beat. Gather your family and friends, kill a goat, bury it in the coals, and pop a cool one. We’ll laugh, talk, and make music until the sun comes up. Then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
MIKE HALLIDAY
In 1970, I’d been working at Phelps Dodge about a year and a half when I met Panchelli. He was a heroin addict, but a functional heroin addict. And he knew people. We’d been out drinking a few times and we smoked pot together. One day he offered to take me to Juarez, where he knew a guy who would sell us as much as we wanted. And then he would show me where to bring it across.
Just what I was looking for, right? The only problem was I didn’t have any money.
What got me started—what really set things in motion was a camping trip I took with my wife Karen up to Wall Lake in the Gila Wilderness. She was about seven and a half months pregnant at the time, but her doctor said it would be okay. Her father let me take an old school bus he had fixed up for camping.
From the ranger station on the highway, Wall Lake was about eight miles of very rough road. We got there as the sun was going down. Karen was riding in the back and all that bouncing around was not a smart idea. The first thing out of her mouth the next morning was, “I’m going to have the baby!”
So we pack up and head back to the Ranger station. The Ranger’s wife talked to Karen and told her husband to get a helicopter there right now. They turned out to be really great people. They took care of my son Michael John while we flew to Silver City in the helicopter.
Well, evidently, a pregnant couple in a helicopter is a pretty big news day in Silver City. We made the front page of the paper—a picture of us landing in the parking lot. Linda Jean Halliday was born on May 21, 1970. She stayed in the hospital for a little over a week.
Now, because Silver City is a big copper city, some of the bosses at Phelps Dodge got the newspaper from up there. I was still a big story when I got back to work. Before I drove back to Silver City to pick up Karen and the baby, the insurance people cut me a check for $700—made out to me, not the hospital!
That was the thing that really started everything rolling. That $700 got me my first Mexican load.
We were in my mom’s little white Valiant and Panchelli and I are driving along in Mexico with about twenty-five pounds of pot in the trunk. We might have been thinking about how we were going to spend the money—we were definitely not thinking about the speed limit. Not very smart—Mexican cops make a living on traffic tickets.
So this guy pulls us over for speeding and starts talking about going to see the judge. Panchelli got out to talk to him while I freaked out. I knew the guy would take a payoff, but I had spent every last dime on the weed, and Panchelli was a junkie—he never had any money. So he was talking to the cop and pointing to me in the car, and the whole time the cop kept nodding his head.
When Panchelli came back to the car, he told me to take off my watch but act like I didn’t want to give it up. So I kept shaking my head no while I handed to him. That watch probably cost about ten bucks new—it was junk. But that piece-of-shit watch saved our ass that day. We gave it to the cop like it was some kind of solid gold Rolex. He put it in his pocket and let us go. I just hoped we’d get across the river before it stopped running.
Panchelli had me drive to a place he knew down past Tornillo. He told me to carry the load across the river, and he’d drive back over the bridge and meet me on the other side of the levee, where I’d be hiding with the pot.
It was broad daylight, man, but the area was totally deserted. You could see a long way in any direction. I could have stopped and smoked a joint in the middle of the river. I walked across, climbed to the other side of the levee and found a nice little place to stash the weed. After about thirty minutes, here comes Panchelli in the Valiant and away we go.
After a couple of those kinds of deals, I started to get pretty tight with Panchelli’s connection. That was Hector—Hector was the guy. He was connected to Sinaloa—the big fields, the best pot. The problem was, you could only throw so many bags over your back and carry it across like that. What we needed was a four-wheel drive.
JACK STRICKLIN
1970
Bottom to top: Jack Stricklin, Mike and Karen Halliday, Dave and Joyce Blott, ca. 1970
After four months and twenty-six days in maximum security, the Navy drove me to the middle of downtown Boston and let me out. Under their own guidelines, they couldn’t give me a dishonorable discharge so I got a BCD (bad conduct discharge). I honestly didn’t care. I was out—that was all that mattered.
My family had a cabin in Durango, Colorado—that’s where I went first. I didn’t have a car. I had sold my Plymouth when I went in the Navy. My goal at the time was to earn $10,000. I don’t know why I picked that amount or what I would do if I ever earned that much. But that’s what I wanted to do. And I was headed to El Paso to hook up with Mike and Dave.
My parents had no idea how I’d finished out my time in the Navy. My sister Bonnie knew. I’d send her letters and she’d send them to a friend of mine on the ship, and he’d send them to my folks.
I only stayed a couple of days in Durango. About the time I was thinking of leaving, Dad says, “Jack, what are you going to do now?”
“Well, I’m going to El Paso, earn a little money and see some friends.”
“What are you going to be driving?”
“I don’t know, I’ll probably buy some old jalopy when I get there.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Jack. We’re going to shut down the cabin for the winter anyway. Why don’t you take the Scout and drive it ’til you find something else. You can bring it back in the spring.”
“Welcome to Texas,” read the sign by the side of the road. Within range of El Paso at last, Jack Stricklin drummed the wheel to the rhythm of the radio as the four-wheel drive International Scout carried him home. Just to the north, La Tuna Federal Correctional Institute crowned a gradual rise. It was a quiet presence to all but the unfortunate souls housed within.
With the Franklin Mountains just ahead, Jack looked out over Mexico to the south, where primitive huts randomly dotted the small mesa that rose from the trickle of the Rio Grande. Tendrils of wood smoke drifted from makeshift chimneys, merging with the poisonous reek from the towering smokestack of El Paso’s ASARCO lead smelter. As if total poverty was not enough, the riverside colonia endured an air quality that condemned its children to the lethal fate of lead poisoning.
Just past ASARCO and the University, Interstate 10 came to a slingshot curve, skirting the southern tip of Mount Franklin and heading east. The edge of downtown El Paso and its sleepy railroad yard, once so important to the economy, flew by in a blink. Jack Stricklin was back on the border, where the only law that really mattered was: Don’t get caught.
Jack
