Tape 1, Side 1
Rumburg: 1342, Gardner Blvd, San Leandro, CA, phone number 562-1864. Mr. Guilford was here on Alcatraz from 1948 until 1960 and what we'll be talking about today will be helpful in gaining information that we need to help interpret our program here on Alcatraz.
Now this is where you would have come in right here, right?
Guilford: [Unintelligible] …going to the basement…
Rumburg: Right. Now as a prisoner you know, like when you were transferred over here on the boat...is this where you came in, right here?
Guilford: Yeah, right here. You went in here, through here. This is where they used to store all the blankets and stuff like that.
Rumburg: Uh huh. Off to the right there.
Guilford: Then you'd go up here to the shower stall. Over here at this place, when you first came in, you'd come over here and strip. All this back here, this used to be, like this big box thing here...that was where each guy had a number. See those little metal slots there. Your name was on each one of them.
Rumburg: How did they number you before you came in here? If you came in here first, when did you get your number?
Guilford: I got a number right here. 926.
Rumburg: This is where numbers were issued, then right here at this point.
Guilford: Or whatever place you went to, didn't make no difference.
Rumburg: Was there any processing that was done at all on you when you hit the dock, when you first came in?
Guilford: No, I came up here and they brought an MTA [Medical Technical Assistant] down. As soon as I stripped, this is what used to, was the most, you know it just tore a guy's dignity up. You got to strip, then bend over, an MTA got a rubber glove, and bingo…ya know…and then you'd come over here and they'd give you a, at that time they were coveralls. They'd give you a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, a coverall, a pair of little felt things. They called them "slides." You took ‘em over here and there was benches along here and then you got under the shower and you had to shower, dry off. Then you put your clothes on and then you went up these stairs to the cell block and then you were assigned a cell. And you stayed there. I'll show you where, when you first come here, you went on what they call Broadway upstairs. Then the next day after you talked to the Associate Warden, they took you around and then you were assigned a cell somewhere else.
Rumburg: So there were just certain places up there, say, a new man coming in, would be put in a cell just for overnight purposes and then the next day he would be issued a cell that he would be in for a period of time. So, you said they showered on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Guilford: Tuesdays and Fridays.
Rumburg: Tuesdays and Fridays, oh.
Guilford: Tuesdays and Saturday mornings ‘cause, the reason it was Saturday morning, you couldn't go to the yard on Saturday morning because that was shower morning. When you come to the shower, you stripped down in your cell and they had a little cotton bath robe thing you put that on. You brought your dirty clothes to a desk right up there at the top of the stairs. You laid your dirty clothes down and the Guards then picks them up and shake ‘em down and give ‘em back to you. Then you came down here and they exchange ‘em right here for your dirty clothes and they give you a clean set and you took your shower and dried off and went back up to your cell. When you went back up, you went in the bath robe, you didn't put your clothes on here. When you took your clean clothes off, same Guard pick ‘em up and shake ‘em down, see you got nothing in them and give to you and you go to your cell and close the door and then that's when you put your clothes on.
Rumburg: What about Guards down here in the shower room?
Guilford: They had…one was in the cage there constantly and on bath days they had sometimes 4 or 5, you know or maybe more or maybe 3 or 4. It all depended on how many Guards they had, that they could afford to send down here.
Rumburg: I've heard a lot that from other people that I've talked to out here that the shower room was probably one of the easiest areas to become involved as far as the homosexuality aspect of it and things down here.
Guilford: I don't know how because there was no private showers. They were just out in the open, you know, and there was Guards all around. This kid that got killed here, Barsock[?], he was in D-Block. And his partner, his crime partner killed him, a guy named Simcox. Simcox got out of D-Block first and went to work down here, but he had told the Guard in D-Block that "I'm going to kill you punk when you come out." When you come out of D-Block, the first place you come is the shower...to get your mattress and stuff to take back to your cell.
[Note: Edward Gauvin was murdered by Ronald Simcox in the shower. Joseph Barsock was murdered by Freddie Lee Thomas in the barbershop.]
Rumburg: They had mattresses down here, too.
Guilford: Yeah, they were stacked over there…
Rumburg: Oh, the storeroom was down here.
Guilford: They got under the shower, this Simcox came out and… [Claps] …bingo and hit him 3 or 4 times. This Guard’s down over here throwing toilet paper behind yelling ''Cut that out, cut that out." But he ain't about to run over there and try to stop him. He didn't want to take a chance on getting killed.
Rumburg: Now, on the average, this is supposedly a 50-man shower. Was it pretty full most of the time?
Guilford: On bath days, yeah.
Rumburg: Did they run them in shifts?
Guilford: A tier at a time. They’d never turn ‘em all loose at once.
Rumburg: So about 28 guys.
Guilford: About that, yeah.
Rumburg: That's very interesting. So, the water down here was hot, right?
Guilford: Yeah, fresh, hot water.
Rumburg: Did they have salt water you could shower in down here if you wanted to?
Guilford: No. Not that I know of. No salt water. For the first couple of years I was here about the only time I could really get warm was under that hot water because it was cold up in that cell block.
Rumburg: If you had to take an average guess at what the temperature was up in the main cell block, what would you say?
Guilford: I would say it was around 60. Some days it would get higher and some days, it all depended on the weather. On foggy days, it was cold. If you were in your cell you had to get under the blankets because it was just too cold.
Rumburg: Now, as far as blankets go…
Guilford: You could have as many as you wanted.
Rumburg: As many as you wanted up to a certain limit?
Guilford: No, there was no limit. I know one guy who had about ten blankets on his bed.
Rumburg: Jiminy Christmas, must be cold weather. [Both chuckle] Did you know much about the supply area over here, about what was stored in here? Let's just walk in here for a second. Mattresses in this first room?
Guilford: Huge stack of blankets over here. The clean blankets were stacked over there and the dirty ones over there. [Unintelligible] …they sent them to the laundry ... and then here...This was more or less, this door was always kept closed and then that other area, I don’t know what they kept over there. ‘Cause I never…Ah, that was the basement for the kitchen!
Rumburg: Right. It was the food preparation area. They had a freezer and... [Crosstalk] Would you like to walk back there?
Guilford: Sure.
Rumburg: They also had an elevator; you know that took food up to the kitchen. Do you know what this room was back in here? It looks...In the early years did they have the laundry in this area down here?
Guilford: I don't really know. Not in my time they didn't.
Rumburg: I was just wondering if this could have been used maybe as a laundry or something like that down here.
Guilford: It could be, I don't know. Over here, up until 1952 the guys that worked in the kitchen could come down here and bathe everyday if they wanted to. You know they had a shower, bath. [Crosstalk] They could come down and bathe every day. In 1952, after they had the food strike, the reason the food strike came about was they sent a new Steward out, Chief Steward. His name was Stotter and I got to where I really respected Mr. Stotter. But when he first came here, they closed the kitchen for a couple of days. Everybody stayed in their cell and the Guards fed you. Then he told everybody there were going to be some changes made. No more showers in the basement. Shower on the regular days down in the regular shower, same as everybody else and no more eating…cooking your own food. You'll eat what the main line eats and...
Rumburg: So, the guys that worked down here had kind of special privileges. It was a good job to be able to work in the kitchen.
Guilford: There’s where the shower mount[?] was.
Rumburg: I see, I see, that's interesting.
Guilford: Lotta guys objected to it so everybody went on strike. It was only 27 guys working in the whole kitchen, you know.
Rumburg: Oh, well, did they have, say the Steward, when we get upstairs, of course there is a glassed-in area up there. Is that where the Stewards office was, little room?
Guilford: The little thing there was his office, yes.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: They tried Simcox for murder over in San Francisco and he got acquitted, self-defense. [Chuckles] That’s unbelievable. They had three Guards, three Guards was eyewitnesses to it and he still beat it on self-defense. This kid was stark-naked. So how is he gonna have a weapon?
Rumburg: So, this room clear back here in the back, the farthest one back is the bakery. What kind of stuff did they bake? Did they bake all the bread, you said?
Guilford: All the breads, pastries, they ate good here. Every morning they had fresh rolls or donuts or chocolate coated donuts or coffee cakes, there was something, you know. That was the proof box. That's where you put the bread, you put it in there to steam it up, proof it up. They had a big table right here to roll your bread on....
Rumburg: Kneading table. Well, then you said that the people that lived on the island, say the families, the Guards and stuff like that also bought bread and stuff. Did they have to buy it or was it given to them?
Guilford: No, they had to pay for it. But they got it at a much lower price than you'd buy in the City. And like their laundry, they had their laundry did here and they got it done so much cheaper.
Rumburg: And they also could buy their food here? All their food was then brought from down...
Guilford: They could buy most everything in the way of food. There’s the ovens and they had a big oven in here. I don’t know if it’s still there or not. That's where they baked all the bread and the pastries and stuff. You know right here was a big mixer where you mixed your dough.
Rumburg: Oh, just to the left of the doorways as you walked in. The kitchen looks like it was a very modern kitchen. It looks like all the appliances that they had here and everything else was pretty tip top. We're going to move into the dining area here and we'll talk a little bit about that. That's the part, there used to be a shower here or somethin', just a sink?
Guilford: No, that was a, let me think a minute, where they had the coffee urn.
Rumburg: Now, let's just start from the very beginning. Say, let's just get up for breakfast and come in here and just explain the process that you would go through on eating a meal.
Guilford: You come through the dining, you come single file, one behind the other. When you got up to here, one line could go this way and one could go this way.
Rumburg: So, they served on both sides of the table. The whole middle part of this was open, open space.
Guilford: The only places the tables were, were on the right side between these two…you know, between these pillars.
Rumburg: And you said ten men sat at each table?
Guilford: It was a wide table. Had five on each side. When the ten men got to the…when the first…you had to stand there until all ten of you got there. Then you sat down.
Rumburg: Now, you sat down when the Guard told you to sit down.
Guilford: You'd sit down when he’d tell you to sit down. So, you'd sit down and start eating. And me, anytime we'd come in the dining room…when I'd get to my table…you always ate at the same place with the same guys all the time. When I'd sit down, if you had a meal which required a knife to cut the meat, I would look and if there was no knife there, I wouldn't sit down. I'd call the Guard, "Hey, look."
Rumburg: I think everybody was very aware of that particular fact, right? That was something that other people I've talked to said the same thing. And there was a Guard at each table, right?
Guilford: Then when you got through eating, after your meal was over, you sat there until the Guard...He'd start down there at the first table, you know. One table would get up at a time and you'd march out single file. The five guys on the fore side would come out and then the next guys would follow right behind them. Then they’d come to the next table and they'd go like this. Everybody get up, march out single file, come all the way down and start over here.
Rumburg: What about the other silverware? Was it just left on the table?
Guilford: The spoon and the fork made no difference. All they were interested in was the knife.
Rumburg: Was there anybody that checked them when they went out the door?
Guilford: Checked the knives or…?
Rumburg: Were they frisked or anything?
Guilford: No, your spoon and fork, you picked them ahead of time.
Rumburg: Ok, they had a container that you put them in, then, right. There was somebody standing there watching you, right, all the time.
Guilford: Oh yeah. Sure was. Make sure you didn’t have a fork and a spoon.
Rumburg: Now the people that worked here in the kitchen, you said there were how many people?
Guilford: 27.
Rumburg: 27 people.
Guilford: A total, that included the bakery, the dining room and the kitchen.
Rumburg: Now, were all these people inmates? Did they have any people that were not?
Guilford: Well, they had three cooks in here, yeah. That's what used to be ridiculous, you know. ‘Cause they'd have the Chief Steward…let's see there was 1, 2, 3 other Stewards and they didn't do anything. The convicts did all the work. It was, I go “Man this is ridiculous”. These four or five people in here all the time, and the taxpayers pay them a salary and they don't do nothing. They're not earning it, you know.
Rumburg: So, there were no…those were civilian type people?
Guilford: Yes, they were government employees.
Rumburg: To your knowledge, was there ever any major problems that took place here in the mess hall, that you knew of, besides the food strike?
Guilford: Well, I don't know whether you'd call it a major problem or not. I'll give you a good example. One night when we all came in, they had spaghetti and meatballs and it was good. Man, I'm waiting to start…I’ma eat this. I sat down and I didn't even get a chance to start. The guy on the other side got up and just picked the end of the table up and went whew, table and all. It all just flew over and in less than two seconds, every table in here was turned upside down.
Rumburg: Just because one guy did it? Do you think there was anything planned on that?
Guilford: No. Planned nothing. They just followed...they see him do it and they’re all bingo, wham, they all went over.
Rumburg: So, what happened?
Guilford: So, they took us all out single file out of the dining room and, the guys in the kitchen cleaned the mess up, and they brought us back and we had sandwiches.
Rumburg: Was the guy that started the whole thing...was something done to him, as far as the instigator, nothin' really?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: Nothing really, it was just...
Guilford: No, just bingo!
Rumburg: So, everybody was punished as far as sandwiches...?
Guilford: Everybody lost because it was a good meal.
Rumburg: So, what happened informally, did anybody have a chat with that guy or pass the word on to him...?
Guilford: No, ‘cause you know, sometimes...
Rumburg: Just frustrations are… [Crosstalk] People understand it, ok, I see.
Guilford: Once I seen one guy get stabbed right here, right over here. He was sort of a crippled guy. He'd had a little argument with somebody, I don't know, and the guy...didn't hurt him very bad. He did stab him right here. But outside the windows they had gun Guards, on both sides. If you started anything in here, man, they just…
Rumburg: Oh, I didn't even know there was a catwalk on this side.
Guilford: There used to be.
Rumburg: Oh, I see. There was one, there was a little ladder contraption on the outside over here.
Guilford: I guess it’s torn down but there sure used to be one. This one over here was probably still…
Rumburg: Oh, it is, you can see it from the outside. Do you ever remember any shots being fired through there?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: No shots ever fired in here. What about tear gas, was tear gas ever used?
Guilford: I never seen ‘em use tear gas in here either.
Rumburg: Now, the tear gas that was used, it was all piped in. It was direct tear gas. Do you know where the storage tanks... Would it be up on the top of the building? [Crosstalk] I think it probably is.
Guilford: They were operated by electricity.
Rumburg: These doors right here, these were electrical doors?
Guilford: Oh yes.
Rumburg: Well, now here is the door I was talking about. See how this is built.
Guilford: Well it was all glass.
Rumburg: It was all glass, so they had a wide, wide view of everything.
Guilford: Yeah, of everything.
Rumburg: And this door, then, was always closed down into the...?
Guilford: In order to get down there, the Guard had to unlock it and then you'd go down into the basement through there.
Rumburg: I see, I see and then the Guard from the gallery there also had a viewpoint in from that mesh screen...
Guilford: Oh yeah. Sure did. They had mirrors up there. There was a hook… [Crosstalk] …and the mirror would reflect, where could see the whole thing.
Rumburg: 180 degrees.
Guilford: Yeah, right. Out here there used to be a desk, right here, what they call the Officer of the Day stayed, right here.
Rumburg: Times Square…
Guilford: They didn't call it...that was Broadway. I ain’t never heard this place called Time Square.
Rumburg: Somebody referred to this, it was called "Times Square" by a couple of Guards even called it that. That's why I was curious.
Guilford: I never heard that expression when I was here, not once.
Rumburg: Is it true that this was Michigan Avenue over here?
Guilford: No. [Chuckles]
Rumburg: This is stuff we've picked in some of our research. But this was known as Broadway?
Guilford: [Unintelligible] ...the only people here were the guys that worked in the kitchen. Up here on the second tier, when I came in that's the first place I went, right up there in the cell. I got here about two o'clock in the morning and I stayed there until the next day. I ate my first meal, and then I went back to that cell and then a little while later they called me out. I went around to A-Block when they had a desk in there and I talked to the Associate Warden and Captain and Lieutenant. They always give you some kind of a briefing.
Rumburg: Well, now, you said the only people that were housed on BBlock, Broadway were the people that worked in the kitchens? [Loud noise]
Guilford: From here down to the cutoff. Up here on this tier there used to be guys celled here… [Loud noise] …but not for long.
Rumburg: Let's just walk down here...That noise from them throwing stuff down...
Guilford: This, now, all of the people that I ever seen cell up here was the guy that first came in.
Rumburg: Most of these then were empty? As far as B-Block goes? In this Broadway area?
Guilford: Yeah. Except for the 27 guys that worked in the kitchen.
Rumburg: Well, you know, we were told by the prison people that came through here, as far as Guards go, that the blacks were segregated on the top tier here.
Guilford: The blacks were segregated here. But they only had a few. They were here and a few up there...
Rumburg: 2nd and 3rd tier on B-Block.
Guilford: He told you the truth. They were segregated.
Rumburg: Also, at mealtime? They were segregated at the same table.
Guilford: Yeah. They ate at their table and then the white guys at their table.
Rumburg: So basically, this whole area here on Broadway was pretty isolated.
Guilford: Yeah, right. And down here past the cut-off there wasn't much, wasn’t nobody.
Rumburg: Nobody past this first cut-off coming down from the mess hall. These were all empty cells down here then. Well, that's very interesting. That's something that we hadn't heard of before. What I would like to do is walk around right here and let's go over into ABlock area and talk a little bit about…
Guilford: I wanna show you where the visiting rooms are. Now these, these were not visiting windows at all.
Rumburg: Oh, they weren't?
Guilford: Right over there, right there...
Rumburg: The four windows. Is that right? This was the visiting hall?
Guilford: Yup. Right there.
Rumburg: So, this actually looks like it was an outside gun port that was put in after the riot.
Guilford: Well, there was something out here, too.
Rumburg: This is the port that looks out towards the City right here. They would talk to you from the outside of the building.
Guilford: Well, there was a shed-like thing there.
Rumburg: A shed-like structure put over there.
Guilford: They used to use it right here too.
Rumburg: I see...where the four windows are...
Guilford: l never did see four visitors here at one time. One right here. You'd sit here and you had a telephone over there and this was bulletproof glass here, and the other chair, and you sat here and you had...they'd plug the phone in for you and they had a Guard up here that monitored your conversation.
Rumburg: So, he monitored through the phone system?
Guilford: Yeah, right.
Rumburg: Right through the phone. Well, that is very amazing. Do you know, do you happen to know when this changed as far as visiting within the prison here rather than outside over there?
Guilford: That changed about, I would say around '51 or '52. I'm not sure.
Rumburg: But it was early 50's then, somewhere around there that they changed...
Guilford: But these four windows were never occupied at the same time. See you were only allowed an hour a month for a visit.
Rumburg: Now how did that... Did that go all the way up until the time you left? One visit per month?
Guilford: Yeah. One hour a month. Now, my visitor would come on the last day of the month and visit and then he could come back the next day, or she could come back the next day. So, two days in a row. You see, they come on the last day and then the next day is the first day of the month.
Rumburg: So, they could spend two days? Very interesting, very very interesting.
Guilford: This door over here, oh man, nobody went through...that door goes up to what they call the Board Room.
Rumburg: [Unintelligible] …us to walk up there right now?
Guilford: I'll show you where the Board Room was, what they called the Board Room.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: This is known to us as the stage area, recreation room, and movie theater. Guards also had their offices up here.
Guilford: This was the Board Room, right here.
Rumburg: The Board Room, the one with all the boards in it.
Guilford: [Chuckles] Now they had a big table in there and the Warden would sit at the head of the table. The Associate Warden would be here, then the Captain, then the Lieutenant, then the industry man and the priest, whatever, and you'd sit down at the end of the table. They would talk to you, but it never did amount to nothing. You wasn't going to get no parole out of here anyhow.
Rumburg: This was more, basically, the hearing room when your time…yearly parole hearing.
Guilford: Yeah. There was never a guy, from the time this placed opened until it closed, paroled out of Alcatraz. Not one.
Rumburg: That's interesting because I just talked to a prisoner who said he was paroled from Alcatraz.
Guilford: No sir, don't you believe it. Nobody ever left this place directly from here to the streets on parole. Never. [Chuckles] If they did, they did it secretly ‘cause nobody ever heard of it.
Rumburg: Is that right? That's interesting. I'd like to bring that up with somebody else again as far as...
Guilford: I've never heard of anybody ever being paroled out of here. You were either transferred away or you served your time, or you got out through the courts, or you went out feet first, one or the other.
Rumburg: Well, you seem to be very emphatic on that point. It seems to be something that was pretty obvious when you came here, that there was no parole.
Guilford: There was no parole from here. None. I never...not once I have never heard of a guy ever getting a parole from here.
Rumburg: Would that be something that basically prison people would know that were, say, within the prison?
Guilford: Sure, they would know. Anybody that ever worked here should know that nobody ever went out of here on parole, any Guard.
Rumburg: Very interesting...I'd like to bring that point up with some other people and discuss it with them.
Guilford: Well, you got 'ole "Double-Tough's" address, ask him, he'll tell you.
Rumburg: What was his name?
Guilford: Ordway. [Chuckles] I used to laugh at that guy ‘cause he was really, in a way, he was sort of dumb. Not dumb but he just put on such a tough-guy act. I used to laugh at him. Really, like over in B-Block one day, there was a bunch of guys over there and there was an Indian kid named Mitchell. So, this Mitchell hollered, "Hey Ordway." Ordway happened to be in B-Block[?], Ordway says, "Put a handle on that..." and he said, "Hey, motherfucker."
Rumburg: Mitchell said that? This seems to be a pretty common thing every now and then when people get pressured...
Guilford: You know, they gotta let off something. [Chuckles] It really tickled me, I had to laugh. I got sent to the hole, and also had to pay for a bed sheet. I was on the second tier in D-Block[?] and the guys on the bottom tier were on what they called "restricted diet." The guys up on the second tier that were getting full meals would save a little something and rap...and tie it on a...
Rumburg: String.
Guilford: A string and drop it over the tier. I didn't have no string, so I just ripped a piece of string off my sheet about so long and dropped it over and they...so they called me over and tried me for it. I paid $2, I had to pay a fine of two dollars and fifty some cents for the sheet and went to the hole for ten days.
Rumburg: Well, now the money you made here working in the industry and whatever, where did that go?
Guilford: On your account.
Rumburg: You had an account here.
Guilford: Well, they kept it on the books for you.
Rumburg: Now, could you draw out money any time you wanted here?
Guilford: What are you going to use it for?
Rumburg: Well, say you want to order books or something like that.
Guilford: You didn't draw the money; they paid for it and took it off your account. You never did see no money in here.
Rumburg: Did you ever get to monitor your account or see if you were getting the amount...
Guilford: Well, they sent you a statement every month, just like in Leavenworth. You never draw any money there either. You know, you go to the canteen and you…and they got a big canteen there…you give your number and the guy that’s got your cards, and everything, he pulls. The last time I was there you were allowed to spend $25 a month. He looked at your card and you could go once a week. [Audio skips] $25 dollars the first week, next week and so on...
Rumburg: In this area right here, is this where you came to watch movies and things like that?
Guilford: Yeah, this was the movie right here. The screen was right up there, and the seats were up there.
Rumburg: I heard, though, when you came in to watch a movie that it was a very uneasy situation because they had armed Guards around here. When the lights went off, if there was any slight sound or anything, they'd turn the lights on, and it was just kind of an uneasy situation.
Guilford: No, they didn't have no armed Guards in here. They ain’t about to put no armed Guards in here.
Rumburg: With all those people.
Guilford: No way, no way. I went up here a few times and I never did see nothing unusual and I never see them turn the lights on. Once in a while the movie projector would sort of foul-up and they'd turn the lights on then, until they got it repaired and working again, then they'd turn them off again.
Rumburg: And you had movies, how often did you say?
Guilford: I think it was twice, I think it was every other Sunday. Sometimes...
Rumburg: It would vary every now and then, but basically every other Sunday.
Guilford: Ordinarily, if everything was going normal, why, you'd get a movie every other Sunday, and, if it wasn't going normal, well... [Chuckles]
Rumburg: Was there anything else done up here in this room? What about bands, jazz bands?
Guilford: The band, they had what they call the band room, was down in the basement right there in the shower room.
Rumburg: Oh, it was in the shower room.
Guilford: You had to get on the list. I'll give you an illustration of one of them.
Rumburg: Why don't you wait just a second. I want to change this tape.
Tape 1, Side 2
Rumburg: I want to talk to you just for a second about the band thing.
Guilford: Oh yeah, I’ll tell ya. There used to be an Associate Warden here named Latimer and in order to go down to the band room on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings, you had to be on what they called a band list. So, I went over to Latimer one day and told him I'd like to get on the band list.
Rumburg: He was Associate Warden?
Guilford: Yeah. He said, "Well, I can't put you on the band list. You don't have an instrument.” I said, "Ok.” So, then I went back, asked permission to buy a guitar. He said, "Well, I can't let you buy a guitar, you're not on the band list." And I said "Ah, this is ridiculous." [Chuckles] I just gave up.
Rumburg: Well, do you think you could have, couldn't you have bought a guitar or was that just something that...
Guilford: No, you couldn't buy unless you got permission. A few guys in here had guitars like Ray. Ray Karpis used to have a steel guitar.
Rumburg: Well, did the band ever perform, did they play?
Guilford: I think once or maybe twice on holidays, they let a few of them come up and play in the dining room while we were eating, but that’s all. Like perform for an audience? No.
Rumburg: No, I meant for some of the inmates...
Guilford: No, if you weren't on the band list you didn't go down there, period.
Rumburg: I see, now they went down when there was…weren't showering and things like that and they played downstairs. They weren't allowed to come up here and practice in the band room?
Guilford: Oh, no.
Rumburg: Was there a Guard room in this side up here?
Guilford: I don't know, I never did know of any Guard room up here.
Rumburg: I was just wondering as far as...
Guilford: Yeah, wait, they had some kind of little recreation thing up here, somewhere. I think they used... [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: It would have had to have been in here because this is the only other area that...
Guilford: They had a little, once in a while, they had a mat. I think they had a wrestling mat they'd put out here and for wrestling matches. Their handball thing was outside somewhere, I don't know where, I never did see it.
Rumburg: Oh, it was down below in the parade area. Ok, well, let's walk on down and we'll go along back into the main cell block. [Audio briefly cuts out] The only time, say you wanted to see the Warden, what process would you go through to see the Warden?
Guilford: Well, you'd write a request to see him and if he granted the request, why you'd come over here.
Rumburg: Ok, now, A-block was where the Warden has his requests table set up?
Guilford: [Crosstalk] …you wanted to ask...or sometimes they might just... [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: Were some of them better than others? As far as requests?
Guilford: [Unintelligible] …was the best. Right here past these steps they had a table somewhere.
Rumburg: Just in front of the stairway going down into the old fort or citadel area.
Guilford: Right. They had a desk here and Associate Warden would sit back there, and the Lieutenant would stand here. Another Guard would stand over here and you'd sit out here.
Rumburg: Did this line have anything to do with...?
Guilford: Yeah, you don't cross that line.
Rumburg: That line you didn't cross.
Guilford: No, so this is where he held his interview. You had disciplinary action taken here. They'd bring you here. This is where you get tried. Then you went from here to D-Block if you, if you went to the hole or they'd just turn you loose or whatever.
Rumburg: To your knowledge was any of this area ever used over here for anything?
Guilford: Yes, in 1952 when they had the food strike, they had D-Block so full that they kept guys up here on the second tier for about a month. The shower bath was down there at the bottom.
Rumburg: Do you know what…was that area ever used for anything else that you know of down there?
Guilford: That area through the gate? That was the barber shop.
Rumburg: When you were here was there still stairways. There used to be over here down at the end of this block area right here on ABlock looking up towards the gun gallery, there used to be circular staircases all the way through here and up into the gun gallery. Were you here when that was here?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: Okay, that must have been...
Guilford: Long before my time. See, for a long time they didn't have screens over the gun gallery. I'll show you why when we get out here.
Rumburg: That was just after the '46 blast-out that they put the screen up. Now the screens were here during that time because, I guess, Johnston was kind of an aesthetic guy and didn't want to put ‘em up because they didn't look good or something. Were you, are you familiar with…I guess you wouldn't be because that happened just after you left? This is...these cells right here are the ones that the Anglin brothers dug out of, right here. Yeah, that happened right after you left. These are the two that they tunneled out of right here...
Guilford: And the guy that went with them, Morris...
Rumburg: Did you know Mr. Morris? One thing about the cells. When you were here were you allowed to do any painting within your cells or to fix them up in any way?
Guilford: No, you couldn't fix your cell up. No way. You had a little shelf up there and you had a little steel mirror about so close. It’s what you used to shave.
Rumburg: About three of four inches?
Guilford: Yeah. And your bed was here and these two tables, just like that. They fold out, and you had no razor blades in there. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday night a Guard would come by and lay a razor blade here. You get up and shave and put the blade back and you better have it back.
Rumburg: Did anyone try and cut their wrists or anything with the razor blades?
Guilford: Not that I know of.
Rumburg: One thing that...also, what about the light bulbs?
Guilford: The light bulbs right there...
Rumburg: Were the light bulbs controlled by you in the cell?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: I see strings hanging off of some of them.
Guilford: Well, during the daytime you could turn it off if you wanted to but at night you had no...
Rumburg: Lights went out at 9:30?
Guilford: 9:30. Lights out.
Rumburg: What about getting up in the morning? What time did you get up?
Guilford: When they rang a bell.
Rumburg: Bell rang, what, at 6:30?
Guilford: Yeah. Around 6:30 or 7 o’clock. I'm not sure. Right here, here's the barber shop. The barbers in there used to have a pair of scissors and a pair of clippers to cut your hair. So, one day a black guy was cutting another black guy's hair. White guys didn't cut the black guys hair. Black guys didn't cut the white guys hair. So, this black guy is cutting the black guy's hair and got in an argument. This guy stabbed him with the scissors and killed him.
Rumburg: The barber did? The barber stabbed the other black guy?
Guilford: Yeah and killed him. So, then they took the scissors out and all they had left in was a pair of clippers.
Rumburg: Well, now I heard…
Guilford: They got no shaves in there; they had no razors.
Rumburg: Well, that was interesting. Were the barbers people who worked here, were they inmates?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: I see. Well, now, this must have been a pretty heavily used area right here in B-Block, on this side of B-Block.
Guilford: This is what they call B-Section[?] People celled here.
Rumburg: It was pretty full, then, this area was all the way down. You know you were talking about...do you remember anybody...as far as people coming to visit the island, interested in cells where really important people lived. You know such as “Machine Gun” Kelly and a lot of those guys. Did they transfer people around a lot? You know, did you basically have the same cell...
Guilford: No, that was wrong. About the only time they ever do was, if you requested a cell change, why you might get one. Otherwise, you'd stay in there for as long as you...
Rumburg: The whole time you were here. Well, now, what about trying to...say somebody vacated a cell up here up on the second tier that you could see out of a window. How would you go about trying to get a cell like that or what would be the...?
Guilford: You just waited until one was open, and then put a request for it.
Rumburg: And then you put in a request for it? Would most people try and put in a request for a cell that was...a good cell like that?
Guilford: No. Once in a while when they first come in, they likes it, but after you’re here a while, outside didn't mean nothing. The best one's that I ever seen to have a good view was over in D-Block. You could sit in the cell and look out all day long if you wanted to.
Rumburg: Did most of the guys that spent time here, most of them spend some time in D-Block?
Guilford: No, John Paul Chase was here for 26 years I think, and I don't think he was ever in D-Block. He was what they call a model prisoner. Guys like Banghart and Karpis and a few other guys, they spent a lot of time over there.
Rumburg: Would you like to go on up into…let's go up to the hospital area and then we'll come down and go to D-Block.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: He had been to the hospital. If he was coming back from the hospital. And Swope was coming up to the hospital and Swope always walked with his hands out like that and he'd talk in a whining voice and he'd call everybody "my boy." "How are you this morning, my boy?" I just ignored him...and Swope got up here… [Unintelligible] …and called down there... [Unintelligible]
Rumburg: Just because he didn't speak to the Warden?
Guilford: Just because he didn't say good morning to the Warden...
Guilford: 9 months’ worth.
Rumburg: 9 months’ worth?
Guilford: In D-Block. Not in the hole....
Rumburg: In the consignment cells. As far as control or access back and forth here there’s this large middle gate here. Was this closed at all times? Was there somebody Guarding this gate?
Guilford: There used to be a bench out here. When you came to the hospital, you sat on this bench until the Guard in the hospital came and unlocked the door and let you in. This was the dental parlor.
Rumburg: Let me ask you a question before we get there, what was this here?
Guilford: I don't know.
Rumburg: You didn't know that.
Guilford: I knew it was there but what it is was, I never...
Rumburg: I just wonder if it was a ventilator that they kept locked or... [Crosstalk] I've been trying to find out... It was just a...
Guilford: Like here is the mirror.
Rumburg: The Guard could look through.
Guilford: And see who is coming up.
Rumburg: So, this was, dental first room on my right as you walk in.
Guilford: And the dentist came over once a week on Wednesday, that's all.
Rumburg: Once a week on Wednesday.
Guilford: And here's where they fixed and repaired teeth so forth and so on.
Rumburg: Was their dental care pretty good?
Guilford: Yeah, you didn't have much chance to go to a dentist because there was only in one day a week.
Rumburg: Yeah, I see. They took probably the most severe cases in a...
Guilford: Here was the operating room.
Rumburg: First door on the left was the operating room.
Guilford: [Unintelligible] This is where they operated, right here.
Rumburg: Did they have a lot of chance for operation, probably wouldn't be too much of that, would there?
Guilford: No, if it was a major operation, real major operation, they'd probably transfer you to some other prison.
Rumburg: Either to Springfield or Leavenworth.
Guilford: They got a good hospital in Leavenworth.
Rumburg: What about taking you to the city to be worked on?
Guilford: Take you over, no way.
Rumburg: No way? Never take you into...
Guilford: Frisco? No. This is what they call...where they'd come in here for all treatment like...they had a big table in here, examine you, and this and that and the other, you know.
Rumburg: An examination room right across from the operating room there.
Guilford: And right here was the hospital...
Rumburg: Supply area...food...
Guilford: This was the kitchen. They’d bring it in here…food court[?].
Rumburg: Oh, I see, they would bring it up from downstairs, you mean.
Guilford: Yeah, and they had a little gas stove here. I used to be on a diet, and I could cook my food. I had ulcers real bad. I liked to get my meat raw and I could cook it without putting a lot of grease and stuff.
Rumburg: This is your area, you worked up here, right. Now, was that kind of a special privilege or...?
Guilford: Yeah, I worked up here. Oh, no, nothing special.
Rumburg: Well, did you have your choice of working up here or working in the working areas down below?
Guilford: No, the only reason they put me up here was because I had to be on a diet, and they had no diet in the dining room. No. [Crosstalk]
Here was the X-ray room.
Rumburg: Across the hall, again, from the supply room, still have the 'ole x-ray room.
Guilford: Here was Stroud's cell. Right here. This is where his cell was...and that toilet was put in there about '53 or '54, prior to that he used a bedpan and, he was so weak. You know, his muscles so deteriorated that he couldn't even flush it with his finger. Had to take the broom and put the broom in and then lean on it. That's true and then once a week, on Saturdays, was it here? Yeah, it was in here.
Rumburg: Across the hall...
Guilford: They'd bring three Guards up here and he'd come out and go in there and take his bath. Go back to his cell. That was it.
Rumburg: He was pretty weak during that period of time.
Guilford: His arms looked like little toothpicks.
Rumburg: And he spent, probably the majority of his time up here in this complex.
Guilford: Right here is where they kept hospital records and so forth.
Rumburg: Records, right across the hall from this...
Guilford: Bug cage.
Rumburg: Bug cage?
Guilford: Yeah, that’s what they called them.
Rumburg: Now these are stripped cells, right?
Guilford: No. In here, there are two, here and here...those were the showers...and the floor was kept warm. How, I don't know. They used to have part of a [?] toilet in there...
Rumburg: Now, there is a toilet on the other side...
Guilford: Yeah. Now this one, one could be...they put you in here and you were stripped but you still didn't get cold because the heat came up from the floor.
Rumburg: And everything was flushed from the outside, complete control from the outside.
Guilford: [Crosstalk] They were flushed right here.
Rumburg: Okay. See, now this one has the new aluminum cast toilet here...
Guilford: Yeah, right. That’s so you can’t work[?] here.
Rumburg: …and then food would be slid in through this opening here.
Guilford: Right through here.
Rumburg: And then you would be observed in through the windows right there?
Guilford: Yeah. [Unintelligible] …glass here too.
Rumburg: Well, it’s been broken out.
Guilford: But these panes[?] you can’t touch. They’re hard, you can’t even break that.
Rumburg: They’re about two or three inches thick, I think.
Guilford: [Unintelligible]
Rumburg: So, you would spend time until you quieted down?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: Probably had some kind of a relaxer, or shots, or something like that?
Guilford: [Unintelligible] …for the doctor. I’m trying to think of that guy’s name. He’s the head psychiatrist over at the University of California, and he would come over and interview him right in here.
Rumburg: In this room with the wooden door right here was his...? [Crosstalk]
Guilford: Psychiatrist used to interview them.
Rumburg: Now, how often would he come over?
Guilford: Sometimes once a month, maybe twice a month. All depended on when they really wanted to come over. These were the hospital wards. They either had one man or three men. Used to be one big huge ward. These didn't used to be here at all.
Rumburg: They weren’t partitioned off with the steel cells?
Guilford: '53 or '54, I'm not sure. I sort of lose track. There was a bathroom back there in the hospital. They had no hot water up here. Even after they put earphones in here, a guy in the hospital couldn't have no earphones.
Rumburg: Oh, they did have earphones in here to listen.
Guilford: No, no sir.
Rumburg: Not in the hospital, but down below in the cells. You said those were put in about '57?
Guilford: '57. The first thing I ever heard was a World Series between Milwaukee and the Yankees.
Rumburg: And that was a great series in 1957, that was when the Milwaukee Braves were quite a powerhouse.
Guilford: Yes, indeed.
Rumburg: Atlanta fan now, of course, but that time it was Milwaukee, Warren Sphan, fine ball club.
Guilford: I spent a lot of time in this ward over here. [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: The first one on the left here? With your ulcers?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: And TB, you said you got TB here.
Guilford: No, I didn't have TB until after I left here but I think it got started down in that strip cell.
Rumburg: So, this was remodeled in here, you said, in the early 50's?
Guilford: Yeah, it used to be just one big ward.
Rumburg: And what was the reason between either one man or three men, why not two?
Guilford: Why, I don’t know. That was just their way.
Rumburg: Never two men per cell. Either it was always odd, one or three.
Guilford: Always.
Rumburg: Now what was in the back area back here?
Guilford: Back here was sort of a storeroom...
Rumburg: Any drugs or things like that back here?
Guilford: No, that was kept down there in the safe with big locks.
Rumburg: Ok, they had a safe here that kept all the drugs, right?
Guilford: Yes. This is just more or less nothing, kept little stuff stored back here.
Rumburg: I see, a storage room. This room back here, do you have any idea...
Guilford: I have no idea what...
Rumburg: Just a storeroom? OK.
Guilford: Just a storeroom, I suppose. I was never back here. No drugs were kept back here at all. Up there in the doctor's office in a safe.
Rumburg: Now, as far as the doctor's office. We didn't talk about that too much...
Guilford: Well, his office was everywhere but his safe was right in here.
Rumburg: Now I had, there was one thing...
Guilford: There used to be a big huge darn safe right here in the corner. This was always kept closed, nobody got in there.
Rumburg: I see, in this room, right across from the psychologist's room.
Guilford: Right.
Rumburg: Ok, now, there’s a room right here that's interesting, and I just wondered, maybe you might have some ideas. Why was that stool propped up on top of that like that? Do you have any idea?
Guilford: Well, this was for the doctor's benefit, I guess, and the MPA's. I was never in here. I never did use it.
Rumburg: I was just wondering why… [Crosstalk] …why would they build it clear up on this platform. Everybody that comes in here, even the Wardens couldn't figure that out.
Guilford: I don't have no idea.
Rumburg: The Warden's referred to this area as a strip unit, but they said it was for the people, violent people, people who did have psychological problems or something else like that.
Guilford: Well see, those were put in here in the 50's, those cells. The bug cage used to be right here. This is the bug cage.
Rumburg: Oh, right next door to it here?
Guilford: Yeah, weren’t nothing in here. That was the bug cage.
Rumburg: Small, too. One person here at a time maybe? There would only be one person, right?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: There would have to be only one person. So, this is quite a familiar area to you.
Guilford: I used to feed him [Stroud], you know. I liked to talk to him. They'd all, like I told you, it all depended on what Guard was on duty. Some I could stand to talk to a while, some I couldn't.
Rumburg: Well, you know what was, he must have been, early 50's when he was here, right? In this particular area here.
Guilford: He was more in his 60's because he died in 1963 when he was past 70.
Rumburg: I think he was 72 when he died.
Guilford: Something like that.
Rumburg: That’s right. He was in his 60’s. You know when he died at Springfield, I guess he died from coronary, right? I was talking to some people the other day about that.
Guilford: Well, he spent a long time in there...
Rumburg: What would be some things that you'd talk about?
Guilford: He liked to just talk about general things, and he had some funny things that he used to do. I guess you'd call it, what's the word, idiosyncrasies? When he would shave, he would shave from here to his toes. All the way down. And he would eat no cooked vegetables, all raw. They sort of babied him a little and he would drink no milk unless, when they give him his milk, they'd give him a couple drops of ascorbic acid and then make the milk sour and curdle. He would take that, and he’d get some of the, what they call 4 by 4's and some gauze, and he'd make cottage cheese. He’d make his own. He drank nothing but tea. Drank no coffee but drank tea by the tons. He would eat no sweets of no kind, and when he got his hamburger, his fish, he like to get it raw. He used to amaze me. He wore little eye shade things he'd made out of cardboard.
Rumburg: Kind of like an old telegraph type hat.
Guilford: Yeah, right.
Rumburg: That's really interesting. Well, how long did you spend in this area up here as far as work?
Guilford: Oh, about a year, a year and a half, something like that.
Rumburg: We were talking a little bit earlier about how you came to Alcatraz and you were talking about...you came on bank robbery and kidnapping.
Guilford: Just plain robbery.
Rumburg: Oh, was it just robbery?
Guilford: Robbery and kidnapping.
Rumburg: There wasn't a...
Guilford: There wasn’t a bank, no.
Rumburg: Oh, I see.
Guilford: This was always kept locked. These were always locked except...
Rumburg: Going into the mess hall.
Guilford: ...the only time they could be opened, the Guard here couldn't open them. The guy up here in the gun gallery had to open them.
Rumburg: Now the gun gallery individual had control of what areas down here as far as?
Guilford: He only had control of this. He didn’t control the cell block.
Rumburg: ...just that gate. What about the recreation area?
Guilford: Well, no the Guard here... [Unintelligible]
Rumburg: That Guard that was down here, okay. Now you had, what about cigarettes? You know I see...
Guilford: They gave you three packs of cigarettes a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday night you were issued a pack of cigarettes, but you had tobacco here.
Rumburg: That you could roll your own with.
Guilford: All kinds, you had Prince Albert, Marlboro, Union Leader, Ranger...whatever. You had a choice. It was good tobacco.
Rumburg: And it was just constantly filled?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: You know this seems to be, probably the best cells in the place as far as being able to live.
Guilford: It was.
Rumburg: A little bit warmer over here because of the sun...
Guilford: Yeah, because of the sun. On Fourth of July you could put the cross[?] over to Marin and see the fireworks from down there.
Rumburg: I've even heard stories that people made their own telescopes out of glasses.
Guilford: Yeah, glasses and a cardboard you roll up and you put... [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: Like an old toilet paper roll thing.
Guilford: Or a piece of cardboard. Right here is where I celled for a long time.
Rumburg: Right here, right across from the library.
Guilford: Karpis’s cell was right here.
Rumburg: Karpis was right next to you. Oh, you were right next door to each other then.
Guilford: Yeah, we used to talk to each other. You know when he was doing life for kidnapping Theodore Hamm. Kelly had kidnapped Urschel…
Rumburg: That's right Kelly.
Guilford: Karpis had kidnapped Theodore Hamm.
Rumburg: Right, Hamm, that's right.
[Note: Karpis and his gang kidnapped William Hamm, grandson to Theodore Hamm, who was the founder of Hamm’s Brewery.]
Guilford: So, in 1957 when they put the earphones out here, the Giants were out here, too. Ham's beer used to sponsor. [Both chuckle] They used to play that song "The land the sky-blue waters". I'd pick on Ray, I'd say "Hey, Ray," "Yeah, what do you want?" "Get up, man, they’re playing your theme song." [Both laugh]
Rumburg: I bet he really enjoyed that.
Guilford: The library was over here. They had a three guys sit in here, they had three librarians all the time. They had a couple of guys working there.
Rumburg: But you never got to use it as an inmate, right?
Guilford: Oh, no.
Rumburg: You always had to have your materials brought to your cell.
Guilford: You had a library card and full of numbers. And you was supposed to keep 20 numbers on there. The numbers would correspond with the titles of the book and each day you put your card up there when you go to work and one of the guys that worked in there would come and pick the cards up and then they'd go in there and they'd look and try to get the book, the number one choice. If they couldn't, they take number two choice and deliver them to your cell.
Rumburg: Well, now, how would you know what books they had in here?
Guilford: Well, you had a library catalog in your cell.
Rumburg: Oh, the catalog! Would they renew it every now and then as far as what new books they got in or anything like that?
Guilford: I never did see ‘em get any. They might get one or two, once in a while.
Rumburg: Did they have a fairly decent library?
Guilford: Yeah, you could read most any on any subject you wanted to. They had a lot of biographical, historical, a lot of fiction, lot of textbooks.
Rumburg: What about law books? Could you order law books to study here?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: No way, right. It was just almost impossible.
Guilford: You see that's the difference between here and Leavenworth. Leavenworth had a huge library, law library. You could get any law book you want but here, they had nothing.
Rumburg: But what about current events? I've heard that there were no current events on Alcatraz, basically.
Guilford: What do you mean, current events? Could we hear about the current events outside?
Rumburg: Like the news, daily news?
Guilford: We didn't get no news until they put the earphones in '57.
Rumburg: And then it was monitored, right?
Guilford: Oh, yes.
Rumburg: What about up to date newspapers and things like that?
Guilford: We didn't have no newspapers here.
Rumburg: That's right, that's what I am talking about, current events, being able to keep up with everyday events.
Guilford: No, way, no way, na-huh. See the Chronicle offered at one time to send 250 green sheets over here. You know, sports sheets and old Ed Swope denied it. And one Christmas Ghirardelli Candy Co. offered to send over some candy, and they denied that too. I never bought...the last Christmas I was here, in 1959, they let everybody that wanted to order a two-pound box of chocolate candy. There was 262 guys here and there was 262 orders for that chocolate. [Chuckles]
Rumburg: I heard that candy was a really important item here because there was very little candy that was ever given out. At Christmas time I heard you got a...
Guilford: Yeah, 6 bars.
Rumburg: What would you get at Christmas time as far as Christmas packages?
Guilford: You got 6 cigars, 6 candy bars, maybe a hand full of hard candy and an apple and an orange, that's it.
Rumburg: What about...heard there was a lot of gambling over those little Christmas packages?
Guilford: That's the only thing they had to gamble for. You couldn't buy nothing else. During the football season, they would bet on different games, or go out there and play dominos or something ‘cause they didn't have no cards.
Rumburg: Did people ever get into trouble over gambling?
Guilford: No, not that I know of.
Rumburg: What were some of the problems they had here? Do you know, basically problems within the inmates?
Guilford: Well, just little things that, you know. You know when you're in a place like this, a little thing that really means nothing will build up, like making a mountain out of a mole hill. It builds up in you and builds up in the other guy too and you begin to hate each other. First thing you know, you're in trouble here.
Rumburg: You take your frustrations out on each other? Let's go on in here into the solitary unit for just a minute.
Guilford: Eh.
Rumburg: Your favorite, I guess.
Guilford: I never did see this door open.
Rumburg: This door was always closed? Cell number 14...
Guilford: That's what they call the strip cell. They literally meant stripped ‘cause you were stripped.
Rumburg: I was wondering why there wasn't a toilet in there.
Guilford: Well, you got a hole in the floor. They called it an "Oriental toilet."
Rumburg: A squat toilet.
Guilford: Yeah, that's all you had, and you had no water, no nothing. The Guard would bring you a Dixie cup full of water three times a day. He'd open this door, set a Dixie cup full of water in there and that's it. Set your food there, they brought it to you. That’s all. The rest of these cells, they had mattresses. You know, they had bumps in them, but you lost your mattress every morning then you got it back at night.
Rumburg: Now it was put right in between here. [Crosstalk]
Guilford: And your blankets was in there, too. Now, a lot of guys during the day would go down and fish[?] to open a blanket and pull it in and keep it during the day, but just before it got time to, they'd roll it up and put it back out.
Rumburg: And they probably knew they were doing that, didn't they?
Guilford: Probably.
Rumburg: Well, they'd have to, almost. I think that's only logical. What...
Guilford: All these cells were controlled by electricity.
Rumburg: Right, this is the only area in the whole place that was controlled by electricity except for the gate going into the mess hall.
Guilford: That’s right. These cells were, they were hole cells, too, but they were what they called, more or less, restricted diet. That's why the guys up here would save a little food, you know.
Rumburg: On the second ones. Well, now how would they drop the food down? Over the edge here, right to the front, on a piece of string and they would dangle it down.
Guilford: And the guys would fish it in.
Rumburg: Well, now, the gun gallery people didn't walk around here but...
Guilford: Every so often, except for mealtime they was always in here. And on Saturdays during bath time they was always in here ‘cause they had to let one guy out at a time to go down to the end of his tier. There's a shower bath... [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: But it's a two-man shower now? Only one man at a time ever used the shower.
Guilford: Only one man at a time. Never two.
Rumburg: Now, one question here. I have been told that these cells down here were cells that if a guy got in trouble, he would probably be sent here unless he was a constant troublemaker. He would be sent here first into these cells and then into the hole if he gave them trouble here. Basically, say you got into trouble, just kind of give me an idea, what would happen?
Guilford: Say you got in a fight out in the yard. Say two guys get in a fight out in the yard. They bring you up here and put you in these cells and you stay here until you go up to the Disciplinary Court. But you went to Disciplinary Court over here, right up there. You didn't go to A-Block. No, no.
Rumburg: You didn't go to A-Block. You had it in D-Block here.
Guilford: They had a desk and everything up here at the end. Then it was up to the Associate Warden. If he decided “I'm going to put you on a restricted diet in one of these cells” and he might tell the other guy "I'm putting you in a closed front cell" which meant you went down to one of these cells.
Rumburg: He may have been the instigator then?
Guilford: Yeah. The Associate Warden would listen to both stories and whichever one he thought was the guy that started it, he'd usually put him in the closed front cell and put the other guy up here.
Rumburg: And however, much time that he wanted them to spend basically was up to him.
Guilford: Yeah, right. He didn't sentence you. [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: He said, "I'm going to put you in there" and he wouldn't tell you for how long and it would depend on them how long they stayed in the cell, right?
Guilford: Once in a while, you could ask the Guard that was over here "How long am I going to be in here?" And the Associate [Warden] had already told him, "Well, you'll be in there for 10 days, or 15 days, or 21 days."
Rumburg: So, if you had a guy like we were talking about, maybe that would be a friend. Some Guards were a little more outgoing and would tell you something whereas other Guards would say forget it. It's up to you to find out.
Guilford: They used to have a Guard. I liked and respected him ‘cause he was such a, he was a big, tall guy, his name was Gregory. And he was out there. You see every Friday was inspection day. Swope would come by. Behind him, the Associate Warden, and behind him is the Captain. Every Friday. That desk out there where I told you the Officer of the Day sat. Swope’s looking at it and Gregory was Officer of the Day that day. Swope says, "Mr. Gregory, get down there and see if there’s any dust under that desk." Gregory said, "If you want to know if there’s any dust down there, you get down there and look." Swope says, "Why don't you retire, Mr. Gregory?" Gregory says, "Why in the hell don't you retire?" [Both chuckle]
Rumburg: Did you actually hear that conversation?
Guilford: Yeah, I was standing out there that day. I was waiting to get in the mess hall before going up to the hospital and I heard it. And another thing, this Latimer that I was telling you about, was bald headed. We called him "Skinhead." So, when I was in the kitchen there one day, eating, and this friend of mine come told me about it. Latimer was in the O and G and drinking coffee and having a donut or something. So, Gregory goes in there and says, "Mornin’, Skinhead." And Latimer called him, "Mr. Gregory, I've told you repeatedly, don't use that name to me." This guy says, "Ok, Skinhead." [Both laugh]
Rumburg: So they used to kid each other...the inmates that were here would have their little names for each one of the Guards, and every once in a while the Guards would pick up on it and maybe have fun and kind of kid around with the other guys?
Guilford: Oh, yeah. Like the guy I told you was throwing toilet paper down at the guy down there that was killing this guy, turn this off, after that he was called "Shit paper slim." And Mitchell was called "Blueboy". There used to be a Lieutenant here from, used to be Warden at a Utah State Penitentiary in 1951, and they rioted on him and tore it up. And they rioted on him again and tore it up so the State…finally came back here as a Lieutenant and his name was Severson, called him "Utah Slim." Like Ordway, they called him "Double Tough." And there used to be another guy, his name was Fisher, F. F. Fisher.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: I'm sure you can pick up some pretty interesting names for ‘em.
Guilford: [Chuckles] Oh yeah.
Rumburg: [Chuckles] So, this area here. Oh, I wanted to ask you, what's this area for right here, where the sink and all this stuff...
Guilford: This was for the Guard that stayed in here 24 hours a day. This was his toilet and whatever...kept a mop back here. Once in a while they'd let an orderly out to mop the floor.
Rumburg: Now, I saw on that little door here, it says bookcase. Did they have books in here for the guys that were in the cells up there?
Guilford: Yeah, they kept...your books were kept in here and you'd get one at a time. They take you one at a time up.
Rumburg: I want to ask you a couple other things, too. Now what about recreation time, within...say you were in here. Variations from down below here. If you were thrown in these cells you didn't have any privileges at all, right?
Guilford: None whatever.
Rumburg: Until you came up for the Disciplinary Board.
Guilford: Yeah, until you went upstairs.
Rumburg: As soon as you got in. Now, if you went into the second and third tier that meant that you were going to be in here for a period of time, right?
Guilford: Yeah, right. But, now, very few of them. Once in a while they would let you out, they’d come say, “Okay, recreation”. If they could find extra Guards, but most of the guys wouldn't go out. Because when you come down here you got to strip down, totally and completely, all this shit, this and that, bend over. Then you'd put your clothes on, go out in the yard about an hour or so, come back and go through the same thing again. [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: So, recreation was pretty limited, then if you were in those cells. You'd get out, say every now and walk around in here?
Guilford: No, not here, no way. You went out in the yard under an escort.
Rumburg: So, you couldn't get out one at a time and walk back and forth a little bit?
Guilford: No sir, not here in this place.
Rumburg: Well, some guys had to get out of there every now and then to get recreation, didn't they, just to get their bones loosened up a little bit? Or, would you just get used to it after a while?
Guilford: I used to do my own exercises, push-ups, squats and so forth. Do my own exercise ‘cause God almighty, who wants to go out in the yard and go through all that rigamarole? [Crosstalk] It was better to stay in my cell.
Rumburg: If you were going to be on the second and third tiers, what would be...2 months, on the average?
Guilford: Oh no, longer than that. I know one guy. A guy named Whitey Franklin, that you heard Ray talk about, that done 13 years over here. Joe Carnes done ten years over here. Louie Fleish [Fleisher?] done seven years over here.
Rumburg: Why would they get such a long period of time in here?
Guilford: Because they were just a little bit scared of ‘em.
Rumburg: They just couldn't handle ‘em?
Guilford: No, not that they ever caused any trouble or nothing. It’s just that they…
Rumburg: Were they a little bit rough or tougher talking or what?
Guilford: No, like Karpis and Chase, the guys, the most pleasant people you could ever talk to. It's just that they didn't want them a part of…
Rumburg: Of what was going on elsewhere.
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: They’d rather be kind of isolated than have anything to do...
Guilford: I didn't mind it over here, really, because you had, for a long time you had linoleum on the floor, and once in a while the orderly...
Rumburg: Well, you also had more heat over here. You had heaters in here. It was probably warmer in this area.
Guilford: Warmer. You see all these things worked and another thing they had, these lights up here were on 24 hours a day. You could read all night long if you wanted to. Instead of laying with your head that way, turn your head this way and read all night.
Rumburg: Was it pretty bright in here? I mean, course it would be. You’d get used to it, to the light every night.
Guilford: And the lights in your cell were, I guess you'd call it indirect lighting. They were back where you couldn't touch them. See that hole up there? The light was back there, and it had a screen on it, so you had no control of it.
Rumburg: I wanted to ask you about that light. Was it bright enough to read by?
Guilford: Oh, yeah, sure.
Rumburg: It was? Well, you know you notice a wire covering over it...it doesn't seem like much light could get out.
Guilford: You could read by it real easy.
Rumburg: That's about all I can think of in here.
Guilford: You see there's all the electrical wires there that control the thing by electricity. This guy up here, the gun Guard, he got a panel up there that had a switchboard and say the Guard down here "Alright Jim, open cell 18." He just pushed the button and 18 would slide open.
Rumburg: Oh, I see, he controlled all that...he could either control it from up there or right here, right?
Guilford: No, this guy had no control over the cells.
Rumburg: What about...?
Guilford: I don't know what that was.
Rumburg: All these. See, those control 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 9-S, 10-S, 12-S.
Guilford: I never seen a Guard use that to open a cell. Always this guy up here.
Rumburg: See, if you'll notice here, these are all the steel door cells. That's why they have 9s, 10s. You see those were all controlled. They had the ability, it looks like here, to open that whole first tier.
Guilford: Well, they still don't... there’s 5, 10, 14. Well, that might have been, maybe...
Rumburg: But see, this was always locked and I'm sure this was controlled in coordination with that box up there, too. He had to probably push a button up there.
Guilford: Maybe so, probably so. I don't know why they had two showers here. There ain't never been two guys in there at one time. One only. Now the ones on the other tier, I don't think they have two showers. Let me see.
Rumburg: Yeah, they do. You can stand back here and look up there.
Guilford: I didn’t know that. See, I didn’t remember. But, I know there's never been two guys in there showering at the same time, only one at a time. You came down the tier in your shorts with your towel and when you got here, when you went in to bathe, when you came out they gave you clean bedsheets, and clean shorts and a clean towel.
Rumburg: Once a week?
Guilford: Once a week. Every Saturday.
Rumburg: You could shower twice a week, but you only got clean clothes once a week?
Guilford: No, you could shower once a week here. You could shower twice a week if you were out in population.
Rumburg: Once a week in here, twice a week in population. Twice a week you get clean clothes in population.
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: Only once a week in here, though. And not even that, if you were in, say the strip cell or whatever. You didn't get anything in strip cell.
Guilford: You don’t get nothing.
Rumburg: Let's step outside into the recreation yard.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: ...the little green lining, that's where they controlled the snitch box. See where it set right down there.
Rumburg: So, there was a box as you come right out this main door here.
Guilford: A Guard was standing here, you know, if you went through there, they had a little green light in it, I used to look at it, and if you went through there, it would go bzzzz. That light would go like that.
Rumburg: If you had metal on you?
Guilford: If you had metal on you.
Rumburg: Now were armed Guards walking all around the outside...
Guilford: Around the wall, yes.
Rumburg: Around the wall at all times. And you had armed machine gun Guards here that controlled the mess hall from this side and also on the other side, too. And the snitch box was down here. Was this a double snitch box or just a single?
Guilford: Single. No, it was a double! The one outside the…going to the work area, it was a single. This was a double. Had one when you walked over there, and one when you went through here. One was sitting right here, and you go through there. Another one would come through there. There was a Guard standing right here and if it rang, he'd tell you to go back and come through again. And if it rang a second time, they searched you to see what you got. [Plane flies overhead]
Rumburg: Now if a man came out here for recreation, let's just go over here and sit down for a minute and we'll talk. You know guys...recreation is something that seemed to vary an awful lot during the years that this was a prison.
Guilford: You see those shuffleboard things there. Well, those were put there after I left here because it wasn't here when I was here. You could play handball against the wall. There was a handball court. And they had a little ball diamond up there where you see the grass. And there wasn't baseball or wasn’t softball, there was... [Crosstalk] …a hard rubber ball. After you hit it a few times, it got mushy. You'd get so many a week and I used to play out there once in a while. Most of the recreation was right up there in the background over there and they played Bridge.
Rumburg: Played a lot of Bridge?
Guilford: Oh yeah. That's where I learned to play Bridge.
Rumburg: Cards was a pretty...?
Guilford: Not cards, they had them…like dominos.
Rumburg: Oh, bridge with dominos.
Guilford: It was a regular card thing, but the cards were made like dominos.
Rumburg: Big cards, I don't know what you mean.
Guilford: You know the size of... [Crosstalk] …for a King it would be like a double six would be a King, with a K on it. The other one, you know they have a J for a Jack, ten for ten but they were in different colors.
Rumburg: You could also use them as dominos too, then right?
Guilford: You had regular dominos to play dominos, you could if you wanted to, but they had regular dominos to play dominos with. And chess, they played a lot of chess.
Rumburg: What about sitting up here and playing? Did people utilize these steps at all?
Guilford: You could sit up here and look out. You could do that.
Rumburg: Did that seem to be a very popular thing to do, just kind of relax up here? Most guys wanted to get out and exercise?
Guilford: Yeah, I used to play a little handball, play a little baseball, play Bridge. I never did care for chess. I never did even learn but I loved to play Bridge.
Rumburg: Was that the most popular game?
Guilford: Yeah, it was the most popular game. They used to play by...you were only out on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.
Rumburg: Was Sunday all day?
Guilford: Yeah, up until around three o'clock. Used to be partners, like me and Ray were partners in Bridge, and we'd play John Chase and Banghart and you'd play a fifty thousand series. Might take you a couple months to play the series, long drawn out affair. It was really enjoyable.
Rumburg: So, you and Alvin were partners?
Guilford: Sometimes. Ray liked to walk a lot and, man, he walked like a big [Unintelligible]
Rumburg: He was a pretty good size man wasn't he, fairly tall, thin?
Guilford: Yeah, he is. Tall, thin, slender and he used to walk up and down, and I'd walk with him sometimes for an hour and say, "Man, walk by yourself. I'm going to sit down." [Chuckles] But he did, he liked to walk a lot.
Rumburg: That's very interesting, what else? I see a lot of lines drawn down here, too?
Guilford: This was for the handball.
Rumburg: Handball was here. What about the little courts over there and things like that...the circle...?
Guilford: That was a handball...you'd play handball against the wall over there, too. That circle. I don't know what that circle was for. That’s after my time. Basketball things was after my time, too.
Rumburg: They looked like they were fairly new. What about, when you lined up for work detail or when they had work details out here...
Guilford: You lined up. Like the glove shop lined up in one line, the model shop lined up in another line and the tailor shop lined up in another line. The Guard would be down at the door and say, "Alright, tailor shop" and you march out single file and go down through the snitch box and go single file. He'd call, "Model shop” or “Glove shop," whichever. You'd march single file right out the door, go down the steps, two long flights of steps and go through the snitch box down there and you'd turn right and go down to the work area.
Rumburg: What...you know we were talking about things that they did here as far as work. Now, it was up to you whether you worked or not, right? You didn't have to work you just had to stay in your cell all the time then.
Guilford: That's right. That's like I told about you about Beef Stew, George Sanders[?].
Rumburg: And another thing, too we were talking about. What about Guards? You know when you're going down there, did they have extra Guards on watching you when you went down?
Guilford: Oh, yeah, there’d be so many Guards out here. In fact, not only did they have the Guards, but they had the supervisors from whatever shop you were going to work in. He was out here, too. And this guy in the gun tower and that guy in the gun tower and there was a guy around the corner on the wall and there was never no trouble.
Rumburg: You said some of the guys made more money than others down there and some of them were paid a monthly salary instead of by the hour.
Guilford: No, they were paid by piece work. The more they did, the more they made.
Rumburg: Ok, you said some guys made up to a hundred dollars a month.
Guilford: Yeah right, sure. In Leavenworth I made as high as a hundred and five dollars a month. But I was what they call, a set up man in a furniture factory. I knew how to set up all the different machines, like the [?] saw, band saw…to set up to cut precise sizes of wood, different shapes of wood, the shaper, the router and everything. I set ‘em all up. [Plane flying overhead]
Rumburg: What about during the war years? What changed here? What were some of the basic changes they had during the war years?
Guilford: After the war, things loosened, before the war things were pretty tight. That's when they had the silence system and so forth and so on. And after the war…
Tape 2, Side 1
Rumburg: You said something about Harbor Tours?
Guilford: Harbors Tours would come around and they had a record that they would play and the guide on there would say, the record would play, rather, and if the wind was not blowing too hard and was blowing right, you could hear it. So, this guide’d say, "Now, on the right there’s Alcatraz Island, where the most desperate criminals in the world are housed." [Both chuckle] It was laughable, talking about all the killers and murderers. The most desperate men of all are housed, that's where they lived. It was just laughable, that's all. The guys in here were no different than the guys at Leavenworth or any other prison. They just wanted to do their time, most of them did, and get away from here.
Rumburg: Do you think, you know, in your different travels around to other prisons and things, do you think the prison system has changed?
Guilford: Oh, Christ Almighty yes, good God, yes. [Chuckles] When I first went to prison. They still got the menu in San Quentin. When I first went to Folsom in 1935, six nights a week I ate red beans, bread and coffee and that's all. And six mornings a week I ate oatmeal, mush, bread and coffee. No milk and no sugar. That's all. On Monday at noon, you had lima beans for lunch. Tuesday at noon you had goat stew. Wednesday at noon you had spaghetti. Thursday at noon you had goat stew. Friday at noon you had hash. I don't know what they made that hash out of [Both chuckle] ‘cause there was no meat around there. On Saturday at noon you had this, some kind of watery soup or something. And on Saturday night they had what they called "moneroo beans," that was red beans with a little chili powder in it. That was good. And every other Wednesday night you got a little bowl of black strap syrup and a little piece of corn bread. That was the only dessert you got. Sunday at noon, you only got two meals on Sunday. Sunday at noon you either got a piece of dry, stringy roast beef or a piece of half-baked roast pork and a piece of gingerbread and what they call shorty-brown potatoes. Now that was your Sunday meal. And that went on until after the riot there in 1937 when the Warden got killed and a bunch of other people got killed, five guys went to the gas chamber. The food began to...they got a new Warden, a guy named Clyde Power who I think was the most understanding Warden, the most liberal that I've ever seen. He eventually got fired for what they called "coddling the cons" and he put better food in there, much better food. He put better work time, better work conditions. He let you fix your cell up. You could order rugs or bedspreads or a feather mattress, because at that time all you got was a straw mattress.
Rumburg: Still, for letting the people that were there live a halfway normal life, he got fired.
Guilford: He was there from December of '37 until about last part of November 1943. They fired him and then they brought a guy in named Bob Heinsey and he put... You see, under Plumber you could order radios. I had a portable radio; I had a General electric portable radio I could carry out in the yard. Or, you could order cabinet radios, anything. When Heins came as Warden all radios out, no more. Well, I had nobody to send mine to, so I took a baseball bat and shattered it and I had an RCA cabinet model in my cell and went in the cell house and got it. Some Guard wanted it and I tell him "No, I'm not going to give it to you. I'm going to tear it up." And I did. I took it out in the yard and put the baseball bat to it, too. I didn't want to donate it to the prison.
Rumburg: Well, listen, do you want to take a walk down in the work area and look around. As you came through the metal detectors coming up from work and you came into the rec yard here, then you'd have spot check, shakedowns. Were you here when there were the big doors here? The big metal doors?
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: Those must have been taken out earlier. I wanted to stop here for just a second. I'll ask you something about the work things. Now during the war did they alter their work things in any way to...?
Guilford: Yeah, they used to make submarine nets.
Rumburg: Submarine nets and buoys and things like that? Did they make some metal buoys in their welding shop?
Guilford: Yeah, right here was the loft.
Rumburg: Right. And it's also down below. They had some of the big machines down in the lower floor underneath.
Guilford: I can't remember this little building here.
Rumburg: That's what I was wondering now. There used to be some metal detectors here. This isn't...l don't know when it was built or anything like that. It’s made out of concrete.
Guilford: After my time. There used to be a metal detector right down here.
Rumburg: I have pictures of that in some of the old stuff that I have.
Guilford: You go through there and there was always a Guard standing there and if it buzzed, why they send you again. If it buzzed a second time, why they stripped you down and shake you down and see what you got. The garbage...right over there used to be, see that incinerator. Well, used to be a guy worked there to burn all the garbage and stuff. And a truck, some Guard would drive a truck up that little road there and dump the stuff in there and he'd burn what could be burned.
Rumburg: I was talking about gardeners and stuff to you. All this whole area down through here is one mass garden, rock gardens all the way around up there. Beautiful. I'll take you up there in just a little bit and let you see all the pretty flowers.
Guilford: I seen ‘em, but I don't remember anybody working out here. I sure don't. Not in a garden.
Rumburg: Not in a prisoner capacity, or whatever.
Guilford: No. In fact, all this stuff didn't used to be here. All this shrubbery and stuff, ya know? It was all kept clean. That was under Ed Swope, Swope didn't want nothing. He'd keep things in an uproar all the time. He'd even keep the Guards agitated.
Rumburg: So, you say a lot of this flower...a lot of these things were not even here.
Guilford: Weren’t here. Not to my knowledge.
Rumburg: What was down in there? That greenhouse has been there...
Guilford: Just plain grass, I mean plain ground. What they had back over here I don't know but I never remembered anybody working over there as a gardener.
Rumburg: But all they had there, you say, was just grass, nothing else? Well, that big tree has had to have been there for quite a period of time.
Guilford: But all this green stuff here, it just wasn't there.
Rumburg: Well, some of these plants have probably been brought out later because these are fairly native to this area and they were probably planted in the later year, but some of these things up here, like the geraniums, I know have been here for some period of time because they’re almost trees now.
Guilford: Maybe there were 'cause I just never did pay any attention, but I sure don't remember nobody working out here as a gardener. I just don't.
Rumburg: Okay, let's walk on down and go on down there.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: So, you came down, when you come down the ramp here...
Guilford: And go right around the building.
Rumburg: And the glove shop was down below there?
Guilford: Yeah, right. This is the laundry here.
Rumburg: It's interesting because there are some laundry shoots over here on the right, on this top floor. This was laundry in here. Well, down below there's the large laundry machines.
Guilford: All the laundry machines used to be here.
Rumburg: Oh! Well, this whole building was laundry then, basically?
Guilford: Yeah, right.
Rumburg: Well, what about the gloves? Were they down below, too?
Guilford: They were down below. The glove shop, model shop, tailor shop’s down below.
Rumburg: Now the model shop was where they repaired furniture?
Guilford: Repaired furniture and stuff like that.
Rumburg: Furniture would be brought in, what, from the City? Military furniture? What was it?
Guilford: There used to be a lot of military laundry here.
Rumburg: Yeah, that was one of the major work forces, I guess.
Guilford: Yeah, they used to bring them over from the Marine General Hospital, all the nurses’ uniforms and stuff like that.
Rumburg: So, this whole first floor was basically laundry?
Guilford: This was the laundry.
Rumburg: Do you remember what this area was in here?
Guilford: This was the head guy's office.
Rumburg: Honcho’s office.
Guilford: This back here was just, more or less, packages. They had a lot of stuff stored back here.
Rumburg: Not too much work went on in this area here.
Guilford: No.
Rumburg: Well, now, when guys came down here to work, what kind of restrictions were they under? Did they have kind of free movement? Were there Guards that were down here?
Guilford: No, they had free movement, more or less. Now, the supervisor had to check them every 15, look around to see that everybody was here. This was a loading platform.
Rumburg: How often did they have a head check here? Say, in a working situation?
Guilford: Well, they had...every 15 minutes the Guard would look around and every 30 minutes he called in the count.
Rumburg: Now, when you were in the main prison, say up in the regular main cell block, did they have a head count every half an hour up there?
Guilford: No, about every hour. At night it was every hour.
Rumburg: Every hour at night and the daytime, basically the same thing?
Guilford: No, well once in a while they'd prowl the tiers when the guys were locked up. At noon time when...they had a count at noon time. They 'd count in the morning before you left your cell for breakfast. Then you came out of breakfast back to your cells, everybody. Then they called the work detail. When the work detail went out, then the Guard counted everybody that was left in the cell block. Then at noon time when they came in, they were counted at noon time. Afternoon time they were counted after they came out of the dining room. Then they'd call, what they call sick line, and down below there they had a MTA was down there with a little desk and pills and stuff like that.
Rumburg: So, if you were feeling bad then you could go on sick call?
Guilford: At noon time, yes.
Rumburg: What about morning, if you were sick in the morning?
Guilford: Well… [Chuckles] …sort of slough if off if you could.
Rumburg: I see. See, this is what I was talking about here. They've got a lot of big machines. These are all laundry machines.
Guilford: They must have been…they were moved down here.
Rumburg: Oh, they were moved down here later on?
Guilford: The laundry was up there. The laundry was not down here.
Rumburg: This is all laundry stuff down here...big machines. These are all the rollers, the dryers…cleaners.
Guilford: Yeah, everything. It all used to be upstairs. Oh, this…wait! They had a dry-cleaning plant down here too!
Rumburg: Dry cleaning…that's exactly what this is, dry cleaning.
Guilford: Yeah, right, right.
Rumburg: Ok, that’s what it is. Yeah! This stuff is all dry-cleaning stuff. I see, well that's interesting then.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: With the stuff, like they remodeled furniture and things like that here. They had a dock down here, right? Did they come pick up anything off this dock over here?
Guilford: No. Only dock they had was down here.
Rumburg: On the other side? Where you came in today or where we landed.
Guilford: Yeah. They used to have the Army boat, once a week, would come over with a tank of water, ya know. Fresh water. [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: Right. Well, you know, there used to be a dock down here and I was just wondering if that was here during your time. It must have been in the early years or something like that because there's a major platform down here and steps that lead down and everything else that you can see.
Guilford: Now, here, this was the tailor shop, right here.
Rumburg: Tailor shop. The very first one on the bottom floor.
Guilford: Yeah. This was a the tailor shop, all kinds of sewing machines and stuff in there, ya know.
Rumburg: Ok, so that's a big room.
Guilford: Mostly just khaki pants. [Plane flies overhead]
Rumburg: Now that was for military?
Guilford: Yes. Once a month they'd have a military inspector come over to inspect it and then they would ship ‘em out. This was the door to go in there.
Rumburg: Ok, so this door opened up into the...this is all in the Tailor shop here. We can walk on through there. We'll just walk in here.
Guilford: Over there was the clothes shop. That place in there.
Rumburg: Oh, I see.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: …big rolls of cloth.
Rumburg: They were all cotton gloves, right?
Guilford: Cotton.
Rumburg: Cotton gloves and they cut their own cloth...well, they just did everything. They did all the pattern work and everything.
Guilford: They used to have a big table here. This was a long table; it was called the cutting table and the guy that cut it’d unroll that thing and then they had patterns. Then they'd cut it out.
Rumburg: I see, so it was kind of a line type system?
Guilford: Yeah, right.
Rumburg: The guy would cut it and then it’d go to somebody else.
Guilford: Then over here, they had all kinds of sewing machines. And you put so many gloves, or so many gloves that they’d cut out and each guy would get a box. Then when he'd put ‘em all together, he had a little tag to put his number on it. Then he was credited for that, and he got paid for it.
Rumburg: I see, well, that's really interesting. So, each man basically made the glove himself. He would do the whole thing.
Guilford: Yeah. Except cut it. They had one guy that cut ‘em out.
Rumburg: Well, now, how did he get paid? He got paid…
Guilford: By the hour. But the guys that sewed them...
Rumburg: Got paid piece by piece. [Crosstalk] So, they were right next to the dry cleaning over there.
Guilford: Yeah. Then next one down there was…the model shop was not too big of a place.
Rumburg: They didn't do an awful lot of repairing then. [Crosstalk]
Guilford: In fact, there was only just a few guys working there.
Rumburg: Well now, the big building we see on the end of the island down there...
Guilford: This was a warehouse. See this tower up here? That's where Whitey Franklin and what was the other guy's name, Jimmy Lucas, was going to try to escape. And they tried to sneak up there and get to the guy in the gun tower and Franklin got shot. The guy shot him. That's why he done so much time over in D-Block.
Rumburg: Oh, I see, that's the one you were telling me about, the guy that was over there...
Guilford: One day up in the hospital, you see, he got shot in the lung and they never did take the bullet out. It's amazing, really. One day, he went… [Coughs] …like that, and the bullet came out. [Chuckles]
Rumburg: Is that right? I’ll be.
Guilford: This was all a storeroom.
Rumburg: Well, now, didn't they do some metal work here? Did they have any metal lathes or anything like that that they did any piece work on metal?
Guilford: Not that I know of.
Rumburg: So, this was basically just a storehouse, right.
Guilford: Just a storehouse. In fact, I was never over here but I know it was a storehouse because I used to...the guys...once in a while the guy in the laundry would take a couple guys, bring a little push cart thing down here. And they'd get so many different items out of here and take it back to the laundry, like soap and soap powders and whatever, you know, and take it back up to the laundry. As far as people working over here regularly, uh-uh, didn't have it.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: ...so Severs[?] says, "Alright now, just stand here." So, after the line all went through, pick him up at the hospital, x-rayed him to make sure he ain't got nothing, shook him down, sent him to his cell. The next day they told him, you know, before they call the work area the Guard will come around the tier and say "So and so stay in, so and so stay in" and called and told him to stay in.
Rumburg: This was because of his incident. He was trying to bug out, right? Now, "bug out" is a term used for saying gettin' out of here to, back to...
Guilford: Later on, after the work area had gone, he says, "Alright Don come on, better get up to the hospital get you a ground wire". Old man shoved him in the bug cage.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: Did he ever get out?
Guilford: They sent him to Springfield.
Rumburg: Did they finally do that?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: Didn't take him...it wasn't very much trouble for him to get off, then.
Guilford: No, but once you start you have to continue with your act, or they will detect it and you're not gonna make it.
Rumburg: So quite a few people tried that?
Guilford: Oh yeah, sure. Quite a few of ‘em made it, too.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: Is it true when you were here, like in the recreation yard, that there was an imaginary line? See where the red marks are on the side of the wall. You could not go...
Guilford: No, you couldn't because you couldn't get in the corner like that.
Rumburg: Did that imaginary line run from this end of the wall all the way down to the other end?
Guilford: No, just in the corners.
Rumburg: Just the corners. What about the fence?
Guilford: That fence wasn't here.
Rumburg: Now, somebody told me when the Wardens were out here the other day, they told me the fence was put there to keep people from going over in that area because you’re getting too close to the gun tower.
Guilford: Bullshit. The guys used to sit dead against the wall, I sat dead against the wall time after time.
Rumburg: That's what I figure, too.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: Up in the corner...
Rumburg: Corners were pretty much disallowed. The Guard would tell you to stay away from the corners?
Guilford: Out.
Rumburg: Yeah.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: You said you spent your time here, basically, most of it?
Guilford: Yeah, except when [Chuckles] I was over in D-Block.
Rumburg: How many times did you go to D-Block?
Guilford: I'd say about, not too many times.
Rumburg: 3 or 4?
Guilford: Yeah.
Rumburg: What did...you know what...verbal assaults...besides the time you punched the Guard out?
Guilford: No uh, refusing to do this, ya know whatever. [Crosstalk]
Rumburg: Right. Maybe not feeling like doing something?
Guilford: I never did, verbally...if I want to say something, I'm gonna do something. I didn't cuss someone out.
[Tape cuts out]
Guilford: ...this was being remodeled. It wasn't a regular thing.
Rumburg: Oh, it was just used for a short period of time then, that hall down there. Well they remodeled this while you were here.
Guilford: Then they wired it all up.
Rumburg: Put the phone system in, that type of thing. What was it before that? What kind of a system?
Guilford: They only had one. It was like this only you couldn't talk through this. They had a phone, but it was only a single. Then they wanted more, why, I don't know. But I never did see two people down here at once. I guess they just wanted to make it look good for the public, or something. I don't know.
Rumburg: So, the whole time you could only have one visit a month, one hour a month. Now could you have anybody out here that you wanted to have?
Guilford: Oh, no.
Rumburg: It had to be a blood relative?
Guilford: A member of your family.
Rumburg: Or a lawyer. Or your wife.
Guilford: Your wife, your mother, your father, your son or daughter, if it was it was past 16. Or your lawyer.
Rumburg: If they were past 16, so nobody under 16.
Guilford: No. Nobody under 16.
[Tape cuts out]
Rumburg: So, a lot of talk was made about swimming off the island and when the Anglin brothers escaped and when Roe and Cole took off.
Guilford: That was a funny thing about Cole and Roe. John Chase was their friend and they asked him to, this John told me. They asked him to go with ‘em. He told ‘em no, but I'll try to get you some outside help. They told him, well, if we make it, you’ll hear from us. That was in July and in November of the same year he got a postcard from Caracas, Venezuela and all it said was "Business was good in the month of July." So, whether it was them or not, who knows.
Rumburg: That's amazing, business was good in the month of July. You know I never got to talk to Paul that much, just one or two times. In fact, I had been...
Guilford: He was a nice guy, wasn't he?
Rumburg: Extremely nice, distinguished man, oh, very distinguished. When I was, had him up...he came up to the office and talked to us twice, and I was just getting ready to set up another appointment with him when he went into the hospital, and it was just about a month after that he died. It was in November last year.
Guilford: Sure, a nice guy.
Rumburg: He was just a fine gentleman.
[Interview ends abruptly]