Not A Lot like Prison

We had so much fun today. The hub and I went to San Francisco where we met a friend we worked with 30 years ago on Alcatraz. Yes we all worked on Alcatraz. We were park rangers when it cost $2 to ride the boat over to the island. The tour was free - still is - you pay for the boat although it costs a whole lot more to go take the boat now than it did in 1979.

Considering that the place was a prison, and a generally depressing place when it was open, we had an unseemly amount of fun when we worked out there. We all had to walk the mile and a half tour route three times a day and it was uphill the whole way. As a result, we were all skinny as rails so all the seventy five cent beer we drank at the Eagle bar had no effect on our flab quota. Sometimes we'd meet somebody in the bar had been on our tour and then - free beer!

Alcatraz was a terrific place to have a party, too. We just had to make sure the beer smell was gone by the time the first tour went through in the morning. Once, a bunch of us decided to spend the night on the island. We went crabbing off the dock and reenacted the bludgeoning murders that happened on the island on the delicious little crustaceans so we could eat them. The bad part was that the night watchman was a vegetarian pacifist who quit his job shortly after our crab dinner. Oops - our bad. We were kind of gross.

We gave good tour, though. Once I was leading my group up the hill and we stumbled upon a group of really tall, very beautiful, half naked women. They saw us and ran screaming into a tent that I had never seen before. I recovered my composure and called to my group. And called again to the men. The other people that were there informed us that they were shooting a Macy's ad and their spotter got distracted (hmm wonder why?). They were very sorry.

I finally wrangled my men back into my group ( I might have lost one short, bald guy but his wife didn't seem to mind). Anyway, I started giving my tour again and looked down at my drab NPS uniform. One lady read my mind and piped up "Oh honey, if you can look good in what you've got on, you can look good in anything." I loved her instantly and wanted her to be my mommy.

Alcatraz was a great place to work and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I think the visitors could tell how much we liked working there - it had to show in our faces, our whole beings. We loved that place - still do - but we can't drink beer like we used to and if we tried to walk one and a half miles uphill three times a day five days a week, we would die.