RESEARCHING TO THE OTHER SIDE
Photo by Jitze Couperus
When doing research, sometimes you just get lucky.
During a class at Bread Loaf, my teacher David Bradley suggested that I do research on the details of San Quentin prison, to make more realistic those scenes in To The Other Side.
I looked in the excellent and quite beautiful Multnomah County library, and found a book about the architecture of federal prisons. (Remember libraries? Those are the places where writers once did a lot of their research.) The book, published by a trade group of architects that designed prisons, didn't have anything about San Quentin, a California state prison. I called the trade group, in D.C., and explained that I was trying to get a group of Black Panthers to escape from San Quentin, and that I needed help. Long silence. Then I told them that I was a novelist, writing a story set decades ago, and we had a fine chat. They suggested I call the California state prison administration.
Those folks recommended that I talk directly to San Quentin, and referred me to the warden. I said that was ridiculous, so they gave me the phone number of San Quentin's PR person. (Right, they'd have one.)
I talked with him, and he said I should visit their museum, which was on site in an area accessible by the public, though it was behind one gate. A prison museum?! Well, it was good timing - Maya and I were visiting the Bay Area soon.
During a class at Bread Loaf, my teacher David Bradley suggested that I do research on the details of San Quentin prison, to make more realistic those scenes in To The Other Side.
I looked in the excellent and quite beautiful Multnomah County library, and found a book about the architecture of federal prisons. (Remember libraries? Those are the places where writers once did a lot of their research.) The book, published by a trade group of architects that designed prisons, didn't have anything about San Quentin, a California state prison. I called the trade group, in D.C., and explained that I was trying to get a group of Black Panthers to escape from San Quentin, and that I needed help. Long silence. Then I told them that I was a novelist, writing a story set decades ago, and we had a fine chat. They suggested I call the California state prison administration.
Those folks recommended that I talk directly to San Quentin, and referred me to the warden. I said that was ridiculous, so they gave me the phone number of San Quentin's PR person. (Right, they'd have one.)
I talked with him, and he said I should visit their museum, which was on site in an area accessible by the public, though it was behind one gate. A prison museum?! Well, it was good timing - Maya and I were visiting the Bay Area soon.
California Department of Corrections
Two weeks later, my San Francisco biking friend Brian Neilson and I rode from his home in North Beach to San Quentin. We arrived at the East Gate (see the photo on the To The Other Side page), but were told by the very large guard that we couldn't see the museum that day. A prisoner had contracted TB, and the entire prison was in lock-down, to make sure that everyone had been inoculated. The guard said we could come back the next day, but the next day I'd be flying home.
Brian and I stood in a parking lot, outside the East Gate, very bummed out. I tried to observe what I could, but the actual prison was a hundred yards off. While we stood there, a guy came over to talk. Maybe our age or a little younger, Hispanic. He knew a lot about bikes, and he and Brian had a fine chat about them. Eventually I managed to slip a few words in, how we'd come to visit the museum because I was doing research on a novel that included an escape from San Quentin.
Our new friend said, "Oh, guys escape all the time. We just go to their mother's house and wait for them. Sometimes they go to their girlfriend's, but mostly they go to their mother's." He started telling us escape stories, and it was clear that he worked there. He also kept talking with Brian about bikes, gear, and serious long-distance rides taken.
Eventually he said, "I live in a house just inside this gate. You guys want a snack?" So he walked us to the gate and nodded at the very large guard, who let us pass. The guard did not return our smiles. In our friend's house, he showed Brian all his amazing bikes, and gave us drinks and bananas. We talked more, about bikes, about living with a family on the grounds of a major prison, and about how he came to that job. He had worked his way up from a dangerous neighborhood in east L.A., where a number of friends and relatives had been killed or imprisoned. Now that his kids were grown, his idea of fun was to ride a bicycle from Canada to Mexico. Then he asked, "Wanna go inside? I bet the lock-down is over by now."
He made a phone call, then took us to the main entrance to the prison, through a narrow tunnel in an old stone building. On the tunnel wall was the kind of placard that shows photos of the people who ran the place, in this case the warden and maybe five others. Our friend was one of the five; he ran two cell blocks. We had to sign in, and then we passed through a double-gate that was opened by the guard on duty, sitting in a room behind a bullet-proof glass window.
Brian and I stood in a parking lot, outside the East Gate, very bummed out. I tried to observe what I could, but the actual prison was a hundred yards off. While we stood there, a guy came over to talk. Maybe our age or a little younger, Hispanic. He knew a lot about bikes, and he and Brian had a fine chat about them. Eventually I managed to slip a few words in, how we'd come to visit the museum because I was doing research on a novel that included an escape from San Quentin.
Our new friend said, "Oh, guys escape all the time. We just go to their mother's house and wait for them. Sometimes they go to their girlfriend's, but mostly they go to their mother's." He started telling us escape stories, and it was clear that he worked there. He also kept talking with Brian about bikes, gear, and serious long-distance rides taken.
Eventually he said, "I live in a house just inside this gate. You guys want a snack?" So he walked us to the gate and nodded at the very large guard, who let us pass. The guard did not return our smiles. In our friend's house, he showed Brian all his amazing bikes, and gave us drinks and bananas. We talked more, about bikes, about living with a family on the grounds of a major prison, and about how he came to that job. He had worked his way up from a dangerous neighborhood in east L.A., where a number of friends and relatives had been killed or imprisoned. Now that his kids were grown, his idea of fun was to ride a bicycle from Canada to Mexico. Then he asked, "Wanna go inside? I bet the lock-down is over by now."
He made a phone call, then took us to the main entrance to the prison, through a narrow tunnel in an old stone building. On the tunnel wall was the kind of placard that shows photos of the people who ran the place, in this case the warden and maybe five others. Our friend was one of the five; he ran two cell blocks. We had to sign in, and then we passed through a double-gate that was opened by the guard on duty, sitting in a room behind a bullet-proof glass window.
We spent a couple hours in the prison, hanging out in a cell block with convicts (who pretty much have the run of the place for most of the day), being locked in one of their cells, having coffee in the dining hall with a prisoner, and getting a tour of the entire grounds from our guide. We saw the building (the Adjustment Center) where George Jackson had taken the hostages, and the place outside it that he ran to, where he was killed. Almost everyone in the visited cell block was a lifer, which meant that they had probably killed someone. They were all quite nice to us, and one of them, after I'd told him what we were doing there, went off to his cell and came back with a book that he said I should read.
One of the more fascinating things about the tour was our guide's explanation of how things worked inside. As a general rule, the convicts police themselves. Since they were mostly lifers, they knew they would be living with this group of guys forever, so they might as well make it as pleasant as possible.
The only thing in my novel made up was the furniture shop. Everything else looks, and is situated, as described.
And I did this in-depth and otherwise inaccessible research because there was a lock-down on the day we visited, and we happened to be noticed by a senior manager there, who wanted to talk bikes.
One of the more fascinating things about the tour was our guide's explanation of how things worked inside. As a general rule, the convicts police themselves. Since they were mostly lifers, they knew they would be living with this group of guys forever, so they might as well make it as pleasant as possible.
The only thing in my novel made up was the furniture shop. Everything else looks, and is situated, as described.
And I did this in-depth and otherwise inaccessible research because there was a lock-down on the day we visited, and we happened to be noticed by a senior manager there, who wanted to talk bikes.
