Monday, March 7, 2011

Observations from a Hightower: Why I went to San Quentin

Dear Reader -
    For almost as long as I can remember William A. Hightower (Uncle Bill), has been a part of my life. As a young girl I met him and knew him as a kind old man who showered me and my sister with all kinds of treats and stories. He would come every other Saturday to our home in West Los Angeles. My younger sister and I would run up the street to meet him at the bus. He lived in W. Hollywood and came to see my parents and us on a regular basis.  That wasn't always the case.
    My parents first met Uncle Bill soon after he was paroled. He was in his 80's and had basically served  half of his life in San Quentin, one of Californias maximum security prisons. He went in before the Golden Gate Bridge was built, he survived the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II, the Baby boomer era, Korea, and Vietnam eras all from inside prison. That period of time also included prison reform. When he went in fingerprinting was a new forensic, the dungeon was still being used, and the prison doctor was doing wild experiments on the inmates (documented cases are in the San Quention museum and his own books).
    Imagine going into prison when the Model T Ford was the buzz and coming out in the space age. Quite a shock, almost like Rip Van Winkle.  When my parents met Bill they took him to a nice restaurant for dinner to get to know him.  Mother's sister, Betty Hightower was a genealogist by hobby and her husband's family tree hooked into Bill's.  Betty heard of him in the prison and became a sort of pen pal. Becasue we lived in Calfornia, Betty asked us to befriend him, as he was alone.
     Bill told my folks that it had been 42 years since he had set at a table with a table clothe on it. He observed everything around him.  Then they took him for a ride. First place was the LAX airport. It wasn't anything like it is now, but for Bill to see and hear a jet engine and to see planes take off and land, was a miracle. The Los Angeles freeways were a nightmare, but also an engineering wonder to him.
     What does this have to do with me going to San Quentin so many years later?  Well, I needed to know if all of the stories and things I inherited from Bill were really true.  I wanted to see how and where he lived.  We were prepairing a book and a movie script of his life and our research took us to the maximum security prison.  Very few women visited inside the prison, the next woman to come after me was Mother Theresa.
      The jail cells were stacked two or three stories high, facing a blank wall and they went it seems mabe half a football field, I could be exaggerating as I was distracted by the constant noise.  The assistant warden had warned our small group not to make eye-contact with any of the prisoners. They were being lined up to go to the mess hall for lunch. That was difficult. I was the only woman in the group and the slurs and filthy language was pretty much a new experience for me.
      As we toured throughout the yard, the cell blocks, the hospital etc.  we asked the assistant warden about things, shared some of Bills stories and memoirs of the prison. Every once in a while he would look at us and say. . . You know about that?  He varified everything we mentioned that Bill had written about. We knew we had a story and that Bill had a life worth telling about.
       In the coming days I will share with you his story.  He was a kind old man to us. But his life was filled with much more intrique than just spending time playing ball with little girls.

Genelle
    

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