MARTHA STEWART'S NEW HOME | 2004-09-29
Martha Stewart is being sent to Alderson Federal Prison. I used to live in Alderson. My doctor brother "dodged the draft" by being a prison doctor for two years with the Public Health Service. One of those years was spent at Alderson.
That was about 1956. Two of the prisoners there were Tokyo Rose, a Japanese-American who had broadcast from Japan during World War II, and Axis Sally, a German-American who had broadcast from Berlin during the same period.
They used to hold plays, and in one play Axis Sally played the part of George Washington.
Alderson is a lovely place, very near White Sulfur Springs Resort.
It was off season, and my Austrian bride and I happened to be in White Sulfur Springs. It was my wife's first Thanksgiving in America and I asked where we might get some turkey and so forth. She told us to go to a certain country club.
It turned out that one of the members of that country club had been a traveling salesman. Many times he had been away from home on Thanksgiving. So he had retired to his home town and every Thanksgiving he set out a spread and drinks for absolutely anybody in White Sulfur Springs.
We ate, we got drunk, we met everybody.
As for Martha Stewart, if she had not said her conviction was a "right wing conspiracy," I would be on her side.
I have seen a lot of prisons from the inside. Alderson was the best of them.
A rich liberal deserves much, much worse.