Transcription
5-6-12
I woke up in the middle of the night again to the quiet world inside the little cell I live in at Folsom Prison. It was sometime back in the seventies or it was the eighties. Dates, days, are hard to remember when each day is only a repeat of the day before. I turned on the television, sat to read by its soft light. The channel was not on a news station. There was a baby girl, let's call her Jessica. Jessica was no more than two or three years old, and she had fallen down a well pipe and gotten stuck.
The next morning, it was all the discussion there was at the breakfast table. By noon, that was all any of the men in the prison could talk about, the little girl in the well. For the next three days, that was all there was. Everyone's time was spent seeking more information on how she was doing, why was it taking so long to rescue Jessica.
Things were different in prison back then. Convicts were different, the bulls were different. They were all of a different breed. Everyone was concerned, worried about their little girl. Cons, balls, blacks, whites, Mexicans, Indians—all of us were of the same mind on this issue. This was their own baby, and we could all feel the pain of Jessica's mother and father.
She was rescued, out of the pipe and safe after three days. You could see the fear of tears change to smiles of joy on the face of men who would kill you over a wrong look.
I still wake up in the middle of the night. I'm still stuck in a well.
Steve Burkett
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