of what it looks like in person from the 2nd floor.

The House (1st 2 pics) and Senate chambers were different from what we are used to seeing...almost looked more like church gathering rooms. This is another legislature that meets sparingly during the year...depending whether it is a budget year or not, they meet for 85 days and then 60 days every other year. I am starting to think that maybe only Massachussetts meets year round?! haha

At some point during the occupation of the State House, a mysterious fire left the building a skeleton, and it remained that way for 20 years. Ultimately, it was restored and changed somewhat...in color along with a few additions to the building. This building was used until 1932, when a new State House was built.

Just down the street from the Old State House was the Old Governor's Mansion, built at the urging of Governor Huey Long, the most-talked about politician in everything we saw today. His critics claimed that he wanted to be president, so he had this built in the form of the White House.

This church was very pretty on the outside, but very plain on the inside.

This new Capitol building was also built at the urging of Huey Long, and is the tallest state capitol building in the country at 450 ft.

I felt a heavy French flavor in the statues bookending the staircase leading up to the building, but there was nothing I could see that explained anything about any of the statues.

The House and Senate chambers were being renovated so we couldn't see them. All we could see were the main floor and the 27th floor, where we could go out and see the city from the top of the building. Off a hallway to this main entrance area, Huey Long was shot and killed at the age of 42.

Looking out from the top of the building you can see the city center, the grave of Huey Long on the Capitol grounds, and the mighty Mississippi River!

Just down the street from the Capitol building was the State History Museum...a really interesting museum in that it covered everything from the Mississippi River to slavery, from commerce to steamboats, from the civil rights movement to Mardi Gras! Did we know that 40% of the continental US drains into the Mississippi?