Butch Gets Early Release From Prison Cuz He's Such A Nice Guy.

When slumbering in my convict cell my
childhood days I see,
When I was mother's little child and
knelt at mother's knee.
There my life was peace, I knew no
sorrow or pain.
Mother dear never did think I would
wear a felon's chain.

When I had grown to manhood and evil paths I trod,
I learned to scorn my fellow man and
even curse my God;
And in the evil course I ran for a great
length of time
Till at last I ran too long and was condemned
for a felon's crime.

---

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas! I'm doing a series on two of America's most famous outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They didn't meet until they were in their 30's so I've been talking about them individually. But they ARE getting closer to meeting.

In my last post Sundance/Harry, had decided to do outlaw work full time and had just helped rob a bank and was on foot headed toward one of the well known outlaw hideouts in Wyoming. Butch has been in prison serving a two year sentence for stealing a $5 horse. lol.

The poem above reminds me of Butch and how his mother Annie and him were so close and she tried to steer him away from bad people and bad choices. To no avail.

Life in prison

Doing time in prison at any time in our history wasn't a bowl of cherries but compared to our modern prisons it was rather brutal back then. Butch was sentenced to hard labor and when they said hard labor they actually meant it. By the way, here's where he was sent...The Wyoming State Penitentiary. It still stands but is now a museum:

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The philosophy of the day was to work the men, and a few women, very hard with strenuous physical labor so they wouldn't have enough energy to cause any trouble. They'd be so tired that they'd follow the rules which were very strict.

Anyone breaking the rules, even for a minor infraction were sent to the Dungeon, which was a basement. They'd be handcuffed to a chain hanging from the ceiling and there were no windows. Their diet was bread and water only.

That would be considered torture today but was accepted practice back in the 1800's. At least the bread back then would have been natural, organic, non-GMO and pesticide free. Probably didn't get enough of it though since the whole idea was punishment.

The daily grind

The daily work consisted of cleaning out pens and stalls for the prison livestock, taking care of the prison farm and working in the fields, working on the construction projects they had going on like building walls and additional buildings.

This particular prison manufactured brooms so there was work in their broom factory also. For prisoners with good behavior they had rodeos that they put on and baseball games. During the holidays different groups would come and perform for them just like in today's prisons.

Butch gets pardoned

If you've been reading my posts you know that Butch was a great guy to hang out with. He really was, he was funny, friendly, and had a great sense of humor. Here's his mug shot when he entered prison in case you missed that post:
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He looks very affable doesn't he? Well, of course the prison agreed. He had a perfect record inside and was a model prisoner. When the President of the United States started pardoning alot of inmates Butch put in for a pardon and actually got a meeting with the President himself who granted his pardon straight away. So the President himself was impressed with Butch.

Butch lied like a dog to the President. You know he did! lol. I'm sure he told the President(by the way, it was Grover Cleveland) that he'd learned his lesson and he'd return to being an honest, hard working cowboy, probably even talked about Annie and how he was raised.

You know for dang sure that he swore to stay away from banks!
No one knows how the conversation actually went but I think we know. He got out 6 months early.

Back to outlaw country

When Butch got out he headed straight to Brown's Park where he'd lived quite a few years because it was a place that lawmen didn't like to venture into and many outlaws used the area to hide out. One of his old friends from the Telluride bank robbery, Matt Warner, had a cabin there and Butch moved in with him.

The first thing Butch did after moving in with Matt was to ride to town and pick him up a brand new Colt 45 six shooter like this:

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That's a great gun right there. Colt still makes them too, that should tell you something. Show me something sold in 1894 that is still sold today and is the exact same product. A famous saying goes like this: "God created man. Colonel Colt made them equal." There's alot of truth to that actually. AND women of course.

Butch would say later about his prison time that he went in as a petty thief but came out a hardened outlaw. Gee, I wonder what he'll be up to next?

We'll continue with Butch's story tomorrow where he almost immediately starts robbing banks!

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck

PS- ya know...you might just be a redneck if:

You consider new hub-caps to be a home improvement!