A reflection of my year on the Rock
Photo courtesy of Melvin Dean Baker
“The green button starts. The red button pauses. You go up the stairs, walk about 35 feet, and then start the player at the red sign,” I tell the groups of tourists piling off the ferry from San Francisco. As a staff member at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, one of my jobs is to repeat those instructions for the Alcatraz cell-house audio tour dozens of times a day to visitors from around the world.
During the high season, as many as 5,000 people take the tour every day. It’s quiet as a library as guests with headphones pressed tightly to their ears wind in and around the cell house past the famous 1962 escape cells, Al Capone’s old room and eventually outside for stunning views of the bay. The Alcatraz audio tour is arguably among the best in the world, narrated by a former guard and incorporating the voices of other former prisoners and employees, many of whom are no longer alive, making the tour itself an historical artifact.
The start of the audio tour, just beneath Al Capone’s open cell on the second tier. Photo courtesy of Melvin Dean Baker
I washed up on the Rock after my career imploded as a radio news reporter and I needed a gig once my severance and unemployment ran out. Another radio escapee had began…
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