A guard walks into the entrance of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Walls Unit in Huntsville.This Sig Byrd column was originally published in the Houston Chronicle on Dec. 21, 1955.
A guard walks into the entrance of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Walls Unit in Huntsville.This Sig Byrd column was originally published in the Houston Chronicle on Dec. 21, 1955.You could spend the Christmas season in worse places than inside The Walls, at Huntsville, I reckon.
The visiting rooms, mess halls, laundry, offices and yards are decorated in festive mood with Christmas trees, boughs of evergreen, wreaths and religious pictures painted by R.R. Lyth, a prisoner who is an excellent artist. Inmates employed in shops and factories will get a long Christmas weekend"off." A CinemaScope film,"The Scarlet Coat," will be shown in the recreation hall on Christmas Day.
Pete McKenzie, No. 92616, facing his 33rd Christmas in prison, says he plans to spend the day in the Chapel of Hope, praying for clemency and freedom. Pete drew a death sentence in 1929 for killing a San Antonio policeman. On one occasion, they shaved his head for the electric chair, but he got so many stays of execution that his Death Row number changed over the years from No. 61 to No. 388.
With night warden Guy Williamson, I visited the craft shop, where Cowboy Clint Palmer, the prison's champion saddlemaker, told me he now had $10,000 in savings bonds in his pocket, bought with money earned from sales of his fine saddles. Cowboy also was full of hope.Come to think of it, I have seldom seen more cheerful people in one large group than the prisoners I spoke with on this pre-Christmas tour of The Walls.
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