Evelyn Wiede believes prisoners in the Guadalupe County Jail are treated better than most.
    "They've got home cooked meals, and visitors bring cigarettes, television and radio," she said,  "They say they're treated better here than anywhere else."
    Ms. Wiede is the jailer,  The inmates call her "Miss (pronounced 'mizz') Evelyn" and often they tell her their troubles.
    She's a good listener and she keeps the stories confidential.
    "It's a motherly thing with some of them," she said.   She adds that in her nearly seven years she has never been scared sleeping in the facility, 415 E. Center.
    The 51 year old divorcee has two "prides and joys" in life.
    She has a daughter, Ann, married to Vernon Doege, who is in charge of the Texas Lutheran College bookstore.
    And she has Annie, a half dachshund and half terrier dog which has the run of the building.
    "If any of the inmates got any ideas, she said, "The rest of them would fight for me quicker than anyone else.."
    She credits her rapport with the inmates to the ability to be stern yet fair, to being intolerant of mischief in the cells, yet a willing listener to prisoners' troubles.
    The only trouble she's ever had is the night two prisoners escaped.  It was Apr 28, 1975 when a Guadalupe County man and an inmate from Gonzales escaped from a cell and slipped right beside the room where Evelyn was sleeping.
    Once in the courtyard, they scaled a high, barb wire topped fence and were gone.  One later turned himself in to sheriff's deputies.  The Gonzales man has never been recaptured.
    His escape was discovered at 8 a.m.  "A trustee yelled out, 'miss Evelyn, two prisoners are gone,'  I went up those stairs four at a time," she said.
    "When I got up to the cell and found that devil gone (the Gonzales man) -- that scared me," she said.
    Gonzales County prisoners were held here from November, 1974, to May, 1975, while the Gonzales facility was being remodeled.  The escapees apparently smuggled steel cutting wire into the jail and sawed their way to freedom.
    But Evelyn says matter of factly, "IF Huntsville (state prison) can't hold them, who can?"