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During his days of crime, Darwin Coon was a reckless young man. He robbed five banks in the Midwest and escaped from the Nevada State Penitentiary. At Alcatraz, the isolation and boredom worn Coon down.
"This is 127. This is where I've spent four years of my life."
"And it just starts to squeeze you, starts to close in on you. And I guess it's from the fact that you are in such a small area and not allowed to go any further. You, ah, you lose the sense of reality and, er, you wonder whether you are part of the real world."
Each of these convicts hunger to survive, each struggle for ways to beat the odds and beat the time. For Darwin Coon, his felony sentence meant long hours in his cell.
"Er, there really wasn't much to entertain yourself with on Alcatraz. There were very few guys pace in their cell because it was so small. They, that's all they ever did to themselves. They just lay back and, and, and, and look at the ceiling. "
To keep sane, Darwin read books from the highly-censored library, painted and played an instrument. He also fought the isolation by interacting with his fellow inmates. He even played chess with cell neighbors.
"You have a new chessboard set up. And your opponent would make a move."
"Queen to D4."
"When you caught what he moved, you make the move on the board and then you call your move."
And to communicate with more distant inmates, Darwin discovered some secret survival techniques that inmates kept to themselves. One, use the talking pipe built right in the cell.
"Yeah, Tony, ah? Tonight, it's gonna happen."
"Er, flush your toilet, and then you scoop all the excessive water out, so that you got a clear line, and if he does the same thing upstairs, you have just like a telephone, you know."
"Alright, see you tonight."
But he and all the inmates knew the guards were always listening. To keep their secrets to themselves, Coon and his cell neighbors had another trick- a whistle that told everyone, a guard's on the way.
"Coming Around the Mountain was a, our signal that there was an officer on the tier."
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