Bound for the Rock

Tomorrow (later this morning, actually), I’m lucky enough to be heading to tour Alcatraz with friends, the Winston family and part of the Rothschild family. (Thank you, Will.)

I’ve seen the Rock from afar, but will actually get a close-up view for the first time, and it brings up a strange but treasured memory from when I was young.

There was a classic movie from 1962 called The Birdman of Alcatraz starring Burt Lancaster. It’s an old black-and-white picture about an inmate who worked with birds. But when I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8, I had no idea.

I’m sure we saw a promo for a re-run of the old movie on TBS or something. And somehow, my sister, then 5 or 6, and I crafted this character, the Birdman of Alcatraz. And we would take turns wearing a blanket around our neck as a cape and swooping around the den trying to get the other. Michele would say, “I’m a jail bird,” without any idea what that really meant. Just the things that kids do.

It’s goofy. But for whatever reason, all these years later, it has stuck in my head, like so many other seemingly meaningless things that, in all actuality, are the things you remember. And tomorrow when I’m seeing a famous prison for the first time, an unhappy place for a lot of people, I won’t be able to help but think about happy memories.

This entry was posted on June 24, 2019 at 1:57 am and is filed under Family, Movies, TV with tags Alcatraz, Michele McCombs, movie, prison, Rothschild, San Francisco, TBS, The Birdman of Alcatraz, tour, Will Rothschild, Winston. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Raising Two Americans