Tired, broke, and homeless, Bill Baker found an unlocked car door and got out of the weather. He lay sleeping there for a while, until a rap on the window woke him up. It was the cops.
He got four years in the Oregon State Penitentiary for attempted car theft. Even though he had no intention to steal the car, nor did he possess the keys.
Thus began a lifetime of revolving door incarceration for this 19-year-old.
He was a hell raiser in the Oregon Pen, and spent much of his time in the hole with other hell raisers. Together they attempted a daring, and nearly successful escape.
Soon after being released he was arrested again, in Portland, for stealing cigarettes from a warehouse. But this time he actually succeeded at busting out of jail. He stole a car for real, and fled to Washington state. That was a big mistake, crossing the state line, because there he was caught and charged with a federal crime for the interstate transportation of a stolen auto.
He was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas. But on the long bus ride, wouldn’t you know it? He tried to escape again. They weren’t having any of that, so shortly after he arrived in Leavenworth, this now 23-year-old recidivist was shipped back West, for the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.
That was in 1957. As inmate #1259, he spent the next two-and-a-half years in this supermax. But he was getting older and wiser. He decided to grow up and make something of himself while in Alcatraz. So he learned a career. He found a mentor, who was a fellow inmate, and this man taught him how to write hot checks.
That earned him multiple stints in prison over the course of his working life. But he finally retired from the business of hot check writing at the age of 80, and began a new, more honest career as a celebrated author. He wrote the book, Alcatraz #1259.
Bill Baker is one of only two former inmates of Alcatraz who is still living. And these days he’s a celebrity at Alcatraz Island, rather than a prisoner. He talks to tourists about his experiences in Alcatraz prison, and signs copies of his book they purchase in the gift shop.
Alcatraz #1259 tells about this penitentiary from an inmate’s perspective. Baker’s writing is raw and candid. There’s no sugar coating, but there’s no bitterness either.
He treats guards and wardens with both respect and contempt, in measures he believes are well deserved. He humanizes fellow inmates. He makes no excuses, nor apologies, for his crimes. And he warns of the consequences for choosing a life of crime.
His writing style is folksy, reflecting his rural Kentucky background. And it’s also friendly and laced with humor. Bill Baker comes across as a down-home character that anyone would love to have as a cellmate.
This seems to be his first and only book, and his dearth of writing experience is detectable through occasional misspellings and unpolished grammar. But that only adds to his story’s authenticity, in my view. It leaves the impression he’s not trying to pull anything over on the reader.
Even so, some passages came across to me as startlingly eloquent and thought-provoking. I’ll just steal a few quotes from this ex-convict, to show you what I mean:
“A water tower rises high above Alcatraz Island shivering on long iron legs in the cold January wind.”
“Happiness comes in small packages in prison. But it comes. It has to get through the gray filter of awareness that you’re locked up. But it gets through, somehow, maybe not as powerful as cruising down the road with the wind at your back and all your red lights green, like when you’re free, but it gets through in smaller portions. It’s all relative. To a junkyard dog a bone is pure heaven.”
“Love is a four-letter word in prison, one you don’t use when fuck will do, for you dare not show your weakness in the middle of a jungle where a spear may pierce that most vulnerable place in your heart. And loneliness is a word you never use even in a whisper.”
“I have no love for the law, nor they for me, but me and the law had a congenial dumb and dumber relationship, they being dumb and me being dumber.”
“If you’re thinking about going into hot checks as a criminal career you might ought to toughen up your immune system so you can eat a lot of rotten prison food.”
“Never make somebody afraid of you, because a coward can be just as dangerous as anybody if he’s afraid you’re going to do something to him.”
“It’s easier to do time if you don’t fight it.”
“THE FIRST LAW OF SPACETIME: Space and time are equivalent, and neither space nor time can exist independent of the other.”
“My church is a place where space is equivalent to time and Mother Nature is equivalent to God. It’s a place also where the good and the bad are equivalent, where neither the good nor the bad can exist independent of the other, for if it wasn’t for the bad there wouldn’t be any good.”
My wife and I met Bill Baker. We shook his hand in the Alcatraz Island gift shop, and he kindly signed our copy of his book. He came across just as folksy and friendly and funny as he comes across in the pages of his autobiography.
Bill Baker is the real thing. The genuine article. And a national treasure. He’s 85 now, and I suspect he hasn’t much space or time left on this Earth. So don’t waste your space or time. Steal a car, write some hot checks, or do whatever else it takes to get inside Alcatraz and meet the man.
But lacking that, just order his book through Amazon.com, and let yourself have a fun little reading escape.
When you get on Amazon, aim your searchlights for Alcatraz #1259, by William G. Baker.
Categories: Reviews
Chasing Unicorns 
Thanks, TG! I am going to add his book to my Must-Read list.
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You’re welcome, and happy reading. Maybe the book will give you some ideas, if you ever need to escape from a tight spot.
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Hehehe! Could happen.
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Too bad he had his experiences prior to internet. Checks are so passe. That does sound like an interesting book, though. I’ll put it on my to-read list.
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Yeah, in today’s internet world he’d probably be a hacker, sneaking into corporate accounts and reducing their electronic balances.
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Of course, how do we know that he isn’t doing that, to supplement his book sales?
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Shhh.
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Ahh! You are stealing quotes again, you can’t help yourself can you. 🙂
Glad you did, for they are interesting. I especially like the happiness quote! That’s great that you and your wife got to meet him and I like how you said he is the “real thing” , that is one of the most important quality’s that a person can have, being genuine!
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You’re right, I can’t help myself. I guess once a kleptoquote, always a kleptoquote.
Bill Baker is definitely the real deal. Though when he wrote hot checks for a living, he may have been someone else.
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No cure for a kletptpquote which is a good thing. You being a kletptopquote benefits us. 🙂
Yeah I guess Bill was one person you didn’t want to get checks from. 🙂
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I believe the “hot” checks Bill Baker wrote, were payroll checks. He apparently counterfeited payroll checks from large companies, then cashed them. So, you wouldn’t want to cash one of his payroll checks.
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So since it’s been determined that you are a kleptoquote perhaps you will have to keep doing it every so often to keep yourself in practice . Just saying. 🙂
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Okay. As soon as I figure out how to steal time, I’ll work on stealing some more quotes.
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Easy! Drink LOTS of coffee, get a caffeine buzz which gives you energy to do lots of things and you don’t need naps because you are full of energy so you have more time!! Problem solved! 🙂
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Turn to drugs, eh? So that’s how everyone else does it. But the problem is, coffee is poison.
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LOL! Yeah, I forgot that one small part.
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I’ve been to Alcatraz and a number of other prisons over the years and this is not a life I think I could survive. He’s had a rather sad life – largely because he was broke and homeless. I’m actually happy that’s he’s found a bit of fame – in a good way – at this stage of his life.
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Yes, at the age of 80 he finally settled down and became an upstanding, law-abiding citizen. He’s even married now. But I guess that’s what you do once you retire from a life of crime.
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It’s better late than never 🙂
… although I wonder if. he reflects on the loss
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Probably so. As we all do when we look back and wonder what would have happened, had we taken a different fork in the road.
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Sounds like quite a character. You might enjoy “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” about a forger of celebrity correspondence. Like Bill Baker, Lee Israel was proud of the quality of her forgeries calling them the best writing she ever did:
In this fact-based drama, author Lee Israel strikes gold in the 1970s and ’80s with a series of successful celebrity biographies. But when tastes shift and her demons begin to disrupt her writing, she turns to forgery to support herself.
Cast Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Jane Curtin, Jennifer Westfeldt, Dolly Wells, Anna Deavere Smith, Julie Ann Emery, Shae D’Lyn, Michael Cyril Creighton, Marc Evan Jackson, Christian Navarro, Alice Kremelberg, Joanna Adler
Director Marielle Heller
Genres Drama, Crime Dramas, Dramas Based on the Book, Dramas Based on Real Life, Period Pieces, 20th Century Period Pieces
Moods Cerebral, Cynical, Witty
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Sounds like a good drama. Something I might want to plagiarize. I’ll keep an eye out for it, on Netflix.
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interesting, sad story!
makes me want to go inside,
not 🙂
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it takes
all kinds
to make this world
interesting
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I love the way you wrote this review, and I definitely want to read the book now. I’d also love to meet him. Glad you got to.
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Thanks. It’s a good read, in my view.
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I’ve been to Alcatraz but didn’t know about this guy. Thanks for this note, about the man and his writing. I need to go see this guy for myself.
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He’s an interesting character. But if you never get around to seeing him, here’s a short interview you can watch:
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