about how to do it better. And I had a lot of time to think. I was sitting in the Long Beach brig when the ship deployed to Vietnam. I rode the chain from there to San Diego, then to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the Naval and Marine Corps prison.
The prison in Portsmouth was a fucking dungeon. There were some bad motherfuckers inside, maximum-security, maybe the scariest prison I’ve ever been in. You didn’t have to wonder who was a killer—they all were. But in a funny way that worked out for me, because I knew if I could survive there, I could survive anywhere. The prospect of doing time never scared me after that.
A lot of people might have been discouraged to find themselves in a maximum-security military prison. The food was lousy, beds hard, inmates largely homicidal. There was not a lot of fun to be had. But Jack possessed several unusual qualities that would enable him to adapt. One, he was a world-class sleeper. He could take a nap on the business end of a jackhammer. Doing time was a whole lot easier when you were unconscious. Two, he had a knack for making friends to help him pass the time. And three, he could score pot in a convent.
“Dear Mike,” he wrote. “It really sucks in here. It sure would be nice if you could do something for my smile…”
Mike Halliday knew, of course, that all mail in and out of prison was carefully screened. He took it as a personal challenge, meticulously manicuring the finest Mexican pot and packing it perfectly into an emptied tube of Crest toothpaste. He added small nails to achieve the exact weight then resealed the tube in its original box. It was as pristine as the day it left the line. He tossed in a toothbrush for good measure and included a short note.
Dear Jack, Sorry I can’t help you out, bro. I’m afraid this is all I can do for your smile.
MIKE HALLIDAY
I had this guy in Cleveland—a black guy I had sold to when he was stationed at Fort Bliss. He called me one day after he got out of the Army and said he wanted about twenty-five pounds, which I ended up getting from Dave Blott. But I couldn’t take the time off from work to drive it to him, and he didn’t want to come get it.
So the first thing I did was build a bricking machine—my first one. Honestly, it was a piece of shit, but I managed to press the pot into bricks, exactly the size of milk cartons. Then I sealed them with wax—dog proof, right? I packed those milk cartons in an old footlocker and threw some worthless shit on top. Then I went down to the Greyhound station and put it on the bus to Cleveland.
For some reason, the guy in Cleveland never came and got it. I don’t know if he thought the load was hot, or if he found Jesus, or if he was just a chickenshit. But he never picked it up. So I went down to the bus station and had it sent back—it was twenty-five pounds of pot. I wasn’t about to let Greyhound have it.
By the time I got it back, that footlocker had stickers on it from as far away as Detroit, and it was beat to shit. Greyhound sent that thing everywhere. But nobody ever got a sniff of that pot. I ended up fronting the whole load to a guy I knew in El Paso.
A couple of days later, I opened the morning paper and right there in the Borderland section was a picture of those milk cartons. The caption said, “Police Seize Dog-Proof Pot.” It was the first load I ever lost.
Somewhere around that same time, I met these guys from Tennessee. They were just walking around San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso trying to score. So happens one of the guys I worked with at Phelps Dodge, a Mexican dude, he wanted to get a sideline job, so I gave him some of my garbage stuff to sell. And there he was working the Plaza when these guys from Tennessee ran into him. My guy knew he didn’t have enough, so he said, “Okay, I’ll take you to someone I know.” And they all show up in my alley.
Well, I really didn’t have much to sell either. Dave had nothing. So I called a friend of mine—The General. The name was kind of a joke because he took ROTC in high school and he was pretty gung-ho about it. I didn’t do a lot of business with him. He was kind of a nervous kid, not really cut out to be a drug dealer. But he had a decent connection, which was more than Dave or I had then.
It turns out The General had taken all his pot out to the desert and buried it. So we get in his car with a couple of shovels and head east out past Horizon City and Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. We end up about forty miles outside the city limits in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Anyway, we dug up the pot, and I delivered it to the guys from Tennessee—about thirty-five pounds. They probably got a few pounds free because I forgot to bring a scale. But I got a good price and made a nice profit for a couple hours work.
These guys had never seen Mexican pot with the little white seeds before and had no idea what to expect. So we tried it out before they left town. About halfway through the second joint, they were falling all over themselves. They said it was the best pot they had ever smoked. They took my phone number and swore they would stay in touch. But a year later I still hadn’t heard a word.
At this point, Mike Halliday was just another hamster on the wheel, spinning in place as he sifted through the moment in search of spare parts he might fashion into something bigger and better. He and Dave Blott were selling all the pot they could get their hands on, but Dave’s product was overpriced and the quality inconsistent. Mike could only get a kilo or two at a time from his Phelps Dodge connections, but he sensed they were closer to the source than Dave Blott had ever been. A groundswell of pot smokers was emerging in America. And Mike Halliday knew he was standing on the ground that was swelling.
El Paso has always been a smugglers’ paradise, engraved with the colorful legend of a wide-open border town that defined the rules of commerce on its own terms. Smuggling was an important part of the area’s economy and largely viewed with a wink and a nod, as everything from human traffic and livestock to cosmetics and cigarettes flowed freely across the invisible boundary. We were a forgotten city, carved from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and slowed to a crawl by the ceaseless heat of an eternally blazing sun. Not quite Old Mexico, not quite New Mexico, not exactly Texas, but an isolated frontier town with a self-determining soul and an outlaw spirit. Laws were mere suggestions and contraband was just another word for bargain.
Living the better part of your childhood in a border town instills a Latino ethic that defies provenance. The rich and contagious culture became deeply embedded in our lives, heavily accented with the local spice of good friends, fiery food, and a language all its own. But while growing up gringo allowed us to absorb the best of a native heritage, we were spared the worst. The hometown that I knew in the 1970s was a largely integrated city, but not without discrimination. El Paso resided in poverty, controlled by the handful of Anglos who comprised its economic core.
If you were inside the great white bubble, opportunity would present itself. If you were Mexican, you waited at the back of the line. And you didn’t concern yourself with impractical laws that attempted to govern an ungovernable frontier. What stereotyping so unfairly sketched as a mañana mentality was simply an acceptance of the fact that when you’re powerless to make things happen, you have to let things happen.
Mike Halliday was certain that good things would happen within the confines of Phelps Dodge. But all he could do was go to work every day, stack his copper, and continue to build trust with los hermanos, who were beginning to accept him as “Guero,” a light-skinned Mexican. Mike knew he was getting close, just as he knew
