John Stadig at Alcatraz

   (The factual information in this story was compiled by Darrell McBreairty for his book Alcatraz Eel: the John Stadig Files. I made up certain details, like for instance the name of the first movie that was shown at Alcatraz)

    On August 4, 1934, because of his attempt to escape from the McNeil Island Prison, John Stadig was transferred to Alcatraz. He was one of the first fifty civilian inmates to be sent there.

   As the prison ferry crossed the seething waters of the bay, he could see the Rock taking form in the grey fog as they drew closer. With barely a tree to be seen, it foreboded a sense that his next several years would be lifeless. At the dock, while being taken from the boat, he turned his head out over the water and could see the Golden Gate Bridge catching sunlight in the distance, even as it began to rain on Alcatraz.

   He was put into a van and driven up the hill to his new home, then marched into the basement to be processed. He was taken to a large shower room, commanded to strip and wash, but had to wear the stare of an armed guard the whole time. Then he was told to walk through an ankle deep pool of greenish disinfectant. It stung slightly as he sloshed his way across to line up with his fellow new cons at the other side.

   A prison trustee, who’d been standing in the background, picked up a metal bowl and walked towards them. Stadig wondered at first if they were going to be handed out snacks while standing there naked, but then as the prisoner came closer John picked up the strong odour of mothballs and he could see that the bowl was filled with some kind of blue ointment. Then one by one each arrival was commanded to step forward, while the convict approached him and, with a wooden paddle, smeared the stuff into his pubic hair and armpits. Stadig watched with pity as the senior inmate performed his duty, and wondered if this would be the result of good behaviour on Alcatraz: the “privilege” of dabbing camphorated salve on the balls of other prisoners.

   They were told to remain in line.  Stadig suddenly heard the authoritarian sound of a metal door shutting above him. He looked up, and at the top of a stairway there was a prematurely bald man in a white smock. He wore round wire glasses and looked something like a mad scientist from a movie. As the odd looking man descended the stairs, he was carrying, with strange delicacy, a large aluminum bowl, and once he reached the bottom, Stadig could see that it was filled with the fingers of rubber gloves.               

   He put the bowl on a table, turned to face the new prisoners, and then pointed his index finger at the ceiling. Stadig looked up for a second until he realized the bald man was just positioning his finger so he could slip on one of the gloves. He then stepped around behind them as the first man in line was commanded by a screw to bend over and touch his toes. The mad scientist then shoved his finger up the con’s ass for what seemed like a long time, to probe for smuggled items. After that he walked back to the table, discarded the used glove, took a new one and went back behind. This repeated until the rectums of every one of the fresh fish had been thoroughly explored.

   Stadig was then given a grey, one-size-fits-all heavy woolen jumpsuit. Luckily he was tall, because it looked like a deflated balloon on some of the cons beside him. His uniform had the number forty-six sewn large on the chest and at the same height on the back. Later on he learned that the numbers were big so they made easy targets if they had to be shot at from the towers.

   They were then told that the next stop would be the mess hall. The good news was that they could pile as much food as they wanted onto their plates. The bad news was that if they didn’t eat every bit of it they would be put in the hole on nothing but bread and water for one day.

   After the meal Stadig was introduced to his cell, which was about two meters by two and a half meters.  The ceiling was two and a half meters above him with a twenty-watt bulb at the center. He noticed there was no switch to turn it on or off.

   That night Stadig was kept awake by the voices of other inmates. Conversations between cells were forbidden, but several cons were raving in their sleep and calling out through their submerged pain all night long. As nights turned to weeks he came to recognize each voice and could hear their desperation growing, their sanity slipping away as time moved on and on inside the unchanging machine in which they were unmoving parts.

   As if to add percussion to that symphony of insane voices, Stadig could also hear the sound of gunshots almost every night after the lights went out. That first time, he wondered if someone had tried to escape, but he found out soon that except for Sundays the guards would pass the graveyard shift by using dummies for target practice.     Afterwards they would place the soft mannequins, with bullet holes in the chest and head, in the walkways so the prisoners could see them on the way to breakfast.

   After finally getting to sleep in the wee hours, Stadig was startled at six in the morning by what sounded like a fire alarm. He would come to know that bell as the only timepiece the prisoners at Alcatraz would have. He was told that there would be another bell in twenty minutes, and if he was not dressed by that time any privileges that day such as the yard or library would be revoked. Since he was not allowed to wear a watch he had to guess the span of twenty minutes.

   That first morning turned out to be Stadig’s shaving day. He was instructed to put a matchbox on the shelf just outside of the bars of his cell in which a guard would place a razor blade. He was told he had to finish shaving and have the blade back in the box in three minutes or else he’d be thrown in solitary. The shaving soap was cheap, and the sink in his cell only gave cold water, but he finished his shave. He was on his way to put the blade back in the matchbox when he heard a loud tussle going on in the corridor. He looked out and saw one of his fellow new arrivals being wrestled to the floor because he’d refused to shave. Four guards held him down, while the fifth shaved him without soap or water.

   Next the cells were opened and every prisoner had to step out to stand and be counted. After breakfast there was another count, and every thirty minutes no matter whether in the yard or the library or on work detail. No matter what they were doing the prisoners had to stop to be counted when the bell rang.

   There was an hour of free time in the yard before they were sent to work, which was mostly doing the laundry of local soldiers or cleaning the prison. This lasted until lunch and after that they had to work again until 4:30. On weekends they were allowed yard time instead of work. Dinner every day was at 5:00, and then they were all in their cells from 5:30 until lights out at 9:30. John Stadig was lucky that he could read, because that was all there was to do during those last four hours of the day. Many prisoners were either illiterate or so barely competent at reading that the attempt would be a source of frustration for them.

   After about three weeks the routine settled in so completely that any slight variation was a source of excitement for John Stadig. One night he noticed that there were more guards on duty and that they seemed more tense than usual. There were rumours that slowly got passed from cell to cell that night through the pipe tapping code, and sure enough, the next morning at breakfast, looking very small in his too big jump-suit, sitting and eating in the mess hall just like any other con, was Al Capone.

   Yard time was a precious part of the day. To be out under the open sky at least gave the prisoners’ senses a little freedom. One rare sunny day in early September when Stadig was outside with the other inmates, he walked to where a patch of sunlight was warming a wall and leaned against it. He lit up a cigarette and watched the other prisoners toss a ball around. At that moment he suddenly felt tranquil and content, and even thought that maybe his time at Alcatraz wouldn’t be so bad after all. It was just then that a guard approached to tell him to step away from the wall. “Why?” Stadig asked, “Will I hurt it?” The guard reported him for insolence and also complained that Stadig had given him “several threatening and defiant looks”. Because of this he lost yard privileges for a month.

   As autumn arrived and the weather got colder and wetter, John Stadig and his fellow prisoners had to spend more and more time indoors dealing with the boredom brought on by inactivity. They could accept for the most part that they were living in a cage and that their lives were being mechanized, but one thing they considered unfair at Alcatraz was not being able to at least look at a magazine or see a film from time to time. Stadig and some others began circulating a petition to ask for some of these small pleasures to be occasionally allowed. The warden was angry that the convicts in his prison thought they had any right to question his authority. He could often be heard during the next few weeks shouting to one of his aides or into the phone: “Nobody is going to run this prison except me!” He found out which prisoners started the petition rolling and put them in solitary confinement for three days. John Stadig was not among them.

   After a month of resistance though, the warden relented. Perhaps he’d given in to pressure from his superiors in the California Department of Corrections, but the first movie ever shown at Alcatraz was The Thin Man, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, on Thanksgiving of 1934.