San Quentin Beer
The following is a transcript of a Merle Haggard interview done by Larry King (cite below):
“KING: Did you ever get to see death row prisoners?
HAGGARD: I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. We were on a silent system on the shelf and I was there for seven days for making beer. And while I was there I could hear prisoners such as Carol Chessman, I heard him talking about getting a life insurance policy in the mail and that was interesting.”
“KING: Carol Chessman was later executed. Do you say you made beer in San Quentin?”
“HAGGARD: We made beer in San Quentin, just like they make beer at Budweiser, only it was a little better.”
“KING: And for that, you had to be quiet for seven days?”
“HAGGARD: Well, they caught me drinking some of my own beer, and I fell in the restroom and they figured I was drunk, so they took me and locked me up in a jail inside of San Quentin. And that was where I decided to change directions in my life.”
“KING: Merle, before we go to break and then we’ll be taking calls from viewers, how did you make beer?”
“HAGGARD: Well, in the kitchen, you have everything you need. And we had milk cartons in there that we could buy at the canteen, and you just take the ingredients and put it in the milk cartons, and wait a while, and hope somebody doesn’t smell it.”
“KING: And in your case, somebody did.”
“HAGGARD: Somebody did.”
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/16/lkl.01.html
