DISGRACELAND - Merle Haggard (Pt. 1): A Christmas Robbery Leads To Hard Time at San Quentin

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

Merle Haggard was what authorities liked to call a “repeat offender.” He was arrested for riding trains, for skipping school, for stealing cars, for robbing gas stations, and for attempting to knock over a restaurant – during the Christmas Eve rush. He was committed to juvenile halls, correctional facilities, and reform schools 17 times, and 17 times he escaped. When he was arrested for the final time, he was sent to do hard time at San Quentin. He turned 21 in prison. And it was in prison that he found the freedom he’d been running towards his whole life – freedom that was delivered from an unlikely source. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ This episode was originally published on July 25, 2023. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok⁠See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

The stories about Merle Haggard are insane. He turned 21 in prison, not just any prison, but one of the most hardcore prisons in the country, San Quentin. And though he wasn't doing life without parole, like the song says, he did serve an indefinite sentence of six months to 15 years. He was what authorities called a repeat offender. He was arrested for riding trains, for skipping school, for stealing cars, for robbing a gas station, for attempting to knock over a restaurant on Christmas Eve. He was committed to juvenile halls, correctional facilities, and reform schools 17 times, and every time he escaped. This all happened before Merle Haggard ever made great music.

Music that many would consider the platonic ideal of country music, music that went all the way to number one on the country charts 38 times. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Unpainted Maricopa, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to April Love by Pat Boone. And why would I play you that specific slice of white buck, clean-cut cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 25, 1957. And that was the day that Merle Haggard was arrested for the last time. and sent away to do the hardest time of his life.

On this episode, riding trains, skipping school, stealing cars, doing hard time, and country music's repeat offender. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. He stood at the railroad tracks and waited for the next train. He listened for the lonesome whistle, the rumble of an engine, the high-pitched squeal of steel on steel. He knew those sounds by heart. They were the sounds of escape, of freedom. Sounds that took him far away from here. Anywhere but here.

When he was just a kid, before he ever stepped foot on a freight, he watched people climb aboard the Southern Pacific. He wondered what life would feel like to just go, leave everything behind. He imagined it would be just like it was in the Jimmy Rogers songs. He imagined places miles and miles down the track, places there weren't. in Oildale, this dirt-poor hub of dustbowl migrants. Oakey's and Arkeys, two broke to find refuge in nearby Bakersfield. His father was one of those okeys, proud, hardworking, a provider. But his father was dead. Merle Haggard was just nine when his daddy passed. His mama tried to

raise him better, but, well, with his daddy gone and all, she was busy working full-time to make Enzmy. Merle felt like a loner, like he was in someone else's skin. Oildale meant nothing to him. He passed a time down at the train tracks, watching the boxcar was barrel by. He rode his first box car at age 11, took him all the way to Fresno. That was a day for the books. Not just because it was his first time hopping free. It was the first time Merle Haggard wound up in police custody, and it would be far from the last.

He kept riding. Emerilla, Vegas. L.A. He left time and time again with nothing but a guitar on his back. And if leaving home meant occasionally getting roughed up by the cops, tossed into the back of a patrol car thrown into a jail cell, any of that was better than fucking school. Meryl could handle the cops. Cops were a temporary nuisance. Now the people the cops handed him over to, the teachers, the Truman officers, his mama, they were persistent. They never let up. In turn, they made Merle Haggard persistent in his pursuit of freedom. Why the hell would he sit and listen to a math

teacher drone on about A squared minus B squared equals whatever the fuck when he could be out here, really living? Meryl Haggard wanted to be turned loose and set free. And it wasn't just school. It was juvenile hall or the Fred C. Nell School for Boys or the Preston School of Industry, any of those quote-unquote institutes for lower education, as Merle called them. These places that try to hold him down and cure him of his restlessness. They were staseless. They were adults who couldn't fucking wait to tell you, don't do that.

They were bullshit. So Merle Haggard escaped from every single one. 17 times. 17 times he broke out of whatever institution he was institutionalized in, and he was caught 17 times, and broke out again. No one was going to tell Merle Haggard he couldn't run free. Now, it was 1957, and he was 20 years old. He stared out at the empty train tracks.

and though he was no longer a kid, he still wanted nothing more than to get on a freight and leave everything behind. There was just one problem. It was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve meant that no trains were running. If there were no trains running, then Merle Haggard couldn't get out of town.

And if Merle Haggard couldn't get out of town, well, Merle Haggard was fucked. He was still drunk, so drunk that he felt like he was going to be sick. He doubled over an anticipation of spilling his guts all over the dirt ground. He thought about Leona, how he just left her in the car with the baby,

took off on foot as soon as the patrol car rolled up behind them. He didn't even know why Leona came with him in the first place. She was in one of those moods where she was busy hating his guts. Not that he could blame her. His life as a struggling musician was constantly being overshadowed by his life as a struggling criminal. He couldn't stop doing dumb shit, stealing cars, stealing money, even sleeping around.

The sleeping around and the stealing car is, He did just a dupe, but stealing money, that was necessary. Because he and Leona were broke as shit with one baby and another baby on the way. And there were no good jobs for an honest man anymore. And Merle Haggard was an honest man. But you want to talk honesty, real honesty. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. To Merle Haggard, that was honesty.

And so tonight, Merle and his buddy planned to break into a restaurant after hours and take all the cash in the register. If Leona wanted to tag along, whatever. He knew better than to argue with a pregnant woman, especially on Christmas Eve. Leona turned out to be the least of Merle's problems. He was so drunk that he thought it was later in the evening that it actually was. He thought the place was closed up and empty. He realized his mistake after trying to pry open the back door with a crowbar.

He struggled to Jimmy the door free and then suddenly the thing swung wide open. No thanks to Merle's drunken effort. Standing before him was the owner of the joint. Merle peaked inside. The place was packed. The owner laughed. Why don't you boys try the front door like everyone else? Merle panicked and ran back to the car.

He climbed in the driver's seat. His buddy jumped in the passenger seat. Leona was yelling from the backseat, and the baby was crying. The owner of the restaurant was on the phone to the cops. Merle backed up quickly and then threw it into first. He slammed his boot down on the gas. The wheels kicked up dirt and the car shot off into the night, leaving behind a plume of California.

dust. The cop hanging out a few blocks away saw a car fly by without its headlights on. He hit his brightest shit red lights and fired up the siren. Merle knew the police weren't going to arrest the pregnant woman and her child, but they'd throw the book at him if they caught him. And not just for attempting to break into a restaurant. There was that gas station he knocked over a while back. They hadn't fingered him for it yet, but they would. And there was the hard time he just did, nine long months in the Ventura County Jail for Grand Theft Auto. At some point, the law was going to lock him up and throw away the key. Muriel figured he could escape such a fate by doing what he always did. Escape. So as soon as he saw those red lights behind him, Murrell hit the brakes,

put it in park, opened the driver's side door, and ran. There was nowhere else to run to, no trains to hop, nothing to do but accept what he had coming. He turned around, the train tracks now at his back and raised his hands in the air. And then he was taken to a place he knew all too well. a jail cell. The next morning on Christmas Day, kids in Oildale and Bakersfield woke up to presents under their trees just as they had expected.

At the police station, however, cops found not that something in bed delivered, but that something was missing. The prison cell was empty. Just like old Sandy Claus and just like a train, Merle Haggard was gone. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating

and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits,

and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that. really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending, she doesn't know, but is trying to

cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If he sat perfectly still, the irons clamped around his legs and his wrists would stop rubbing against his skin. It gave him a brief moment to close his eyes and pretend he wasn't here. Then the bus would hit a bump in the road or the guy he was shackled to, would wiggle around, and he'd feel it again, cold steel, biting into his ankles and his hands. And it wasn't just touching his physical body. The irons were clamped around his mind,

and that was clamped tight. He'd fucked up. He fucked up when he tried to break into that restaurant, and again when he busted out of that Bakersfield jail cell on Christmas Day. In his defense, the cell door was wide open. He just walked out. He knew that didn't make it right, but it sure as hell made it hard not to do. The chief of police put out an APB. Merle's picture was all over the news. He kept low and made his way to his older brother's house. He rang the doorbell.

He could hear carols being sung inside. The door opened and the warm smell of the holiday feast waffed it out into the cold night. He looked up. The deputy with a shotgun aimed at Merle's chest wished him a Merry Christmas. The local judge didn't have to look at his rap sheet twice. Shit was as long as a California highway.

persona non grata. There was only one place left for him to go. The drive up from Chino took hours. He could see San Quentin for miles. There in the distance, a monster of lights and smoke that lurked in the January rain. At one point, the bus stopped for food, but he couldn't eat. His stomach was in knots. He was nine years old again, a boy without a daddy, a stranger in someone else's skin. Once inside the prison walls, the knots grew tighter. He was still living. He was still living in out those Jimmy Rogers songs, all right, but instead of waiting for a train, he had moved to in the jailhouse now. And in the jailhouse, the fear took hold. The fear took hold in the form of those invisible irons clamped around his mind, even after the ones around his legs and hands were removed.

They put him in a 9-by-5 cell. Catcalls and whistles bounced off the walls. Blood-curling screams of absolute terror echoed through the halls, and the screams of violent penetration and subhuman violation to begin to shake him. No one was coming to hell. He was on his own in every possible way. Forget about lasting for the entirety of his indefinite sentence. A sentence of six months to 15 years, what the hell was that all about? There was no way in hell he was going to get through one night in this place.

But Merle Haggard had an upper hand inside San Quentin that many of the other condemned men did not. He spent the majority of his teenage years locked up somewhere. He knew how to live on the inside. He also knew how to break on through to the outside. and so Merle Haggard did, in fact, turned 21 in prison, but not before he found himself once again thinking about freedom and about escape. Sometimes escape was in a few chords on his martin guitar. The guitar was the only thing he'd brought inside San Quentin,

and then with good behavior came the chance to play it out in the yard. The music took him somewhere else, somewhere beyond the walls of the prison. It took him back to four years earlier, when he was just 16, holding an entirely different guitar in his hands. A guitar with an oversized Gibson J200 body, Bigsby Neck, Fender, Headstock, the pickguard with the name of its owner etched in gold. Lefty for Zell's guitar was as unique as Lefty. Not unlike Merle, Murrell could sing just like Lefty.

It wasn't a parlor trick, though. It was pure talent. As pure as the sound of his voice. No bum notes, no flats, no sharps, just pure, just like Lefty. Merle wasn't supposed to meet Lefty that night. just watch and perform at the Rainbow Gardens and Bakersfield. But his friend insisted they bust into Lefty's dressing room so that Murdo could impress the man with his impression.

Merle fully expected Lefty's entourage to kick their asses out the door and onto the street, but Lefty had a few pops in him and he was curious. Go ahead, son, let's see what you got. Lefty liked it so much that he asked Merle to go up on stage right then and there and open his show. But San Quentin wasn't the Rainbow Gardens. Merle picked and grinned for a few minutes in the yard before the party was over. He was a flight risk. Thus, he was placed on what they called close custody.

That meant back to your cell by four in the afternoon every day. That meant shut the fuck up playing that guitar. That meant you didn't get to sit in with the prison band at the warden show at night. With no music to take him out of his own mind, Merle was stuck fixating on his tiny cell and this fucked up existence. The roaches under your bunk and that rat shit in your food the guys who got killed before your very eyes. Not killed the legal way either, not by the gas chamber, but by the hands of other inmates.

They hit, they clawed, they stabbed, they bit. Some asshole got a shake shoved into his chest because he said the wrong thing. The blood spurted like water from a kinked up garden hose. Someone else was scalded to death in the laundry room. Others just went crazy, like shitty Fred, named because he was literally covered in his own shit 24-7. Merle had something else all over him. A fungus multiplying on his fingers from working in the laundry room. It ate holes through his nails.

It was fucking gross. He wanted nothing more than a get-out. The fact that no one had escaped from San Quentin in 13 years only made him want to do it more. And Rabbit's plan seemed foolproof. Rabbit, aka Jimmy Kendrick, was doing time for robbery. He told Merle he was going to break out of the joint at a desk. It was huge, solid wood, heavy as a man. motherfucker, who was built for a judge by the prison furniture factory. That was rich. That night,

the truck was going to pick it up and drive it away. The desk was so heavy that no one was going to notice a couple hundred extra pounds inside. In fact, the desk was so big that two people could fit inside. Seem like a sure thing. Rabbit, however, wasn't so sure about Murrow getting involved. You're welcome to come with me, Rabbit told him, but I think you'd be making a huge mistake. Merle gave him a puzzle look. Look, man, I'm doing life without parole, Rabbit explained. There's no chance I'll ever get out of here. But you have a chance.

Six months, 15 years, who knows? But at some point, you will get out. And you can play guitar and sing. I can't do shit. Don't fuck this up. Merrill Haggard didn't enjoy being told what to do, even by hardened criminals. But Rabbit's words made him feel uneasy.

Rabbit's perspective gave him pause. suddenly the sure thing felt like the wrong thing. Merle bailed at the last minute. Rabbit rode that desk out of San Quentin all on his own. A few weeks after his escape, Rabbit shot and killed a cop. He came back to San Quentin. A dead man walked from the yard. Murrow looked over towards the north block.

Everyone in the yard was watching. The chimney above death row coughed up gray smoke. Gray smoke meant that it was done, that the execution had been carried out. Rabbit's death weighed heavy on Merle's mind. That could have been him. He could have escaped with Rabbit. Maybe he would have been there when Rabbit shot that cop.

Maybe he too would have been hauled back here and walked up to that same chamber, that same chair, waiting for that little sack of cyanide to fall into the bucket of acid. And then the world would be gas, and he'd never see anything again, let alone the outside. The only way out of this place was the legit way. parole. But the parole board took one look at his inability to hold down a job inside the prison and decided that he wasn't taking his rehabilitation seriously enough. He was far from ready to walk out the front door.

The more he thought about it, the more he wondered. Did he even want to see what was waiting for him beyond that door? A daughter who wouldn't recognize him? A son he never met? And Leona, pregnant once again, but not by Merle, by another man. Another man sleeping in Merle's bed. wearing Merle's clothes, fucking Merle's wife.

Merle's heads spawned. The prison, Leon, his children. They all gave up on him. What did it even matter? Fuck good behavior and a strong work ethic, and fuck taking this shit seriously. If he was going to be in here for the long haul, he might as well make it interesting.

Might as well get good and drunk, too. He gathered orange peels and apples from the trash, mixed them together with some sugar, yeast, and water, and made, well, I don't know what you'd call it, It wasn't beer and it wasn't wine. It absolutely was some rancid yet potent swill made under extremely unsanitary conditions and served in empty milk curtains.

And it fucked. Fucked Merle up so good that he stumbled when he walked. The guards could smell him coming before they saw him. And when they did see him, when they saw dozens of prisoners suddenly drinking an unusual amount of milk, they knew exactly what was going on. And Merle Haggard knew exactly where he was going.

Isolation. We'll be right back. after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific. FitCon artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.

My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything. And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th,

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Years later, when Merle Haggard was busy sending 38 songs to the top of the country charts, Johnny Cash told him, Hag, you're the guy people think I am. Johnny Cash had that outlaw chic on Locke. One of the most famous songs, Folsom Prison Blues, is about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But Johnny Cash didn't live the life of a criminal, not like Merle Haggard.

Merle's songs, both his originals and the ones he made his own, were all rooted in truth. a truth that he lived. Merle Haggard was authentic. Johnny Cash knew this. Merle didn't just sing about being a lonesome fugitive. He was a lonesome fugitive. His mama did try to raise him better.

He did turn 21 in prison. Okay, he wasn't doing life without parole, but that sounds a whole lot better as a lyric than doing an interminate sentence of six months to 15 years. And as yet another Merle song goes, he'd been everywhere he'd talked about. He did it all. He even got arrested inside prison.

He woke up on a cold cement slab. He tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the tiny room. But his eyes hurt like hell. His head was pounding. And that prison hutch may have gotten him good in his shit face, but it left behind one hell of a hangover. He remembered hearing the sound of the 30-30 cocking. And then the guard yelling his name from up on the catwalk.

But he didn't remember being brought down in here. Didn't matter. He knew where he was. Everyone on the inside knew about this place. They called it the shelf. Sixth floor of the north block. Sometimes a guard brought him a mattress. Hours later, another guard would come take it away.

He didn't have a pillow, so he used the Bible that he found in the corner for a place to lay his head. Seven days of this. Seven days of being stuck inside his own head. But Merle Haggard wasn't alone. He heard voices, voices that weren't his own. Sometimes they were muffled And other times they were clear as a bell Jesus, he was going insane

His own mind finally turned on him Just like the parole board and Leona and everyone else He tried to think of nothing Not the fermented orange peels, not his wife Not a pair of some other girls' tits And definitely not a train, just nothing And that only made things worse though The voices got clearer

His eyes scanned the dark room And there was an air vent on the wall He scooted closer to it, and the voices got louder. Guess what I got? The goddamn man, the first voice said. The second voice quickly answered. Can't guess, what is it? I got the life insurance.

The men's laughter echoed inside the air vent. 100% bona fide gallows humor. Merle didn't recognize the second voice, but he knew the first. Everyone in the inside knew that voice. Everyone on the outside, too. That voice belonged to the most famous prisoner in America. Carol Chesman. A.k.a. The Red Light Bandit. San Quentin's celebrity death row inmate for nearly a decade now.

He was facing the gas chamber for two counts of sexual assault committed during a crime spree. He said he was innocent. He fought his fate with appeal after appeal, close to 50 in total. Sometimes he was walked down to the chamber just minutes from death when a call came through that he'd been given another stay of execution. Merle decided at last to speak up. He was going to go fucking crazy if he did not talk to someone else for seven. days. Chessman? Carol Chesman acknowledged Merle's voice. Uh, how's your appeal going? Very well, Chesman answered. I just talked to my attorney. He isn't worried at all. Chesman sounded so calm, so zen. The guy had to be off as nut. A place like St. Quentin just didn't give up a guy like

Carol Chessman. It didn't matter if he was guilty or not. He was there now, in the belly of the beast. inside a nine-by-five room on death row, just prolonging the inevitable. Merle Haggard could see the inevitable more clearly than ever before. It flashed before his eyes. Not his life at first, his death. He thought about five, ten, fifteen more years inside St. Quentin. If he ever made it that long, and he could catch the end of a sharp knife or clenched fist, maybe worse.

He saw his own body twitching on the floor of the mess hall, bleeding out from his head. He watched as a withered up shell of his former self wheezed out his final breath in the corner of the shelf. He heard the hiss of gas in the chamber as the bag of cyanide hit the acid. His eyeballs started to swell until they were too big to fit in their sockets

and they just burst wide open. He didn't want to ever find out what any of that felt like. He didn't want to end up like rabbit or like Carol Chessman. Chessman was eventually led inside St. Quentin's infamous gas chamber one last time. Once again, Merle and the others watched from the yard as gray smoke coughed out of the chimney above death row. He didn't let it get to him.

In fact, it galvanized him. He was going to get out of San Quentin. It would be hard, doing anything the honest way it was hard. But it wasn't going out like Chesman. He took orders and did as he was told. That was some bullshit for sure, but it was necessary. The prison textile factory was the hardest gig on the inside, so he had to focus, showed him he could do the work.

He got good marks. His close custody designation was lifted. Soon he had more time with his guitar. He could play in the warden's band. He was becoming a model prisoner. A guy determined to make his second parole, he was living his truth. Here's day of 1959, Johnny Cash didn't know Merle Haggard from a hole in one of San Quentin's walls. To Cash, Merle was just another criminal doing time.

Another face in a sea of inmates gathered to listen to Johnny Cash and his band perform, right there in prison. Merle Haggard, on the other hand, knew exactly who Johnny Cash was. not the iconic country superstar that he would later become, and not the Good Samaritan who was making a habit of performing a prisons for a portion of the population that the rest of society ignored. Johnny Cash was a man who made Merle and every last prisoner in San Quentin forget where they were that day. Backed by the Tennessee 2, Marshall Grant on bass and Luther Perkins on guitar,

along with his future wife, June Carter, Johnny Cash made the walls of that place disappear. His baritone went into his microphone and it came up. out of the speakers and the room changed. San Quentin was no longer a prison. There were no blood curdling screams resonating through the hallways, no puffs of gray smoke rising from the chimney above death row. There was no death row. There was just music. And where there was music, there was escape. Merle Haggard sat up front and listened. He heard his escape plan. It was there in Johnny Cash's voice and the click-clacking of Marshall Grant's stand-up bass. It sounded like

the trains he used to listen to as a kid. Johnny Cash didn't know it, but at that moment, he set Merle Haggard free. The door to the big Bakersfield house swung wide open. And Merle Haggard stood in the doorway, the low California desert at his back. He had to pinch himself as he crossed the threshold

and stepped inside. He could hardly believe that this place belonged to him. It was a mansion. The fancy kind of home in the nice part of town, his family never could have afforded back when Merle was a kid. Back when Okies weren't even welcome on this side of the tracks, Merle Haggard had three things on his side now. Time, fame, just like the Southern Pacific headed east.

Merle didn't know what to do with himself. There was so much of it. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and didn't even recognize the guy looking back at him. Just four years earlier, in November of 1960, he walked through an entirely different front door, though this time he was headed out and not in. He left San Quentin. in the dust, paroled after two years and nine months of that indefinite sentence, on account of good

behavior and a strong work ethic. He earned that parole the hard way, day after day in the textile factory. The work was tough, but with Carol Chessman's departure and Johnny Cash's arrival weighing heavy on his mind, he persevered. He was no longer a lonesome fugitive. He returned home and made an effort to work things out with Leona. In fact, she was pregnant again by Merle this time. but she never really forgave him for doing the things he did, for spending so much of their time together locked up somewhere. He'd even miss the birth of one of his children while he sat in a cell, and just because he was no longer in prison,

didn't mean Leona saw much more of him. Merle found work, honest work, playing for guys like Buck Owens and Wynne Stewart. Playing meant late nights out at the clubs in Bakersfield or even touring around California and Nevada while Leona was stuck at home playing housewife. She knew what he did on those late nights and long. drives. It was an escape in more ways than one. An escape from home, an escape from her. Every time he came

home, they fought. Leona didn't give a shit about his sturdy voice. The one that rang pure as a bell and could mimic any of the greats. The one that blew away his hero lefty Frizzell. To her, Merle's authenticity was not a selling point, but instead a black mark on his name. Merle knew he could prove her wrong. He was going to make her a believer in him. First, he made Capitol Records a believer. They made a bet on an ex-con when they signed Merle to a record deal. And the bet paid off huge. The money started rolling in.

One of his first singles, sing a sad song, went to number 19 on the Billboard Country Chart. My friends are going to be strangers released in November 1964 went all the way to number 10. It was this latest hit that Merle was hoping to celebrate as he stepped inside his new Bakersfield home. But something wasn't right. He knew it before he even opened the door. His 57 Chevy was missing from the driveway. The lawn was covered in junk. Papers and toys and debris were everywhere.

Inside, the rinked smell of ammonia hit his nose. Dirty diapers were spayed all over the floor. Covers were emptied and chairs were overturned and trashed was strewn on furniture and countertops. And Leona was gone. So were the kids. From outside, he heard the sound of a lonesome whistle, the clattering of box cars banging down the railroad tracks. He wondered where the freight was going.

He no longer had the urge to run. He didn't do that anymore, hop trains. But he did move forward. Every day was a song, one that he wrote and another that he lived. There was no turning back, even if the road ahead was bumpy. Forward was the way through. The only way. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land.

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we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yelloo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tena Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

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