It's Monday morning. I'm back in the real world. I've been home from Arizona for a few days now though I am pretending like I'm not. I wore my Doc Marten sandals yesterday just to prove it!
But as promised, here's more tales from the southwest! This morning's recollection will be of Saturday in Yuma:
We decided not to go to San Diego because of the bad weather they were having and so we slept in and this had ramifications on the day's plan to go to Algadones, Mexico - the marketplace just outside of Yuma, like 10 minutes from Ang's house. So when we did get to the road that leads to the parking lot where the Native Americans (Ang says they prefer to be called Indians there) charge you $3 to watch your car, it was a parking lot, cars everywhere. So we turned around on the side of the road (luckily we didn't get stuck in the sand, there's sand everywhere there!) and a nice Marine let us out. So essentially Mexico was closed for the day. Ang said we'd never get to the parking lot and if we did, we'd wait in line forever to get back to the States. So we drove back to town and found a Jack in the Box for lunch (despite the scary clown on the billboards, the paninni sandwiches are good!) and then stopped by Rite Aid which is closing and had everything on sale (score!). We stocked up for our next stop which was prison.
Downtown Yuma boasts the Yuma Territorial Prison which is now a state park, an a nice one at that. Here's the lowdown on the prison park from http://www.azparks.gov/Parks/parkhtml/yuma.html:
On July 1, 1876, the first seven inmates entered the Territorial Prison at Yuma, and were locked into the new cells they had built themselves.
A total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within these walls during the prisons thirty-three years of operation. Their crimes ranged from murder to polygamy, with grand larceny being the most common. A majority served only portions of their sentences due to the ease with which paroles and pardons were obtained. One hundred eleven persons died while serving their sentences, most from tuberculosis, which was common throughout the territory. Of the many prisoners who attempted escape, twenty-six were successful, but only two were from within the prison confines. No executions took place at the prison because capital punishment was administered by the county government.
Despite an infamous reputation, written evidence indicates that the prison was humanely administered, and was a model institution for its time. The only punishments were the dark cells for inmates who broke prison regulations, and the ball and chain for those who tried to escape. During their free time, prisoners hand-crafted many items. Those items were sold at public bazaars held at the prison on Sundays after church services. Prisoners also had regular medical attention, and access to a good hospital.
Schooling was available for convicts, and many learned to read and write in prison. The prison housed one of the first "public" libraries in the territory, and the fee charged to visitors for a tour of the institution was used to purchase books. One of the early electrical generating plants in the West furnished power for lights and ran a ventilation system in the cellblock.
By 1907, the prison was severely overcrowded, and there was no room on Prison Hill for expansion. The convicts constructed a new facility in Florence, Arizona. The last prisoner left Yuma on September 15, 1909.
The Yuma Union High School occupied the buildings from 1910 to 1914. Empty cells provided free lodging for hobos riding the freights in the 1920s, and sheltered many homeless families during the Depression. Townspeople considered the complex a source for free building materials. This, plus fires, weathering, and railroad construction, destroyed the prison walls and all buildings except the cells, main gate and guard tower; but these provide a glimpse of convict life a century ago.
I found all of this very interesting. And the fact that the prison is still there, as is. We walked into the cells that felt like caves and I stood in the cage in the dark cell (solitary confinement back then) and looked up into the hole where they'd throw scorpions and snakes down to torment prisoners (Ang refused to even walk into the cage with me and yelled when I looked up to take a photo of the hole). But it was a beautiful place really, if you forget that bad people who did bad things lived there. I wonder what our prisons and prisoners today would be like it they had nicer places to be (not that the cells were nice or anything) but the park was nice. I know my dad works with women inmates and they like to make his building look nice with flowers, and they clean it up all the time, they paint, etc. I think people act differently when treated differently. My digression for this blog:-)
So we walked around the park for a while, it was a gorgeous day, the sun out - almost 80 degrees and perfect. We walked some of the trails outside of the prison grounds and smiled as little kids played with sticks in the grass. Then we got the call - Shannon was ready for us to come to San Luis, Mexico where she lives. So the day was saved - Mexico was open after all!
Since it is Monday morning, I have to keep working (I spent the last hour and a half writing answers to dumb questions for a job interview - ugh!), I have class tonight and tomorrow that I need to prepare for. And it's 61 here and sunny so I am going for a walk at lunchtime. But I'll write the rest of Saturday's story some time today!