In the years before my friend Brad was transferred to Farson, Wyoming to be the resident Sheriff's Deputy I was the lone lawman. I broke up many fights by myself in the Oregon Trail Saloon until I finally confronted the bartender, a seventy five year old frail man named Albert and told him that I was tired of breaking up fights in his bar, after he allowed his patrons to over drink and then couldn't control them.
Albert was not fit to be bartender and I knew the problem was that the heavy drinkers would push him around after they got drunk and then Albert couldn't handle them. Well for a time after I had confronted him about the problem he seemed to handle the bar better, because for the first time in years I was able to stay home and sleep at night and was not called out.
Then one night I received a call from Albert who told me, "Ya better get down here, 'cause I just shot a guy." Albert had my full attention with that pronouncement and so I dressed and drove the five miles from my house to the Saloon. When I arrived at the Saloon and entered, I found that local EMT personnel were giving aid to young man who was suffering from a gun shot wound to the stomach made by a thirty eight caliber revolver in Albert's hand.
I interviewed Albert who stated, "Well, don't blame me, you told me to handle my own fights in the bar, and when this young fella came over the bar at me I shot 'im." The ambulance arrived at the Saloon and they loaded and transported the man to the hospital in Rock Springs about fifty miles south of Farson and even though he was badly wounded, he lived.
The Sheriff, Jim Stark one of the last true old lawmen of the west arrived at the Oregon Trail a while after the ambulance transported the victim from the scene, along with the county coroner. Jim questioned Albert about what had transpired in the shooting, and Albert repeated to him the same story thast he had told me. Jim then spoke with a number of people in the bar who corroborated Alberts story, he looked around the scene a bit, walked up to Albert and then shook his hand, and told him, "Good job Albert, sounds like a justified shooting to me!" The case was over. Jim was my kind of lawman and I consider myself fortunate to have known him. Albert continued tending bar, and he continued handling his customers who gave him much respect knowing he was fully capable of defending himself.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Ego bruising at the A-D Saloon
The Rock Springs of the 1970's was a wide open town, drugs flowed like water, prostitutes worked openly on the streets and bars were the only home many men had. Rock Springs was a boom town that had grown from a sleepy little berg of eight thousand people to twenty thousand people in five short years. The were people living in tents in the twenty below winter weather, and everyone had money. It was known as sin city and the television program 60 Minutes did expose on the corruption to be found there.
It was my kind of town and my shift mates and I on the Wyoming Highway Patrol gravitated to be there there to assist the Rock Springs City police officers who were sometimes overwhelmed, a shooting or stabbing happening at least once a week. In my rookie year on the Highway Patrol I worked hard to develop a reputation for being the first one in the door any time I had occasion to be called to a fight. Needless to say I became a little cocky and sure of myself and perhaps a little careless as well because I luckily always seemed to prevail in a fight. We tried to be near town on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night because these were the nights when the action took place and I was always ready to back up the city officers when there was a fight in a bar. K-Street in Rock Springs was where all of the prostitution, drugs and bars existed and as I explained before it was truly a dangerous place to work as a cop. One Saturday night I received a call to assist city officers who were embroiled in a fight at the A-D Saloon that was located in the rough area. Being close to town I arrived at the A-D Saloon first, quickly bailing out of my car in front of the bar and running to the front door.
The A-D Saloon was a narrow but very long saloon that had a bar over twenty feet long along the east wall of the building. I saw through the large old fashioned glass windows of the building that the bar was full and I estimate that there were at least two hundred very drunk and rowdy people inside and it appeared that they had several officers pinned up against the wall. I threw the front door to the bar open, and just as I cleared the doorway someone on my left side hit me over the head with a table. I was smashed face first into the floor and the lights went out.
I do not know how long I was unconscious, but when I came to I was in the fight of my life. While I tried to gather my thoughts, my fingers were being stomped on by booted feet and my ribs were being kicked in by unseen persons. I heard people screaming, "Kill the pig, kick him to death." My hat was gone, someone tore my badge off of my chest, my clothing was ripped, but I still had my gun belt and along with it my pistol still in it's holster under my belly. I attempted to gain my feet, but the number of people having a go at me were too numerous and so I decided the best thing I could do was to retain my pistol at all costs and attempt to crawl through the crowd and hit anything with my left fist that came into range.
The first one I struck was a drunken woman who began pulling my hair. I hit her in the face and she collapsed on the floor, everything that happened was a blur, but I fought with all of my strength because it was life or death and I intended to go home to my family. I threw a lot of punches, some landing and others going wild, but my fury seemed to back them off to the point that I was able to crawl completely through the length of the building without anyone being able to knock me out completely. There was several times when I thought I was going to black out from blows to the head, but I was able to keep on crawling. The crowd that surrounded me seemed to diminish, especially after I began to fight back, I showed them that I still had teeth even though I was down, but there were several men continuing to strike me in the head with their fists and still were delivering staggering blows to my ribs, backside and arms with their booted feet. I began to weaken from the affects of the blows and I feared that I might not have the strength to crawl out of the back door.
Then a black angel came to my rescue in the form of Delbert G an investigator for the county attorney, who had been in the area when the fight started. He happened to see me go down and he went out the front door of the bar and ran around to the alley behind the bar, entering the back door with a 12 gauge shotgun in hand. He began butt stroking my assailants away from me with the butt of the shotgun and pulled me out of the back door and to safety in the alley. Delbert stayed by my side and my assailants melted into the crowd of the bar and I was out of the action, but I was glad to be alive and very angry that this had happened to me.
I was taken to the hospital where they checked me out, discovering that my injuries were bruising to most of my body. I was there issued pain killers for the massive pain and released to go home. My poor long suffering wife cried when she saw me. I was covered in blood, tobacco spit, my face, arms and hands were swollen to a much larger size and both eyes were almost swollen shut. The pain pills helped me to sleep, but the next day I truly knew the extent of the bruising, there was not a place on my body spared the beating including the rectal, scrotal area. I truly gave serious thought to discontinuing to my present line of work, but eventually the pain went away and I went back to work. The funny thing is I do not have any rememberance of much of anything that happened after the fight, or of anyone being prosecuted for committing a battery on a police officer. It is as though my mind has blanked it out of my memory, this is probably just as well. Neither my hat and hat badge, nor my chest badge were ever found, or returned. I am sure that they reside in someones trophy case where someone is bragging to his grandchild about the time he kicked the cops butt.....single handedly
It was my kind of town and my shift mates and I on the Wyoming Highway Patrol gravitated to be there there to assist the Rock Springs City police officers who were sometimes overwhelmed, a shooting or stabbing happening at least once a week. In my rookie year on the Highway Patrol I worked hard to develop a reputation for being the first one in the door any time I had occasion to be called to a fight. Needless to say I became a little cocky and sure of myself and perhaps a little careless as well because I luckily always seemed to prevail in a fight. We tried to be near town on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night because these were the nights when the action took place and I was always ready to back up the city officers when there was a fight in a bar. K-Street in Rock Springs was where all of the prostitution, drugs and bars existed and as I explained before it was truly a dangerous place to work as a cop. One Saturday night I received a call to assist city officers who were embroiled in a fight at the A-D Saloon that was located in the rough area. Being close to town I arrived at the A-D Saloon first, quickly bailing out of my car in front of the bar and running to the front door.
The A-D Saloon was a narrow but very long saloon that had a bar over twenty feet long along the east wall of the building. I saw through the large old fashioned glass windows of the building that the bar was full and I estimate that there were at least two hundred very drunk and rowdy people inside and it appeared that they had several officers pinned up against the wall. I threw the front door to the bar open, and just as I cleared the doorway someone on my left side hit me over the head with a table. I was smashed face first into the floor and the lights went out.
I do not know how long I was unconscious, but when I came to I was in the fight of my life. While I tried to gather my thoughts, my fingers were being stomped on by booted feet and my ribs were being kicked in by unseen persons. I heard people screaming, "Kill the pig, kick him to death." My hat was gone, someone tore my badge off of my chest, my clothing was ripped, but I still had my gun belt and along with it my pistol still in it's holster under my belly. I attempted to gain my feet, but the number of people having a go at me were too numerous and so I decided the best thing I could do was to retain my pistol at all costs and attempt to crawl through the crowd and hit anything with my left fist that came into range.
The first one I struck was a drunken woman who began pulling my hair. I hit her in the face and she collapsed on the floor, everything that happened was a blur, but I fought with all of my strength because it was life or death and I intended to go home to my family. I threw a lot of punches, some landing and others going wild, but my fury seemed to back them off to the point that I was able to crawl completely through the length of the building without anyone being able to knock me out completely. There was several times when I thought I was going to black out from blows to the head, but I was able to keep on crawling. The crowd that surrounded me seemed to diminish, especially after I began to fight back, I showed them that I still had teeth even though I was down, but there were several men continuing to strike me in the head with their fists and still were delivering staggering blows to my ribs, backside and arms with their booted feet. I began to weaken from the affects of the blows and I feared that I might not have the strength to crawl out of the back door.
Then a black angel came to my rescue in the form of Delbert G an investigator for the county attorney, who had been in the area when the fight started. He happened to see me go down and he went out the front door of the bar and ran around to the alley behind the bar, entering the back door with a 12 gauge shotgun in hand. He began butt stroking my assailants away from me with the butt of the shotgun and pulled me out of the back door and to safety in the alley. Delbert stayed by my side and my assailants melted into the crowd of the bar and I was out of the action, but I was glad to be alive and very angry that this had happened to me.
I was taken to the hospital where they checked me out, discovering that my injuries were bruising to most of my body. I was there issued pain killers for the massive pain and released to go home. My poor long suffering wife cried when she saw me. I was covered in blood, tobacco spit, my face, arms and hands were swollen to a much larger size and both eyes were almost swollen shut. The pain pills helped me to sleep, but the next day I truly knew the extent of the bruising, there was not a place on my body spared the beating including the rectal, scrotal area. I truly gave serious thought to discontinuing to my present line of work, but eventually the pain went away and I went back to work. The funny thing is I do not have any rememberance of much of anything that happened after the fight, or of anyone being prosecuted for committing a battery on a police officer. It is as though my mind has blanked it out of my memory, this is probably just as well. Neither my hat and hat badge, nor my chest badge were ever found, or returned. I am sure that they reside in someones trophy case where someone is bragging to his grandchild about the time he kicked the cops butt.....single handedly
The Big Fight at Loya's Lounge.
I have been a part of the Mexican/Mexican American culture my entire life. I have loved the Mexican people of good heart all of my life. I am many ways more Mexican than I am white and my Mexican friends call me "Gringo con cola prieta", translation, "white boy with a black butt." I have never been prejudiced in a racial sense and I am glad God wired me that way, my only prejudice as it applies to most folks is stupidity, i.e. acting stupidly when other responses are more applicable.
I started grade school in 1954 in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico at a parochial school where I was one of five white faces in the school. I fought onto the school bus, off of the school bus, into the class room, before and after each recess, lunch and time to go home, the entire time I was there and oh yeah, the nuns slapped me on the knuckles because I wrote with my left hand. I learned at a young age what it meant to be hated because of my race, and it has made me very sensitive to racial issues since then. In 1986 after I lost the election for Sheriff of La Paz County, Arizona, I returned to my home town of Hatch, New Mexico to become re-certified in law enforcement and I worked in that small town for about one and one half years and became re-certified as a police officer. It was not an enjoyable time in my life because we experienced debilitating financial problems, disease that almost took the life of one of my sons, and my precious wife miscarried a child.
The police department was run by a retired Navy Chief who knew little about enforcing the law and was intimidated by the fact that I was more experienced in law enforcement than he. We butted heads continuously until I left because I refused to leave his drunk friends alone when I caught them drunk driving. There was constant contention between he and I.
The particular story I would like to tell involves a Bar called Loya's Lounge. On Saturday and Sunday nights the migrant workers who frequented the bar did so because there would always be a large dance. Invariably there was always a fight, sometimes a big fight that took place in which some of the participants needed medical help. One Saturday night I was working by my self when I received a call to check out a problem at the bar, during a big dance, referencing the fact that a married couple were fighting over a pool game they were playing. I traveled to the bar and luckily the pool table was located near the door and I was able to stop the fight between the married couple and warn them that if I had to return because of them, they would both be jailed. Just as I finished with this couple a fight broke out on the dance floor.
For some unknown reason I forced my way through the crowd to stop the fight between two men. I seperated the two fighters, but suddenly I realized where I was, I was the only white face on the dance floor and all around me stood an untold number of drunk, irritated and malevolent Mexican faces. The fighting commenced with me the guest of honor. Remeniscent of the fight I wrote about in the A-D Saloon, punches began to rain down on my head and body from 360 degrees surrounding me. I began to get pummeled in a serious way, but this time I was not forced off of my feet and I was able to remove my T-stick from my gun belt and began to flail it wildly in an ark, at any person that became to close for my comfort. My stick made contact with many heads in my bid to not be taken down by this dangerous mob. Using the stick I fought my way to the bare front wall of the bar nearest the exit with men punching wildly at me and then I became aware that the knives were coming out.
This particular group of workers were lettuce harvesters and they all carried lettuce cutting knives with long sharp blades, used to cut the head of lettuce from its root when harvesting. When I realized that this fight was indeed becoming serious, I grew more viscious with my stick strikes and trying to disable my multiple assailants with head shots of great strength and intensity. My greatest fear was being taken to the floor and not being able to regain my feet. I continued to try especially hard to punish the knife wielders and so bestowed my most intense effort on them. No matter how I tried I was not able to move all of the way to the door, I was stuck and it appeared that I was not going to prevail in this fight. My stick arm was becoming tired and I was seriously thinking about drawing my side arm and bring this assault to a conclusion.
There is always the danger when in situations such as this that if you draw your sidearm someone might take it away from you and use it on you. Suddenly I felt someone grab the collar of my heavy patrol jacket and literally jerk me off of my feet and then I felt myself being pulled the last few feet through the crowd and out of the front door of Loya's Lounge. I thought it was an attack from behind until I heard a voice say. "You crazy gringo, what the hell were you trying to do in there?" I realized then that my assailant was my savior in the form of my crazy friend New Mexico State Police Officer D. Martinez. Martinez pulled me out into the middle of the street in front of Loya's Lounge and there we both drew our sidearms and pointed them towards the crowd that was boiling out of the bar like a hive of angry knife wielding bees towards us.
Martinez's spanish being better than mine proceeded to tell the combatants that the fight was now over and the first person who took a step towards he and I was dead. The crowd came to a screeching halt and he convinced them to disperse. Most went back into the safety of the bar and others vanished away from us. He and I retreated further towards our parked cars, I caught my breath and Martinez began to laugh at me for getting myself into such a fix. In the mean time we watched as many people were carried out of the bar by others, the victims of the wrath of my stick. I considered the fight to be a draw and I never attempted prosecution of anyone involved. There were just too many of them, and besides I was still in one piece and there were many men leaving for a hospital with broken heads.
This was in a day and in a place where altercations were handled this way, it would not happen this way today. After this fight I never had any trouble again in this bar, sometimes a reputation is a good thing. D. Martinez will have my thanks and loyalty the rest of my life.
I started grade school in 1954 in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico at a parochial school where I was one of five white faces in the school. I fought onto the school bus, off of the school bus, into the class room, before and after each recess, lunch and time to go home, the entire time I was there and oh yeah, the nuns slapped me on the knuckles because I wrote with my left hand. I learned at a young age what it meant to be hated because of my race, and it has made me very sensitive to racial issues since then. In 1986 after I lost the election for Sheriff of La Paz County, Arizona, I returned to my home town of Hatch, New Mexico to become re-certified in law enforcement and I worked in that small town for about one and one half years and became re-certified as a police officer. It was not an enjoyable time in my life because we experienced debilitating financial problems, disease that almost took the life of one of my sons, and my precious wife miscarried a child.
The police department was run by a retired Navy Chief who knew little about enforcing the law and was intimidated by the fact that I was more experienced in law enforcement than he. We butted heads continuously until I left because I refused to leave his drunk friends alone when I caught them drunk driving. There was constant contention between he and I.
The particular story I would like to tell involves a Bar called Loya's Lounge. On Saturday and Sunday nights the migrant workers who frequented the bar did so because there would always be a large dance. Invariably there was always a fight, sometimes a big fight that took place in which some of the participants needed medical help. One Saturday night I was working by my self when I received a call to check out a problem at the bar, during a big dance, referencing the fact that a married couple were fighting over a pool game they were playing. I traveled to the bar and luckily the pool table was located near the door and I was able to stop the fight between the married couple and warn them that if I had to return because of them, they would both be jailed. Just as I finished with this couple a fight broke out on the dance floor.
For some unknown reason I forced my way through the crowd to stop the fight between two men. I seperated the two fighters, but suddenly I realized where I was, I was the only white face on the dance floor and all around me stood an untold number of drunk, irritated and malevolent Mexican faces. The fighting commenced with me the guest of honor. Remeniscent of the fight I wrote about in the A-D Saloon, punches began to rain down on my head and body from 360 degrees surrounding me. I began to get pummeled in a serious way, but this time I was not forced off of my feet and I was able to remove my T-stick from my gun belt and began to flail it wildly in an ark, at any person that became to close for my comfort. My stick made contact with many heads in my bid to not be taken down by this dangerous mob. Using the stick I fought my way to the bare front wall of the bar nearest the exit with men punching wildly at me and then I became aware that the knives were coming out.
This particular group of workers were lettuce harvesters and they all carried lettuce cutting knives with long sharp blades, used to cut the head of lettuce from its root when harvesting. When I realized that this fight was indeed becoming serious, I grew more viscious with my stick strikes and trying to disable my multiple assailants with head shots of great strength and intensity. My greatest fear was being taken to the floor and not being able to regain my feet. I continued to try especially hard to punish the knife wielders and so bestowed my most intense effort on them. No matter how I tried I was not able to move all of the way to the door, I was stuck and it appeared that I was not going to prevail in this fight. My stick arm was becoming tired and I was seriously thinking about drawing my side arm and bring this assault to a conclusion.
There is always the danger when in situations such as this that if you draw your sidearm someone might take it away from you and use it on you. Suddenly I felt someone grab the collar of my heavy patrol jacket and literally jerk me off of my feet and then I felt myself being pulled the last few feet through the crowd and out of the front door of Loya's Lounge. I thought it was an attack from behind until I heard a voice say. "You crazy gringo, what the hell were you trying to do in there?" I realized then that my assailant was my savior in the form of my crazy friend New Mexico State Police Officer D. Martinez. Martinez pulled me out into the middle of the street in front of Loya's Lounge and there we both drew our sidearms and pointed them towards the crowd that was boiling out of the bar like a hive of angry knife wielding bees towards us.
Martinez's spanish being better than mine proceeded to tell the combatants that the fight was now over and the first person who took a step towards he and I was dead. The crowd came to a screeching halt and he convinced them to disperse. Most went back into the safety of the bar and others vanished away from us. He and I retreated further towards our parked cars, I caught my breath and Martinez began to laugh at me for getting myself into such a fix. In the mean time we watched as many people were carried out of the bar by others, the victims of the wrath of my stick. I considered the fight to be a draw and I never attempted prosecution of anyone involved. There were just too many of them, and besides I was still in one piece and there were many men leaving for a hospital with broken heads.
This was in a day and in a place where altercations were handled this way, it would not happen this way today. After this fight I never had any trouble again in this bar, sometimes a reputation is a good thing. D. Martinez will have my thanks and loyalty the rest of my life.
Big Fight at the Oregon Trail Saloon Part II
I transported Butch to the County Jail in Greenriver, Wyoming and booked him into the jail and during the process I was worried about Butch because he didn't look well. Myself and the jailor asked him several times if he wanted to be transported back to the hospital, to which he answered no. After finishing at the jail I sped back to Farson to find out about our lost prisoner.
When I arrived I called Brad and he told me a strange tale. He said that he found the escaped prisoner in a trailer house, but when he attempted to gain access to the house he was accosted by three armed men who denied him entrance to the house. Brad decided to wait until I arrived to negotiate with the men, and so he and I approached the trailer again. The spokesman of the group told us that the man I had the first encounter with was injured badly, but that he was on parole from the Colorado State Pen in Canyon City, Colorado and that if he was arrested he would go back to prison for a long time. These three men gave us the choice of becoming involved in a shoot out with them, or let the man leave.
I did not think that they had the gumption to start a gun fight with Brad and I, but I told them that releasing the man after my encounter with him was a poor idea. They stated that they would guarantee that the man would leave the area and not come back. I consulted with Brad and between us we decided that we would take a chance and cut this fellow a deal. I asked them to return the cuffs to me and I took the three's drivers license information and told them that if he ever returned I would hold them both responsible. This was probably not the best decision I ever made, but I decided to take a chance on him doing what he promised he would do. This event took place in a time and a place in which law enforcement decisions of this magnitude happened quite regularly, I could not, nor would I be allowed to do such a thing in this day.
I returned home after this last encounter and even though I was apprehensive about the outcome of the situation involving the two prisoners I transported to the hospital and jail, I managed to get to sleep about seven o'clock that morning, after cleaning up and inspecting the damage to my body after the fight in which Brad and I were involved. I had numerous cuts, contusion and abrasions from the fight and I suffered some deep bruising to my kidney area that would take a long time to heal, and I probably needed stitches, but I shunned going to the doctor to have it done. I believe I suffered long term damage to my kidneys from the fight and suffer to this day from kidney problems that I believe were caused by the brusing I sustained to my kidneys in the fight.
At about eight o'clock I received a phone call that awakened me from a deep sleep. It was from the County Attorney whom I had supported during his recent election to his office. He initiated the conversation by saying, "Heard you had a fight last night." I acknowled that I did. He then said, "I just wanted you to know that if Butch dies, I intend to prosecute you for his death. I was shocked at first and asked him to explain. He stated that Butch had collapsed in the jail and he had been air lifted to a brain trauma unit in Salt Lake City, Utah with a cracked skull. I asked the County Attorney, "Do you know what happened here last night? Were you told that we were attacked by eighteen people and barely escaped with our lives." He stated that he was only aware that the man had been beaten by me and might die, and he reiterated that he intended to prosecute me if the man died. I lost my temper and made one of my most stupid comments ever. I asked him what the charge was for killing two people, he didn't answer and so I told him that if he was going to prosecute me for doing my job, I thought it might be a good idea for me to drive to Green River, shoot him (the county attorney) and that way I could get rid of two pests for the price of one. He hung up on me and I never had any contact with him again, charges were never filed when the full story of the fight came out with our reports and the statements of witnesses to the fight.
The conclusion of this story is that Butch lived, the man who was hospitalized in Rock Springs that I struck with the stick lived, and the ex-con never came back as he promised. When their trial took place, both Butch and the the man apologized profusely for their actions on the night of the fight to both Brad and I. They pled guilty to the charges, all misdemeanor and paid hefty fines that the judge levied against them. Butch returned to Farson with his crew, and one day my friend Mitch who owned the local restaurant in which Butch's crew ate every day; saw Butch sitting at the breakfast bar in the restaurant looking morose and constantly shaking his head like he was troubled. Mitch approached Butch and asked him what was wrong, Butch said, "Mitch you know that damned cop don't you?" Mitch responded, "Yes, very well!" Did you know he pointed a gun at me the night of the fight?" Again, Mitch answered, "Yes!" Butch then stated, "Do you think he would have shot me?" Mitch responded, "Butch if you knew how close to death you were, you would have run the other direction." Mitch told me later that Butch hung his head and said rather emotionally, "I knew it, I knew it, all I can think of is the barrel of that gun pointed at me and it looked like the end of a 55 gallon barrel.
When I arrived I called Brad and he told me a strange tale. He said that he found the escaped prisoner in a trailer house, but when he attempted to gain access to the house he was accosted by three armed men who denied him entrance to the house. Brad decided to wait until I arrived to negotiate with the men, and so he and I approached the trailer again. The spokesman of the group told us that the man I had the first encounter with was injured badly, but that he was on parole from the Colorado State Pen in Canyon City, Colorado and that if he was arrested he would go back to prison for a long time. These three men gave us the choice of becoming involved in a shoot out with them, or let the man leave.
I did not think that they had the gumption to start a gun fight with Brad and I, but I told them that releasing the man after my encounter with him was a poor idea. They stated that they would guarantee that the man would leave the area and not come back. I consulted with Brad and between us we decided that we would take a chance and cut this fellow a deal. I asked them to return the cuffs to me and I took the three's drivers license information and told them that if he ever returned I would hold them both responsible. This was probably not the best decision I ever made, but I decided to take a chance on him doing what he promised he would do. This event took place in a time and a place in which law enforcement decisions of this magnitude happened quite regularly, I could not, nor would I be allowed to do such a thing in this day.
I returned home after this last encounter and even though I was apprehensive about the outcome of the situation involving the two prisoners I transported to the hospital and jail, I managed to get to sleep about seven o'clock that morning, after cleaning up and inspecting the damage to my body after the fight in which Brad and I were involved. I had numerous cuts, contusion and abrasions from the fight and I suffered some deep bruising to my kidney area that would take a long time to heal, and I probably needed stitches, but I shunned going to the doctor to have it done. I believe I suffered long term damage to my kidneys from the fight and suffer to this day from kidney problems that I believe were caused by the brusing I sustained to my kidneys in the fight.
At about eight o'clock I received a phone call that awakened me from a deep sleep. It was from the County Attorney whom I had supported during his recent election to his office. He initiated the conversation by saying, "Heard you had a fight last night." I acknowled that I did. He then said, "I just wanted you to know that if Butch dies, I intend to prosecute you for his death. I was shocked at first and asked him to explain. He stated that Butch had collapsed in the jail and he had been air lifted to a brain trauma unit in Salt Lake City, Utah with a cracked skull. I asked the County Attorney, "Do you know what happened here last night? Were you told that we were attacked by eighteen people and barely escaped with our lives." He stated that he was only aware that the man had been beaten by me and might die, and he reiterated that he intended to prosecute me if the man died. I lost my temper and made one of my most stupid comments ever. I asked him what the charge was for killing two people, he didn't answer and so I told him that if he was going to prosecute me for doing my job, I thought it might be a good idea for me to drive to Green River, shoot him (the county attorney) and that way I could get rid of two pests for the price of one. He hung up on me and I never had any contact with him again, charges were never filed when the full story of the fight came out with our reports and the statements of witnesses to the fight.
The conclusion of this story is that Butch lived, the man who was hospitalized in Rock Springs that I struck with the stick lived, and the ex-con never came back as he promised. When their trial took place, both Butch and the the man apologized profusely for their actions on the night of the fight to both Brad and I. They pled guilty to the charges, all misdemeanor and paid hefty fines that the judge levied against them. Butch returned to Farson with his crew, and one day my friend Mitch who owned the local restaurant in which Butch's crew ate every day; saw Butch sitting at the breakfast bar in the restaurant looking morose and constantly shaking his head like he was troubled. Mitch approached Butch and asked him what was wrong, Butch said, "Mitch you know that damned cop don't you?" Mitch responded, "Yes, very well!" Did you know he pointed a gun at me the night of the fight?" Again, Mitch answered, "Yes!" Butch then stated, "Do you think he would have shot me?" Mitch responded, "Butch if you knew how close to death you were, you would have run the other direction." Mitch told me later that Butch hung his head and said rather emotionally, "I knew it, I knew it, all I can think of is the barrel of that gun pointed at me and it looked like the end of a 55 gallon barrel.
Big Fight at the Oregon Trail Saloon
During the winter of 1981 the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office transfered a Deputy to the my town, the little town of Farson, Wyoming. Farson is located at the approximate split of the Oregon Trail, and the continuation of the Mormon Trail leading from South Pass to Ft. Bridger and then on into Salt Lake Valley. Farson was as I have written before a tough little town. There was an odd mix of oil field rough necks, coal and trona miners and farmers. I was the first Wyoming State Trooper stationed in Farson and I was warned by the Patrol staff that if I did not get my bluff in on the inhabitants of the Valley quickly they would run me off.
I quickly found that the farmers and ranchers in the community suited me well and I made many friends amongst them in the years we lived there. The rough necks were a different story, they were hard working, hard partying men who were basicly scoff laws who had no use for the new cop in town. The first arrest I made of this group of people took place on the steps of the only grocery store in town in front of many of the residents of the town present to watch. It happened while everyone came to the post office to pick up their mail. I had to fight the drunk young oil field worker in front of all of these people, and then cuff him and take him to jail. This event did a great deal to solidify my authority in town.
During the four years my family and I lived there, I was the only law within 60 miles in any direction. I broke up family fights, drunken brawls in the Oregon Trail Saloon, you name it I did it because I was the only law in town. So when Brad T. the Deputy transfered to Farson with his family, I was ecstatically happy because he would get the 2:00 a.m. bar fights calls from Albert the bar tender, who had allowed them to get drunk in the first place; and then wanted me to break up fights before they destroyed his bar.
Brad T. was a big man with loads of law enforcement experience. Previous to transfering to the Sheriff's Office he had been a Rock Springs City Police Officer for many years. He knew how to handle himself, but he got religion somewhere along the line and had decided to become a peace maker and not a fighter. He now believed that talking was the answer to all the problems of the world and he was dedicated in his new found philosophy.
For some time before Brad's arrival I had been monitoring the actions of a team of seismographers who were tempory resident of Farson while they were running a seismograph survey through the area looking for oil deposits in the Farson Valley. This was a group of hard partiers whom had created a couple of altercations in the Oregon Trail Saloon, and I knew that before they left there would be a big fight to deal with. I was glad Brad was there to deal with it instead of me.
One night I had just fallen asleep at the end of my shift at midnight, when I received a call from the Cheyenne disptatcher stating that Brad was involved in an altercation at the Oregon Trail Saloon and he needed my assistance. I got out of bed grumpily, put on my blue jeans (out of unifrom) a T-shirt, gun belt and boots and headed to my car. I then traveled the three miles from my home to the Oregon Trail Saloon in thick fog that almost obscured the roadway. It was cold and there was about two feet of snow on the ground.
When I arrived I could just make out a large (for Farson) group of people standing in the parking lot in front of the Saloon, and it appeared that they were all very drunk and upset. Brad was also in the crowd talking to a man whom I found out later was named "Butch". Butch was the leader of the seismograph team and he was a big man. Fully 6'9" and weighing over 300 lbs. I got out of my car as quietly and as unobtrusively as I could after parking it out of sight on the edge of the highway and walked over to the front of the Saloon, but away from what was happening to get the lay of the land, so to speak; without interfering with what Brad was doing. As I watched and listened to Brad trying to talk Butch out of his mad, I found that Butch was upset that someone in his crew had left the bar unbeknownst to him and had removed the coil wire from the engine of his Blazer to keep him from driving drunk and he was mad enough to kill whoever did it.
My location was leaning against the front wall of the Saloon about fifty feet away from the altercation trying to mind my own business, but I noticed a man standing a short distance away near the altercation and he was staring at me, while he held a case of beer under his right arm. This man was really glaring at me and I tried to ignore him, but he seemed to become more and more agitated as he stared at me, until he threw the case of beer on the concrete at his feet and began to run rapidly towards me uttering a rebel yell, YEEEEEEEEEEE,HAAAAAA.
Just before he reached my position he jumped up into the air at full speed with his feet pointed towards me at chest level and parallel to the ground with the obvious intent to strike me a devestating blow to the chest with both feet. I simply used my forearm to deflect the blow away from me and then I struck him in the head with a night stick that I had concealed behind my back. The man was knocked unconscious by the blow, my night stick broke in two and he fell to the ground several feet past my position like a rag doll. I immediately pounced upon him and attempted to cuff him behind his back before he woke up.
The proverbial excrement hit the fan when Butch shoved Brad away from him and began bellowing like a bull and running towards me. Still in the process of trying to cuff my suspect, beer bottles began to rain upon my head from the twenty of so seismograph crew members maddened that I had hit their friend. Butch continued his attack towards me and so I pulled my sidearm and began scraming at him that I would shoot him if he didn't back off. To his credit Butch screeched to a halt and began back peddling away from me and into the crowd of his followers who were intent on breaking my skull with anything they could find to throw at me.
I screamed at Brad to, "Get that SOB, meaning Butch and so Brad who was well over 6" grabbed him and jumping upwards placed Butch in a choke hold and pulled him to the ground on his stomach. In the mean time I successfully cuffed my suspect. I dragged my suspect to Brad's pickup and threw him unceremoniously into the front seat of the vehicle and left him there still unconscious. I then went to my vehicle and grabbed a spare night stick and headed back into the fray with the intent of backing off the people who were kicking Brad in the back and sides as he tried to get Butch to give him his hand that he was holding under his body to prevent Brad from cuffing him.
When I reached Brad's location I began to stike out blindly at the crowd of people surrounding Brad who were trying to extricate Butch from Brad's choke hold. They backed off from us but they still continued to bombard us with beer bottles, striking us on the head and back with force and shattering many of them on us. I then straddled Butch's back next to Brad and began screaming at Butch to give me his hand; he responded with an unprintable expletive and so I took a hand full of his greasy blond hair and began to slam his head into the asphalt of the parking lot. He was knocked unconscious and so I extricated his hand from underneath him and we successfully cuffed him.
Still dodging bottles and hard projectiles from the crowd, Brad and I dragged Butch to my patrol car and placed him on his face on the rear seat handcuffed to the rear and locked him in my car. Brad and I both were tired of the bottles being thrown at us and so we went after the crowd attempting to beat them away. One woman jumped on my back and began clawing me in the face with her finger nails and so I reached over my left shoulder and grabbing a piece of her coat pulled her over my shoulder and slammed her into the ground. While I was trying to cuff her an unknown man who screamed at me that the woman was his sister, struck me in the back of the head with a beer bottle almost causing me to lose consciousness, I turned my body towards him and struck him full force with my night stick in the face. The blow knocked him out and he collapsed to the ground, meanwhile the woman got away from me and disappeared into the crowd. I cuffed the unconscious man I struck with the stick and dragged him to the front seat of my car and placed him in the passenger's side of the seat still unconscious.
Meanwhile Brad kept the crowd at bay by grabbing his shotgun from his car, and when I returned to his position he asked me, "Where is the dude you first hit, when Butch attacked you?" I stated, "Isn't he in your truck?" He continued with, "No, he's gone." We both walked to Brad's truck and sure enough the man was gone. By this time the crowd knew they were in trouble and began to disburse away from the area and back into what ever black hole they came from and Brad and I went looking for the suspect. We were walking in the alley behind the general store and the Oregon Trail Saloon when we encountered two men carrying rifles. Brad and I both drew down on them screaming, " Drop your guns!!!" They both did so immediately and then explained that they were merely tying to help us in the fight. I recognized one man as the upstanding citizen type, so we thanked them and asked them to return home. I determined that I was going to transport Butch and the other man to Green River to the County Jail, and Brad would continued to look for the escaped suspect.
We parted and I began the 47 mile trip to the hospital in Rock Springs to deposit my still unconscious sister protector and then from there to the jail in Green River. I did not drive slow. Even though both men looked to be in rough shape I looked in the mirror of my car and saw that blood was caked on my face from scratching finger nails and I had numerous cuts in my hair and the back of my neck from the broken bottles exploding on my head. My Patrol jacket was shredded in places and it looked as though someone may have taken a slice at me with a knife because there was a portion of the back sliced open about six inches. When I arrived at the hospital emergency room I was almost attacked by the on duty emergency room nurses. When they saw the man I had struck in the face with the night stick, his head was swollen to twice it's normal size and both eyes were swollen shut and his nose was broken from the impact of the stick.
They began screaming and berating at me for beating him, but no one said a kind word for doing my job even though it would turn out I was in as bad of shape as he was and didn't know it. I left him in the hospital's care and with my tail between my legs re-entered my Patrol car and continued transporting Butch to jail. (To be continued)
I quickly found that the farmers and ranchers in the community suited me well and I made many friends amongst them in the years we lived there. The rough necks were a different story, they were hard working, hard partying men who were basicly scoff laws who had no use for the new cop in town. The first arrest I made of this group of people took place on the steps of the only grocery store in town in front of many of the residents of the town present to watch. It happened while everyone came to the post office to pick up their mail. I had to fight the drunk young oil field worker in front of all of these people, and then cuff him and take him to jail. This event did a great deal to solidify my authority in town.
During the four years my family and I lived there, I was the only law within 60 miles in any direction. I broke up family fights, drunken brawls in the Oregon Trail Saloon, you name it I did it because I was the only law in town. So when Brad T. the Deputy transfered to Farson with his family, I was ecstatically happy because he would get the 2:00 a.m. bar fights calls from Albert the bar tender, who had allowed them to get drunk in the first place; and then wanted me to break up fights before they destroyed his bar.
Brad T. was a big man with loads of law enforcement experience. Previous to transfering to the Sheriff's Office he had been a Rock Springs City Police Officer for many years. He knew how to handle himself, but he got religion somewhere along the line and had decided to become a peace maker and not a fighter. He now believed that talking was the answer to all the problems of the world and he was dedicated in his new found philosophy.
For some time before Brad's arrival I had been monitoring the actions of a team of seismographers who were tempory resident of Farson while they were running a seismograph survey through the area looking for oil deposits in the Farson Valley. This was a group of hard partiers whom had created a couple of altercations in the Oregon Trail Saloon, and I knew that before they left there would be a big fight to deal with. I was glad Brad was there to deal with it instead of me.
One night I had just fallen asleep at the end of my shift at midnight, when I received a call from the Cheyenne disptatcher stating that Brad was involved in an altercation at the Oregon Trail Saloon and he needed my assistance. I got out of bed grumpily, put on my blue jeans (out of unifrom) a T-shirt, gun belt and boots and headed to my car. I then traveled the three miles from my home to the Oregon Trail Saloon in thick fog that almost obscured the roadway. It was cold and there was about two feet of snow on the ground.
When I arrived I could just make out a large (for Farson) group of people standing in the parking lot in front of the Saloon, and it appeared that they were all very drunk and upset. Brad was also in the crowd talking to a man whom I found out later was named "Butch". Butch was the leader of the seismograph team and he was a big man. Fully 6'9" and weighing over 300 lbs. I got out of my car as quietly and as unobtrusively as I could after parking it out of sight on the edge of the highway and walked over to the front of the Saloon, but away from what was happening to get the lay of the land, so to speak; without interfering with what Brad was doing. As I watched and listened to Brad trying to talk Butch out of his mad, I found that Butch was upset that someone in his crew had left the bar unbeknownst to him and had removed the coil wire from the engine of his Blazer to keep him from driving drunk and he was mad enough to kill whoever did it.
My location was leaning against the front wall of the Saloon about fifty feet away from the altercation trying to mind my own business, but I noticed a man standing a short distance away near the altercation and he was staring at me, while he held a case of beer under his right arm. This man was really glaring at me and I tried to ignore him, but he seemed to become more and more agitated as he stared at me, until he threw the case of beer on the concrete at his feet and began to run rapidly towards me uttering a rebel yell, YEEEEEEEEEEE,HAAAAAA.
Just before he reached my position he jumped up into the air at full speed with his feet pointed towards me at chest level and parallel to the ground with the obvious intent to strike me a devestating blow to the chest with both feet. I simply used my forearm to deflect the blow away from me and then I struck him in the head with a night stick that I had concealed behind my back. The man was knocked unconscious by the blow, my night stick broke in two and he fell to the ground several feet past my position like a rag doll. I immediately pounced upon him and attempted to cuff him behind his back before he woke up.
The proverbial excrement hit the fan when Butch shoved Brad away from him and began bellowing like a bull and running towards me. Still in the process of trying to cuff my suspect, beer bottles began to rain upon my head from the twenty of so seismograph crew members maddened that I had hit their friend. Butch continued his attack towards me and so I pulled my sidearm and began scraming at him that I would shoot him if he didn't back off. To his credit Butch screeched to a halt and began back peddling away from me and into the crowd of his followers who were intent on breaking my skull with anything they could find to throw at me.
I screamed at Brad to, "Get that SOB, meaning Butch and so Brad who was well over 6" grabbed him and jumping upwards placed Butch in a choke hold and pulled him to the ground on his stomach. In the mean time I successfully cuffed my suspect. I dragged my suspect to Brad's pickup and threw him unceremoniously into the front seat of the vehicle and left him there still unconscious. I then went to my vehicle and grabbed a spare night stick and headed back into the fray with the intent of backing off the people who were kicking Brad in the back and sides as he tried to get Butch to give him his hand that he was holding under his body to prevent Brad from cuffing him.
When I reached Brad's location I began to stike out blindly at the crowd of people surrounding Brad who were trying to extricate Butch from Brad's choke hold. They backed off from us but they still continued to bombard us with beer bottles, striking us on the head and back with force and shattering many of them on us. I then straddled Butch's back next to Brad and began screaming at Butch to give me his hand; he responded with an unprintable expletive and so I took a hand full of his greasy blond hair and began to slam his head into the asphalt of the parking lot. He was knocked unconscious and so I extricated his hand from underneath him and we successfully cuffed him.
Still dodging bottles and hard projectiles from the crowd, Brad and I dragged Butch to my patrol car and placed him on his face on the rear seat handcuffed to the rear and locked him in my car. Brad and I both were tired of the bottles being thrown at us and so we went after the crowd attempting to beat them away. One woman jumped on my back and began clawing me in the face with her finger nails and so I reached over my left shoulder and grabbing a piece of her coat pulled her over my shoulder and slammed her into the ground. While I was trying to cuff her an unknown man who screamed at me that the woman was his sister, struck me in the back of the head with a beer bottle almost causing me to lose consciousness, I turned my body towards him and struck him full force with my night stick in the face. The blow knocked him out and he collapsed to the ground, meanwhile the woman got away from me and disappeared into the crowd. I cuffed the unconscious man I struck with the stick and dragged him to the front seat of my car and placed him in the passenger's side of the seat still unconscious.
Meanwhile Brad kept the crowd at bay by grabbing his shotgun from his car, and when I returned to his position he asked me, "Where is the dude you first hit, when Butch attacked you?" I stated, "Isn't he in your truck?" He continued with, "No, he's gone." We both walked to Brad's truck and sure enough the man was gone. By this time the crowd knew they were in trouble and began to disburse away from the area and back into what ever black hole they came from and Brad and I went looking for the suspect. We were walking in the alley behind the general store and the Oregon Trail Saloon when we encountered two men carrying rifles. Brad and I both drew down on them screaming, " Drop your guns!!!" They both did so immediately and then explained that they were merely tying to help us in the fight. I recognized one man as the upstanding citizen type, so we thanked them and asked them to return home. I determined that I was going to transport Butch and the other man to Green River to the County Jail, and Brad would continued to look for the escaped suspect.
We parted and I began the 47 mile trip to the hospital in Rock Springs to deposit my still unconscious sister protector and then from there to the jail in Green River. I did not drive slow. Even though both men looked to be in rough shape I looked in the mirror of my car and saw that blood was caked on my face from scratching finger nails and I had numerous cuts in my hair and the back of my neck from the broken bottles exploding on my head. My Patrol jacket was shredded in places and it looked as though someone may have taken a slice at me with a knife because there was a portion of the back sliced open about six inches. When I arrived at the hospital emergency room I was almost attacked by the on duty emergency room nurses. When they saw the man I had struck in the face with the night stick, his head was swollen to twice it's normal size and both eyes were swollen shut and his nose was broken from the impact of the stick.
They began screaming and berating at me for beating him, but no one said a kind word for doing my job even though it would turn out I was in as bad of shape as he was and didn't know it. I left him in the hospital's care and with my tail between my legs re-entered my Patrol car and continued transporting Butch to jail. (To be continued)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
My Sister Visited by Death.
The little cowtown in which I was raised had a City Marshal, he was pretty layed back and generally a good man. He had one son who was a star football player, who later received a full ride track scholarship as a distance runner. The other son whose name was Santos was another story.
This kid was a bully of the first magnitude, and I had fought him once in high school and lost. He was a gifted boxer who won many amateur bouts, but sadly he used his skills to further his bullying.
My sister who is just three years younger than me is a beautiful and accomplished woman today, attending nursing school and becoming a registered nurse in her late fifties. While she was a senior in high school she dated a tall cowboy from Dalhart, Texas who drove the one hundred or so miles from his home to see my sister and take her out.
One weekend they had a date to attend the dance held at the school gymnasium, which is quite a festive occasion. Everyone comes to the dance, drinking is discouraged, but everyone has a nip or two and generally it is quite peaceful except for the occasional disagreement and short bout of fisticuffs that inevitably follows, but ends quickly.
My sister and her boyfriend were having a great time dancing, when he accidentally stepped on the toe of the bully Santos. The cowboy wanted no problems, and apologized to Santos profusely, but Santos was drunk and looking for a fight and so he took a swing at the cowboy and hit him in the face.
This was a mistake because the cowboy was a big, tough man. In the fight that ensued Santos the bully was whipped badly, the first time that anyone had whipped him ever before in a fight. He should have taken the licking and went home, but instead he pulled himself up off of the floor and told the cowboy that he was going to kill him.
My sister and her boyfriend just laughed it off thinking that it was just the druken boast of s drunk, but sadly this was not the case. After the dance was over and they were walking arm in arm to the cowboy's pickup truck parked in the parking lot, Santos showed up with a high powered rifle.
My sister said Santos said, "I told you I was going to kill you!", then Santos shot the cowboy through the neck, he fell screaming to the asphalt and he bled to death in the arms of my horrified, sobbing sister before help could arrive. If help had arrived nothing could have been done to save his life. Needless to say the trauma of that night haunts my sister to this day.
Santos ran away from town and hid for almost six months in the wilds of the Canadian River gorge with family members, successfully eluding the massive man hunt organized to find him. He later surrendered to authorities and was tried for the crime of second degree murder, a crime committed in the throes of passion, and was acquitted by a jury that was made up mostly of distant relatives.
Some times the legal system doesn't work as it is intended, but I believe there is a higher judge.
This kid was a bully of the first magnitude, and I had fought him once in high school and lost. He was a gifted boxer who won many amateur bouts, but sadly he used his skills to further his bullying.
My sister who is just three years younger than me is a beautiful and accomplished woman today, attending nursing school and becoming a registered nurse in her late fifties. While she was a senior in high school she dated a tall cowboy from Dalhart, Texas who drove the one hundred or so miles from his home to see my sister and take her out.
One weekend they had a date to attend the dance held at the school gymnasium, which is quite a festive occasion. Everyone comes to the dance, drinking is discouraged, but everyone has a nip or two and generally it is quite peaceful except for the occasional disagreement and short bout of fisticuffs that inevitably follows, but ends quickly.
My sister and her boyfriend were having a great time dancing, when he accidentally stepped on the toe of the bully Santos. The cowboy wanted no problems, and apologized to Santos profusely, but Santos was drunk and looking for a fight and so he took a swing at the cowboy and hit him in the face.
This was a mistake because the cowboy was a big, tough man. In the fight that ensued Santos the bully was whipped badly, the first time that anyone had whipped him ever before in a fight. He should have taken the licking and went home, but instead he pulled himself up off of the floor and told the cowboy that he was going to kill him.
My sister and her boyfriend just laughed it off thinking that it was just the druken boast of s drunk, but sadly this was not the case. After the dance was over and they were walking arm in arm to the cowboy's pickup truck parked in the parking lot, Santos showed up with a high powered rifle.
My sister said Santos said, "I told you I was going to kill you!", then Santos shot the cowboy through the neck, he fell screaming to the asphalt and he bled to death in the arms of my horrified, sobbing sister before help could arrive. If help had arrived nothing could have been done to save his life. Needless to say the trauma of that night haunts my sister to this day.
Santos ran away from town and hid for almost six months in the wilds of the Canadian River gorge with family members, successfully eluding the massive man hunt organized to find him. He later surrendered to authorities and was tried for the crime of second degree murder, a crime committed in the throes of passion, and was acquitted by a jury that was made up mostly of distant relatives.
Some times the legal system doesn't work as it is intended, but I believe there is a higher judge.
A Little Compassion.
In my police career I placed my heart and soul into the work of being a law man, because I always felt that I was obeying a higher calling. I have always felt that many times it is only the efforts of one good man, or one good woman that is willing to stand up for what is right, to make the difference between peace and harmony and utter chaos brought on by the forces of evil that abound in the world.
Even though I always gravitated to the small town, rural law enforcement work, I tryed to bring professionalism to my job and always treated each case, no matter how small and insignificant with the same amount of enthusiasm as I would a major murder investigation.
In Hidalgo County a major focus of law enforcement was the interdiction of illegal narcotics being illegally transported across the border from Mexico into the U.S.
Most of the population of the county nearest the border consisted of ranchers and farmers, the very hard working salt of the earth kind who had nothing to do with the illegal importation of drugs, but were constantly having to deal with the effects of a drug war going on around them.
In our attempts to stop the flow of narcotics through our borders we were constantly trying new and unique ways to identify possible drug loads in vehicles being driven north bound on our county roads. One of these strategies was stopping vehicle for any kind of vehicle equipment infractions that we could find to use as a reason to stop a vehicle and search it for drugs. That included stopping them for not having a light that enabled one to see the license plate of a vehicle at night.
I had always objected to using the license plate light as a pretext to stop a suspicious vehilce, because I felt that it was a flimsy excuse for a stop and if I ended up finding a load of drugs in the car it would be hard to explain such a stop for such a minor violation in court. So I discouraged my deputies from using it.
One night I received a call from a local rancher who was a friend of mine, who was so upset he was crying on the phone. It seems that while and his wife were transporting a piece of machinery from one farm to another farm at around midnight, they had been stopped by one of my deputies, for not having a working license plate light on his truck.
My rancher friend went on to tell me how he had fought through Europe during WWII and served his country and had always obeyed the laws and had always paid his taxes and he gets pulled over for not having a light on his license plate and then the deputy wrote him a ticket for it. "What kind of a crazy country is this!"
It took me about an hour on the phone to calm my rancher friend down, and I told him that I would take care of the ticket. The next day I called the deputy in to talk to him. He was a promising young deputy who had just turned 21, just graduated from the state police academy and was quite sure of himself.
I explained the conversation I had with my friend the rancher to him, and told him that I would consider it a personal favor if he would dismiss the citation for the burned out license plate light. He thought about it a few seconds and told me that he would not dismiss the citation, and then quoted the law that stated that it was against the law for me to force him to drop a citation. He stood there defiantly with his jaw clamped shut, prepared to counter anything I had to say.
I did not respond to him for a few seconds, but then I explained to him that while I would not attempt to force him to drop the citation, he needed to understand that sometimes it is necessary to take other factors into consideration when enforcing the law. Such as honoring an old war hero who felt insulted by the frivolous citation he had written him when there was no lesson to be taught or serious infraction of the law with which to be dealt.
His young jaw was set like iron, and he says to me, "No sir....that man broke the law and I will not compromise, I will not drop the citation." I thanked the young deputy for coming in and complimented him on his integrity and he left my office.
I had received a few complaints from citizens that this same deputy was speeding home after his graveyard shift was done in the early morning, so at the end of his shift the next day while I was coming to work, I decided to check this complaint out myself. Sure enough I just happened to clock the young deputy on radar traveling 100 mph in a 55 mph zone traveling home when his shift was done in his county owned patrol car.
I turned on my overhead emergecy flashers, turned my vehicle around and stopped the young deputy. He was very red faced as he stood by the side of his patrol car as I wrote him a citation for speeding 100 miles an hour in a 55mile per hour zone and informed him that he was scheduled for a performance review in my office with reference to breaking department policy for speeding without using his emergency flashing lights and siren.
During his performance review a few days later, happily this deputy changed his stiff persona and had been greatly humbled. He agreed to drop the license plate light citation, and I agreed to drop the speeding citation that would have cost him several hundred dollars in fines and a possible suspension of his drivers license. I counceled him about speeding in his patrol car, and gave him a one day suspension of pay for a first offense infraction of department policy and we had a long heart to heart talk about the law and how sometimes it needs to be applied with compassion.
Even though I always gravitated to the small town, rural law enforcement work, I tryed to bring professionalism to my job and always treated each case, no matter how small and insignificant with the same amount of enthusiasm as I would a major murder investigation.
In Hidalgo County a major focus of law enforcement was the interdiction of illegal narcotics being illegally transported across the border from Mexico into the U.S.
Most of the population of the county nearest the border consisted of ranchers and farmers, the very hard working salt of the earth kind who had nothing to do with the illegal importation of drugs, but were constantly having to deal with the effects of a drug war going on around them.
In our attempts to stop the flow of narcotics through our borders we were constantly trying new and unique ways to identify possible drug loads in vehicles being driven north bound on our county roads. One of these strategies was stopping vehicle for any kind of vehicle equipment infractions that we could find to use as a reason to stop a vehicle and search it for drugs. That included stopping them for not having a light that enabled one to see the license plate of a vehicle at night.
I had always objected to using the license plate light as a pretext to stop a suspicious vehilce, because I felt that it was a flimsy excuse for a stop and if I ended up finding a load of drugs in the car it would be hard to explain such a stop for such a minor violation in court. So I discouraged my deputies from using it.
One night I received a call from a local rancher who was a friend of mine, who was so upset he was crying on the phone. It seems that while and his wife were transporting a piece of machinery from one farm to another farm at around midnight, they had been stopped by one of my deputies, for not having a working license plate light on his truck.
My rancher friend went on to tell me how he had fought through Europe during WWII and served his country and had always obeyed the laws and had always paid his taxes and he gets pulled over for not having a light on his license plate and then the deputy wrote him a ticket for it. "What kind of a crazy country is this!"
It took me about an hour on the phone to calm my rancher friend down, and I told him that I would take care of the ticket. The next day I called the deputy in to talk to him. He was a promising young deputy who had just turned 21, just graduated from the state police academy and was quite sure of himself.
I explained the conversation I had with my friend the rancher to him, and told him that I would consider it a personal favor if he would dismiss the citation for the burned out license plate light. He thought about it a few seconds and told me that he would not dismiss the citation, and then quoted the law that stated that it was against the law for me to force him to drop a citation. He stood there defiantly with his jaw clamped shut, prepared to counter anything I had to say.
I did not respond to him for a few seconds, but then I explained to him that while I would not attempt to force him to drop the citation, he needed to understand that sometimes it is necessary to take other factors into consideration when enforcing the law. Such as honoring an old war hero who felt insulted by the frivolous citation he had written him when there was no lesson to be taught or serious infraction of the law with which to be dealt.
His young jaw was set like iron, and he says to me, "No sir....that man broke the law and I will not compromise, I will not drop the citation." I thanked the young deputy for coming in and complimented him on his integrity and he left my office.
I had received a few complaints from citizens that this same deputy was speeding home after his graveyard shift was done in the early morning, so at the end of his shift the next day while I was coming to work, I decided to check this complaint out myself. Sure enough I just happened to clock the young deputy on radar traveling 100 mph in a 55 mph zone traveling home when his shift was done in his county owned patrol car.
I turned on my overhead emergecy flashers, turned my vehicle around and stopped the young deputy. He was very red faced as he stood by the side of his patrol car as I wrote him a citation for speeding 100 miles an hour in a 55mile per hour zone and informed him that he was scheduled for a performance review in my office with reference to breaking department policy for speeding without using his emergency flashing lights and siren.
During his performance review a few days later, happily this deputy changed his stiff persona and had been greatly humbled. He agreed to drop the license plate light citation, and I agreed to drop the speeding citation that would have cost him several hundred dollars in fines and a possible suspension of his drivers license. I counceled him about speeding in his patrol car, and gave him a one day suspension of pay for a first offense infraction of department policy and we had a long heart to heart talk about the law and how sometimes it needs to be applied with compassion.
A Gift?
A gift I have always possessed, or perhaps I can call it a curse; is the ability to sense evil when it seems as though no one around me can do so. I have walked into a store on many occasions and instantly became uneasy, on the defensive and fearfully begin looking for the source of what is causing the feeling.
If I continue to search the faces, the demeanor, or the body lanuage I will eventually spot the person or persons who is causing me to feel as I do.
In my opinion evil is a real thing that sometimes has control over persons and in some instances even control over animals. I have on several occasions been visciously attacked by dogs in whom I have sensed an evil.
On one occasion many years ago we lived in the town of Deming, New Mexico and I worked for the Luna County Sheriff's Office. Our home was near the north edge of Deming in a small neighborhood in which there was located a number persons it was rumored who raised and fought pitbulls.
One day while seated in the living room watching television with my daughter sitting in my lap, my wife who had been working in the yard, suddenly slammed through the front door of the house obviously enraged by something. Immediately I became concerned by her actions and asked her what was going on. She almost shouted that there was a pitbull in our yard and that he had attacked her and she was going for a gun to kill him.
I jumped up and stopped her and told her that I would take care of the problem. She said that when she saw the dog in our yard she walked towards him with the intent of shooing him out of the yard and away from the kids playing there. She said that when she approached him he did not back off, but began to charge her so she hit him with a rake until he decided to leave. My wife has been around animals all of her life and she was badly frightened by how this dog was acting, she stated that she felt fortunate the dog did not attack her and take her down.
In New Mexico rabies is rampant and there is the constant threat of that dreaded disease, especially around livestock. I immediatey I thought that this dog must be rabid by the description given to me by my wife and so I grabbed a gun and entering my Blazer went looking for the errant dog.
I did not have far to look because he was fighting with two dogs across the street from my house, they in their yard, the pitbull outside. As I watched them fight I saw my elderly neighbor walk to the fence where the dogs were fighting and begin to strike at the pitbull over the fence with a broom in an attempt to turn him away from his dogs. The pitbull began to snap visciously at the old man and several times jumped upward and almost succeeded in grabbing the man's arm in his jaws.
The fight between the dogs began to move down the fence line and towards an open gate in the fence, when I decided that I was going to have to end this dogs life before the fight reached the gate and the dog would be able to attack the old man, this pitbull was not about to quit and run away.
While the dogs were visciously trying to get at each other through the fence, the old mans dogs trying to defend their master from the pitbull,
I drove up as close as I could to the fight and told the old man to back away because I was going to kill the pitbull. He tottered away from the fence and went back into his house and when I felt he was safely out of the way I shot the pitbull one time, killing him instantly.
My elderly neighbor just about pumped my arm off thanking me for stopping a situation that if it had continued would have ended in he being badly mauled at the least and killed at worst and his beloved dogs killed. This pitbull bore scars of many dog fights and it was plain to see that whoever owned this dog had fought him many times before, the dog was in excellent shape physically, and he must have escaped confinement from somewhere close.
I had called the Sheriff's Office where I worked and a Deputy was sent to the scene just about the time the two owners of the dead dog arrived. The instant these men showed up the hackles began to raise up on the back of my neck, and my never failing instinct for the presence of evil told me that here were two that were going to be trouble.
The instant they saw their dead dog the screaming and hollering began, wanting to know who had done such a thing to their fine dog. I owned up to what I had done and it was obvious that if another Deputy had not been there there would have been a fight between us.
No matter how many times I explained the situation and the need to shoot the dog, they would not believe what I said. Finally my elderly neighbor
spoke up and supported my claims that the dog was out of control, and that it amost seemed that the dog was rabid. When this was mentioned to the owners of the dog, the other Deputy asked them if the dog had ever been vaccinated for rabies, and they said yes he had, but the dog had on a dog collar, but no rabies tag on it to varify their claim that he had been vacinated for the disease.
New Mexico state law requires that in this instance the dead dog has to be seized by the officer, and its head must be shipped to the state lab for analysis, to determine whether the dog was rabid. Also the owner of the dog is to be cited for not having proof that the dog had been vaccinated.
This took the fight out of the two men for the moment but I received anonymous telephone death threats for a while after that and so we were forced to keep a close eye on the kids for a while until the emotion of the dog's death subsided.
Based upon the death of the pitbull both of these men were implicated in a dog fighting ring, and I learned later that the dog I had killed was a champion worth a good deal of money. The dog's head was sent to the lab
and it was determined that it was not rabid.
We moved from that location shortly after this incident occured, but it is amazing to me the evil that was perpetrated by those two men against that innocent dog. The two men in my opinion were the embodiment of evil. They trained the dog to be what he was, it is my opinion that a domesticated dog by nature will not attack man unless taught to do so.
I know people who own pitbulls and even though by nature they can sometimes become aggressive, in most instances they are fine and loyal companions and it is man who creates in them the visciousness and blood lust that is required in a fighting dog.
If I continue to search the faces, the demeanor, or the body lanuage I will eventually spot the person or persons who is causing me to feel as I do.
In my opinion evil is a real thing that sometimes has control over persons and in some instances even control over animals. I have on several occasions been visciously attacked by dogs in whom I have sensed an evil.
On one occasion many years ago we lived in the town of Deming, New Mexico and I worked for the Luna County Sheriff's Office. Our home was near the north edge of Deming in a small neighborhood in which there was located a number persons it was rumored who raised and fought pitbulls.
One day while seated in the living room watching television with my daughter sitting in my lap, my wife who had been working in the yard, suddenly slammed through the front door of the house obviously enraged by something. Immediately I became concerned by her actions and asked her what was going on. She almost shouted that there was a pitbull in our yard and that he had attacked her and she was going for a gun to kill him.
I jumped up and stopped her and told her that I would take care of the problem. She said that when she saw the dog in our yard she walked towards him with the intent of shooing him out of the yard and away from the kids playing there. She said that when she approached him he did not back off, but began to charge her so she hit him with a rake until he decided to leave. My wife has been around animals all of her life and she was badly frightened by how this dog was acting, she stated that she felt fortunate the dog did not attack her and take her down.
In New Mexico rabies is rampant and there is the constant threat of that dreaded disease, especially around livestock. I immediatey I thought that this dog must be rabid by the description given to me by my wife and so I grabbed a gun and entering my Blazer went looking for the errant dog.
I did not have far to look because he was fighting with two dogs across the street from my house, they in their yard, the pitbull outside. As I watched them fight I saw my elderly neighbor walk to the fence where the dogs were fighting and begin to strike at the pitbull over the fence with a broom in an attempt to turn him away from his dogs. The pitbull began to snap visciously at the old man and several times jumped upward and almost succeeded in grabbing the man's arm in his jaws.
The fight between the dogs began to move down the fence line and towards an open gate in the fence, when I decided that I was going to have to end this dogs life before the fight reached the gate and the dog would be able to attack the old man, this pitbull was not about to quit and run away.
While the dogs were visciously trying to get at each other through the fence, the old mans dogs trying to defend their master from the pitbull,
I drove up as close as I could to the fight and told the old man to back away because I was going to kill the pitbull. He tottered away from the fence and went back into his house and when I felt he was safely out of the way I shot the pitbull one time, killing him instantly.
My elderly neighbor just about pumped my arm off thanking me for stopping a situation that if it had continued would have ended in he being badly mauled at the least and killed at worst and his beloved dogs killed. This pitbull bore scars of many dog fights and it was plain to see that whoever owned this dog had fought him many times before, the dog was in excellent shape physically, and he must have escaped confinement from somewhere close.
I had called the Sheriff's Office where I worked and a Deputy was sent to the scene just about the time the two owners of the dead dog arrived. The instant these men showed up the hackles began to raise up on the back of my neck, and my never failing instinct for the presence of evil told me that here were two that were going to be trouble.
The instant they saw their dead dog the screaming and hollering began, wanting to know who had done such a thing to their fine dog. I owned up to what I had done and it was obvious that if another Deputy had not been there there would have been a fight between us.
No matter how many times I explained the situation and the need to shoot the dog, they would not believe what I said. Finally my elderly neighbor
spoke up and supported my claims that the dog was out of control, and that it amost seemed that the dog was rabid. When this was mentioned to the owners of the dog, the other Deputy asked them if the dog had ever been vaccinated for rabies, and they said yes he had, but the dog had on a dog collar, but no rabies tag on it to varify their claim that he had been vacinated for the disease.
New Mexico state law requires that in this instance the dead dog has to be seized by the officer, and its head must be shipped to the state lab for analysis, to determine whether the dog was rabid. Also the owner of the dog is to be cited for not having proof that the dog had been vaccinated.
This took the fight out of the two men for the moment but I received anonymous telephone death threats for a while after that and so we were forced to keep a close eye on the kids for a while until the emotion of the dog's death subsided.
Based upon the death of the pitbull both of these men were implicated in a dog fighting ring, and I learned later that the dog I had killed was a champion worth a good deal of money. The dog's head was sent to the lab
and it was determined that it was not rabid.
We moved from that location shortly after this incident occured, but it is amazing to me the evil that was perpetrated by those two men against that innocent dog. The two men in my opinion were the embodiment of evil. They trained the dog to be what he was, it is my opinion that a domesticated dog by nature will not attack man unless taught to do so.
I know people who own pitbulls and even though by nature they can sometimes become aggressive, in most instances they are fine and loyal companions and it is man who creates in them the visciousness and blood lust that is required in a fighting dog.
Compromise.
One time while patrolling the highways on a dark winter night, I began to hear truck driver's complaining on the citizens band radio that a car with a spotlight on the roof of the car was flashing it at drivers as they went by the opposite direction.
I intently began to search for the vehicle causing the problem as I patrolled until suddenly I had an untra bright spotlight shine into my face, blinding me for a second. As soon as I recovered my sight sufficiently I turned my car around and pursued the vehicle with the spotlight with the intent of stopping it.
I closed the distance between myself and the vehicle which was an older brown in color Jeep Waggoneer contained two passengers both in the front seat. I turned on my overhead red lights and the vehicle pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I exited my vehicle with a ticket book in one hand and night stick in the other, not sure what kind of attitude I was going to face with the occupants.
When I aproached the driver's side window, it was rolled down and I saw there a shoddily dressed elderly man behind the wheel of the car and a woman of a similar age as the driver in the passenger seat. I immediately asked the driver to present his drivers license and registrations, and he says, "Why in the hell are you stoppin' me, I aint done nothin' wrong, why aint ya stoppin' them other fellers who aint dimming their headlights?"
Immediately I discerned the problem and told the man that the reason I had stopped him was because he was flashing his spotlight in driver's eyes, and it was blinding them, and that he made the mistake of flashing his light into my face and I was going to write him a citation for unauthorized use of emergency equipment.
From the passenger side of the car I heard the woman reply to my statement, "Serves ya right ya dumb SOB, that'll teach ya not ta dim yer headlights!" I then thought to myself, "These folks need an objective lesson, so I asked the driver to turn on the spotlight that was mounted on the roof of his car. He did so and I then took my night stick and broke the lense of the spotlight with the tip of the stick, and said, "There...that solves the problem.!"
I then issued the driver a citation for the unauthorized use of emergency equipment, and had him sign it, all the while they both were fuming and sulking in the front seat, greatly perturbed that I had broken the light.
I immediately forgot the incident and went home feeling very satisfied with how I had dealt with the problem. The next morning I received a call from my division Sergeant who told me that I was to report to the Office of the County Prosecuting Attorney at 10:00 a.m. that day.
I arrived at the Prosecutor's Office at the specified time and immagine my surprise when I stepped into his office to find that my spotlight flashing couple from the night before were sitting in his office with very smug looks on their faces. The Prosecuting Attorney immediately told me that the couple had come to him wishing to file charges against me for breaking their spot light, and he seemed to have a little smile on his face when he said it. I stated that I thought that was fair, but I proposed a deal. I stated that I would drop my citation for their misuse of the light, if they would not file misdemeanor charges against me for breaking their light.
Things brightened right up in the room upon my announcement, and the man stood up and shook my hand fervently like I was his best friend. The Prosecuting Attorney agreed to the terms and the slate was wiped clean. The couple promised me that they would never shine a spotlight in anyones eyes again, and we parted friends. A little compromise at times is all that is needed to find common ground.
I intently began to search for the vehicle causing the problem as I patrolled until suddenly I had an untra bright spotlight shine into my face, blinding me for a second. As soon as I recovered my sight sufficiently I turned my car around and pursued the vehicle with the spotlight with the intent of stopping it.
I closed the distance between myself and the vehicle which was an older brown in color Jeep Waggoneer contained two passengers both in the front seat. I turned on my overhead red lights and the vehicle pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I exited my vehicle with a ticket book in one hand and night stick in the other, not sure what kind of attitude I was going to face with the occupants.
When I aproached the driver's side window, it was rolled down and I saw there a shoddily dressed elderly man behind the wheel of the car and a woman of a similar age as the driver in the passenger seat. I immediately asked the driver to present his drivers license and registrations, and he says, "Why in the hell are you stoppin' me, I aint done nothin' wrong, why aint ya stoppin' them other fellers who aint dimming their headlights?"
Immediately I discerned the problem and told the man that the reason I had stopped him was because he was flashing his spotlight in driver's eyes, and it was blinding them, and that he made the mistake of flashing his light into my face and I was going to write him a citation for unauthorized use of emergency equipment.
From the passenger side of the car I heard the woman reply to my statement, "Serves ya right ya dumb SOB, that'll teach ya not ta dim yer headlights!" I then thought to myself, "These folks need an objective lesson, so I asked the driver to turn on the spotlight that was mounted on the roof of his car. He did so and I then took my night stick and broke the lense of the spotlight with the tip of the stick, and said, "There...that solves the problem.!"
I then issued the driver a citation for the unauthorized use of emergency equipment, and had him sign it, all the while they both were fuming and sulking in the front seat, greatly perturbed that I had broken the light.
I immediately forgot the incident and went home feeling very satisfied with how I had dealt with the problem. The next morning I received a call from my division Sergeant who told me that I was to report to the Office of the County Prosecuting Attorney at 10:00 a.m. that day.
I arrived at the Prosecutor's Office at the specified time and immagine my surprise when I stepped into his office to find that my spotlight flashing couple from the night before were sitting in his office with very smug looks on their faces. The Prosecuting Attorney immediately told me that the couple had come to him wishing to file charges against me for breaking their spot light, and he seemed to have a little smile on his face when he said it. I stated that I thought that was fair, but I proposed a deal. I stated that I would drop my citation for their misuse of the light, if they would not file misdemeanor charges against me for breaking their light.
Things brightened right up in the room upon my announcement, and the man stood up and shook my hand fervently like I was his best friend. The Prosecuting Attorney agreed to the terms and the slate was wiped clean. The couple promised me that they would never shine a spotlight in anyones eyes again, and we parted friends. A little compromise at times is all that is needed to find common ground.
Pancho's Stolen Guns.
The little village of Columbus has a museum that is housed in the old railroad station that served the railroad that at one time came through Columbus. The building is an old fashioned wooden structure, similar to many built by the railroad in many towns throughout New Mexico. The railroad line was abandoned in the middle 1960's and all of these little stations were either torn down for the lumber, or moved.
The Columbus station is still located in the original location it was in when Pancho Villa raided the town in 1916.
When I was Chief in Columbus in 1989 the museum was robbed of many of the old rifles, and a pistol that were gathered off of the battle field where some of Villa's men were killed as they fled Columbus on the way back to Mexico, by U.S. Army troops defending the town.
Many of the rifles taken were old Kragg Gorgenson bolt actions in 30-40 caliber, and old lever action Winchesters, but the pistol that was taken was one that I had admired ensconced in it's case on previous visits to the museum. It was a Model P Colt, single action revolver in .45 caliber that had a beautiful set of mesquite handles that looked as though they had been hand made by an artisan in Mexico. This revolver is the type seen carried by all of the old western movie stars, Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers and John Wayne.
The rifles were valuable for their historical value, but the revolver not only had historical value, but it had collectors value because it was a 1st generation Colt bearing the serial number of 851 in wonderful condition.The thief had taken the revolver and holding it by the barrel used the handle like a hammer and broke out the glass of the display cases, this caused one of the mesquite grips to fly off of the revolver along with the revolver's main spring, both of which I found on the floor in front of a display case.
When I was called and told about the missing weapons I immediately began an investigation into the crime. I took photos of the damage the thief had done to the display cases in which the weapons were stored for public viewing, and also took finger prints from the glass of the display cases themselves. I did an extra good crime scene investigation because I was aware the the museum board was very upset, and I wanted to make a good impression and solve the case because I was new to the job.
The crime scene investigation itself yielded no suspects, but finally after several weeks I received a tip from an informant who led me to a teen aged boy whose father at one time was a local sheriff's deputy. I was able to get this boy to confess to the theft of the guns, and then he led me to where he had stashed them after the burglary.
After taking the guns from the museum the boy carried them across the street from the museum and into a deep, heavily brush lined wash where he threw the guns into the brush at various locations along the banks of the wash. We found all of the rifles, but we could not find the revolver. He stated to me that when he saw that the pistol was missing a grip panel and the main spring, he threw it in the brush without looking.
I told him that if we had to search the wash all day we were going to find the missing pistol. After a couple of hours of intense searching I finally found the pitol hanging by the trigger guard on a mesquite limb about three feet above the ground.
I was elated to find the missing guns, and the museum board considered me to be the flavor of the month for some time after I recovered the guns, but there was one more problem to overcome. The guns had been left outside for the weeks since they had been taken and they had been rained on which caused their metal parts to have a surface vaneer of rust on them. The museum board decided to have the guns re-blued which would then reduce their value. I tried without success to cause them to just have the guns cleaned only and not re-blued but they insisted. The guns while still retaining their historical value lost much of their collector's value when they were blued.
After the guns were re-blued and placed back in their restored glass cases to be viewed by the public, someone stole the .45 caliber revolver three days after it was replaced in the case. I did an investigation and placed the pistol in the NCIC (National Crime Information Computer) data base, and I have searched for the revolver in every gun show and in every gun shop I have entered since it was stolen, but I have never found it and it has never been recovered by a police agency. I imagine that the revolver is sitting in someones private collecton somewhere and will never be found.
Because the young man who perpetrated the burglary was a juvenile at the time he received a slap on the hands and was released.
The Columbus station is still located in the original location it was in when Pancho Villa raided the town in 1916.
When I was Chief in Columbus in 1989 the museum was robbed of many of the old rifles, and a pistol that were gathered off of the battle field where some of Villa's men were killed as they fled Columbus on the way back to Mexico, by U.S. Army troops defending the town.
Many of the rifles taken were old Kragg Gorgenson bolt actions in 30-40 caliber, and old lever action Winchesters, but the pistol that was taken was one that I had admired ensconced in it's case on previous visits to the museum. It was a Model P Colt, single action revolver in .45 caliber that had a beautiful set of mesquite handles that looked as though they had been hand made by an artisan in Mexico. This revolver is the type seen carried by all of the old western movie stars, Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers and John Wayne.
The rifles were valuable for their historical value, but the revolver not only had historical value, but it had collectors value because it was a 1st generation Colt bearing the serial number of 851 in wonderful condition.The thief had taken the revolver and holding it by the barrel used the handle like a hammer and broke out the glass of the display cases, this caused one of the mesquite grips to fly off of the revolver along with the revolver's main spring, both of which I found on the floor in front of a display case.
When I was called and told about the missing weapons I immediately began an investigation into the crime. I took photos of the damage the thief had done to the display cases in which the weapons were stored for public viewing, and also took finger prints from the glass of the display cases themselves. I did an extra good crime scene investigation because I was aware the the museum board was very upset, and I wanted to make a good impression and solve the case because I was new to the job.
The crime scene investigation itself yielded no suspects, but finally after several weeks I received a tip from an informant who led me to a teen aged boy whose father at one time was a local sheriff's deputy. I was able to get this boy to confess to the theft of the guns, and then he led me to where he had stashed them after the burglary.
After taking the guns from the museum the boy carried them across the street from the museum and into a deep, heavily brush lined wash where he threw the guns into the brush at various locations along the banks of the wash. We found all of the rifles, but we could not find the revolver. He stated to me that when he saw that the pistol was missing a grip panel and the main spring, he threw it in the brush without looking.
I told him that if we had to search the wash all day we were going to find the missing pistol. After a couple of hours of intense searching I finally found the pitol hanging by the trigger guard on a mesquite limb about three feet above the ground.
I was elated to find the missing guns, and the museum board considered me to be the flavor of the month for some time after I recovered the guns, but there was one more problem to overcome. The guns had been left outside for the weeks since they had been taken and they had been rained on which caused their metal parts to have a surface vaneer of rust on them. The museum board decided to have the guns re-blued which would then reduce their value. I tried without success to cause them to just have the guns cleaned only and not re-blued but they insisted. The guns while still retaining their historical value lost much of their collector's value when they were blued.
After the guns were re-blued and placed back in their restored glass cases to be viewed by the public, someone stole the .45 caliber revolver three days after it was replaced in the case. I did an investigation and placed the pistol in the NCIC (National Crime Information Computer) data base, and I have searched for the revolver in every gun show and in every gun shop I have entered since it was stolen, but I have never found it and it has never been recovered by a police agency. I imagine that the revolver is sitting in someones private collecton somewhere and will never be found.
Because the young man who perpetrated the burglary was a juvenile at the time he received a slap on the hands and was released.
Wild Horses?
There is a common misconception in this country with regard to feral horses. There are very few, if any free roaming horses who have not been domesticated at one time and then either released or escaped into the wild. People like to call these horses mustangs, when in reality there is very little if any connection between these types of horses and the horses brought here from Spain by the Conquistadors in the 1500's refered to as mustangs.
In the early sixties in New Mexico there was a rancher in my home town who had a large desert ranch in the area known as the Jornada Del Muerto, the journey of death. This area about one hundred miles long and situated between two mountain ranges was traveled extensively by the early Mexican settlers in New Mexico, because it was safer to travel the Jornada and risk dying of thirst, rather than following the well established trail along the Rio Grande where there was water and risk death by the hand of the Apache.
This is harsh desert land and it suffers no fools, but Pete Graham and his father had operated a re-mount station and raised fine thorobred horses to be sold to the U.S. Cavalry in the late 1800's and early 1900's. When the horse market began to decline in the 1920's and 30's Pete and his dad began to run cattle on their ranch. Pete told me when I was a kid that he could not bear to sell his mare herd so they just let them run wild on the ranch.
By the early sixties the horses on the ranch were so inbred that it was almost impossible to find a solid horse in the herd, there were paints, and grullas and even appaloosas, but few solid colored horses that were worth anything as saddle horses.
Pete allowed us kids to search the herd of horses that at that time amounted to over two hundred animals, and then when we found what we were looking for he would sell us the horse we picked for $25.00., The only trouble being that we had to catch it and get it home. An intimidating job even to us young cowboys with the skills to do it.
My friend Dale and I searched that herd for a long time until we found a nice looking little yearling grulla stud colt that we liked. We set a date to go after him and when the time came we loaded Dale's dad's big gentle stud horse Buttons in the back of their four wheel drive pickup and drove the thirty some odd miles to the Graham Ranch full of anticipation of the thought of trapping this youngster.
Pete Graham built corrals around all of his wind mills for the express purpose of making it easier to trap cattle and horses when they came to water. We went to the well that we knew the herd of horses our little horse belonged to came to water, and there we set the gates open and ready for when the horses came to water in the middle of the day.
We hid the pickup and Buttons the stud in a wash far from the well, and then we hid in the brush ready to jump from hiding and close the gates on the herd when they came in. We didn't have long to wait and when the herd came thundering through the corral gate, we closed the gate and were pleased to find our little horse in the group.
We then sorted out the horses we didn't want back out the gate and they thundered away, the horse we wanted was the only one left in the pen. We retrieved the pickup and backed it up to the loading chute built into the lumber corrals, and then using Buttons we roped the colt by the neck and pulled him up the chute and into the back of the pickup.
We then loaded Buttons into the back of the truck next to the stud colt, and wise old Buttons who had performed this service many times before pushed the much smaller colt against the side of the truck rails and kept him from being able to jump out of the truck as we hauled him down the road.
Dale and I were really excited to return home and begin to work with this young horse, whom we hoped would be trained into a good stock horse. The colt traveled very well down the road with Buttons nudging him when needed and we soon made it back to Dale's dad's place with our prize.
The young horse was perhaps the wildest horse I have ever been around. We were quite concerned that he might try to jump out of the tall corrals at Dale's dad's place. These corrals had been built specifically to contain the wildest horses and cattle, and it seemed that wild horses and cattle were the only kind of animals to be found in this western land.The corrals consisted of ten foot tall tornio posts stacked vertically side by side and then tied into heavy wire stretched between telephone poles that were stuck into the ground two feet deep, the posts shaped into a rectangle about two hundred feet in circumfrance. The pole tied side by side made an inpenetrable barrier that kept in the largest and wildest bulls.
We decided that after we unloaded him from the truck we would then tie a large tire around his neck to stop him from trying to jump out of the corral. We roped the colt, tied the tire to his neck and then let him up. He began looking wildly around the corral for a place to escape, and suddenly when he realized he could move after being confined for so long by Buttons and us, began dragging the tire with him and then backed his butt into the furthest corner of the large corral. He then took off as fast as he could run with the tire around his neck running towards the opposite sides of the corral and then leaping with all of his might straddled his belly on the sharpened tips of the corral poles.
The tips of the poles impaled him, but he struggled until he pushed his whole body over the fence and struc the ground hard, then with his intestines dragging behind him took off in a lope towards the Rio Grande a half mile away. Horrified at what we had just seen, we saddled horses as quickly as possible and went after the doomed colt.
We tracked him by the blood trail he left, but then we lost him in the heavy brush near the river that is almost impossible to ride through on a horse. Dale and I searched all that day, but we did not find the colt and we assumed that he struggled as deeply as he could into the dense brush and died from massive blood loss. We were heart broken and at that time of my life I had never seen anything as horrfying as this happen to an animal.
Although we searched when we could for months afterwards we never found the little colt's body who chose freedom over confinement. Perhaps his death was a freedom to him. Some horses can never be tamed, they will not accept confinement. I have never forgotten the death of this horse and so many times after this event occured I wished that we had never caught the beautiful little colt, and had just let him run free.
In the early sixties in New Mexico there was a rancher in my home town who had a large desert ranch in the area known as the Jornada Del Muerto, the journey of death. This area about one hundred miles long and situated between two mountain ranges was traveled extensively by the early Mexican settlers in New Mexico, because it was safer to travel the Jornada and risk dying of thirst, rather than following the well established trail along the Rio Grande where there was water and risk death by the hand of the Apache.
This is harsh desert land and it suffers no fools, but Pete Graham and his father had operated a re-mount station and raised fine thorobred horses to be sold to the U.S. Cavalry in the late 1800's and early 1900's. When the horse market began to decline in the 1920's and 30's Pete and his dad began to run cattle on their ranch. Pete told me when I was a kid that he could not bear to sell his mare herd so they just let them run wild on the ranch.
By the early sixties the horses on the ranch were so inbred that it was almost impossible to find a solid horse in the herd, there were paints, and grullas and even appaloosas, but few solid colored horses that were worth anything as saddle horses.
Pete allowed us kids to search the herd of horses that at that time amounted to over two hundred animals, and then when we found what we were looking for he would sell us the horse we picked for $25.00., The only trouble being that we had to catch it and get it home. An intimidating job even to us young cowboys with the skills to do it.
My friend Dale and I searched that herd for a long time until we found a nice looking little yearling grulla stud colt that we liked. We set a date to go after him and when the time came we loaded Dale's dad's big gentle stud horse Buttons in the back of their four wheel drive pickup and drove the thirty some odd miles to the Graham Ranch full of anticipation of the thought of trapping this youngster.
Pete Graham built corrals around all of his wind mills for the express purpose of making it easier to trap cattle and horses when they came to water. We went to the well that we knew the herd of horses our little horse belonged to came to water, and there we set the gates open and ready for when the horses came to water in the middle of the day.
We hid the pickup and Buttons the stud in a wash far from the well, and then we hid in the brush ready to jump from hiding and close the gates on the herd when they came in. We didn't have long to wait and when the herd came thundering through the corral gate, we closed the gate and were pleased to find our little horse in the group.
We then sorted out the horses we didn't want back out the gate and they thundered away, the horse we wanted was the only one left in the pen. We retrieved the pickup and backed it up to the loading chute built into the lumber corrals, and then using Buttons we roped the colt by the neck and pulled him up the chute and into the back of the pickup.
We then loaded Buttons into the back of the truck next to the stud colt, and wise old Buttons who had performed this service many times before pushed the much smaller colt against the side of the truck rails and kept him from being able to jump out of the truck as we hauled him down the road.
Dale and I were really excited to return home and begin to work with this young horse, whom we hoped would be trained into a good stock horse. The colt traveled very well down the road with Buttons nudging him when needed and we soon made it back to Dale's dad's place with our prize.
The young horse was perhaps the wildest horse I have ever been around. We were quite concerned that he might try to jump out of the tall corrals at Dale's dad's place. These corrals had been built specifically to contain the wildest horses and cattle, and it seemed that wild horses and cattle were the only kind of animals to be found in this western land.The corrals consisted of ten foot tall tornio posts stacked vertically side by side and then tied into heavy wire stretched between telephone poles that were stuck into the ground two feet deep, the posts shaped into a rectangle about two hundred feet in circumfrance. The pole tied side by side made an inpenetrable barrier that kept in the largest and wildest bulls.
We decided that after we unloaded him from the truck we would then tie a large tire around his neck to stop him from trying to jump out of the corral. We roped the colt, tied the tire to his neck and then let him up. He began looking wildly around the corral for a place to escape, and suddenly when he realized he could move after being confined for so long by Buttons and us, began dragging the tire with him and then backed his butt into the furthest corner of the large corral. He then took off as fast as he could run with the tire around his neck running towards the opposite sides of the corral and then leaping with all of his might straddled his belly on the sharpened tips of the corral poles.
The tips of the poles impaled him, but he struggled until he pushed his whole body over the fence and struc the ground hard, then with his intestines dragging behind him took off in a lope towards the Rio Grande a half mile away. Horrified at what we had just seen, we saddled horses as quickly as possible and went after the doomed colt.
We tracked him by the blood trail he left, but then we lost him in the heavy brush near the river that is almost impossible to ride through on a horse. Dale and I searched all that day, but we did not find the colt and we assumed that he struggled as deeply as he could into the dense brush and died from massive blood loss. We were heart broken and at that time of my life I had never seen anything as horrfying as this happen to an animal.
Although we searched when we could for months afterwards we never found the little colt's body who chose freedom over confinement. Perhaps his death was a freedom to him. Some horses can never be tamed, they will not accept confinement. I have never forgotten the death of this horse and so many times after this event occured I wished that we had never caught the beautiful little colt, and had just let him run free.
Death in the Snow.
That late winter day in 1980 was a continuation of the long Wyoming winter and I began my patrol of the two lane roads in my jurisdiction, vacant of traffic at that early hour. I later traveled back to town after an initial patrol of the area, to get something to eat at Mitchelson's Cafe and visit with the proprietor Mitch Mitchelson, but then in the middle of breakfast I received a telephone call from my sergeant.
He advised that he was enroute to Farson and that he had received information from an oil field crew of a multiple murder scene they had stumbled upon while traveling back from work on an oil derrick north of Farson, in Sublette county; in an area that was technically out of my judicial baliwick.
Gary arrived at my location a short time later and he and I in his car, following the informant who found the bodies in his car, began traveling north towards the location. We turned off of the main highway about fifteen miles north of Farson onto a dirt cow trail and began wending our way northeast towards the foothills of the Windriver mountains, whose mighty peaks dominated the horizon in the distance.
We traveled but a few miles off of the main roadway and into a small barren valley and suddenly we saw in the distance buzzards by the dozen circling objects on the ground, while some birds on the ground were fighting over what appeared to be carcasses of what we found out later were five murdered human beings.
As a side note, when I saw the movie No Country for Old Men recently, it caused me to have flash backs to the killing field I am describing that happened in Wyoming so many years ago.
As we approached the location of the bodies, we were carefull not to destroy any tracks, or evidence at the scene, so we parked the car and walking up to the scene in single file avoiding anything that remotely resembled possible evidence. What we found when we arrived was five hispanic featured men, with their hands tied behind them each possessing large gaping wounds in the back of their heads, each appearing to have been murdered execution style with a large caliber handgun. Their bodies spread out randomly over an area of about twenty five yards.
Their bodies were still in deep rigor, exhibiting blood pooling in the body areas making contact with the ground. We had contacted the Sublette County Sheriff's Office on our way to the scene, and after we completed a preliminary examination of the bodies to determine whether anyone was alive, we secured the scene and then turned it over to the Sheriff of Sublette County in whose jurisdiction the murders had occured, upon his arrival on the scene.
They began one of the most incompetent murder investigations I have ever seen, lacking any kind of investigative protocol, destroyed most of the tire track and foot print evidence that the Sarge and I had been so diligent to preserve before it could be properly recovered.
The Sarge and I gave statements to the investigative officer, and then left in disgust. It was later determined that the five men were illegal aliens from Mexico who had secured a ride with a stranger from where they were working in Idaho intending to make it back to Mexico and that and unkown person had murdered them for the money they were taking back to their families in Mexico.
The Sublette County Sheriff's Office subsequently arrested the wrong man, and Gary and I both testified at his trial as to our involvement in the initial phase of the case. The case was so badly botched that the jury acquitted the man they accused of the crime and to my knowledge no one was ever convicted of this terrible crime.
Five poor little Mexican campesinos, no one but their fatherless families and I remember, and justice was never served.
He advised that he was enroute to Farson and that he had received information from an oil field crew of a multiple murder scene they had stumbled upon while traveling back from work on an oil derrick north of Farson, in Sublette county; in an area that was technically out of my judicial baliwick.
Gary arrived at my location a short time later and he and I in his car, following the informant who found the bodies in his car, began traveling north towards the location. We turned off of the main highway about fifteen miles north of Farson onto a dirt cow trail and began wending our way northeast towards the foothills of the Windriver mountains, whose mighty peaks dominated the horizon in the distance.
We traveled but a few miles off of the main roadway and into a small barren valley and suddenly we saw in the distance buzzards by the dozen circling objects on the ground, while some birds on the ground were fighting over what appeared to be carcasses of what we found out later were five murdered human beings.
As a side note, when I saw the movie No Country for Old Men recently, it caused me to have flash backs to the killing field I am describing that happened in Wyoming so many years ago.
As we approached the location of the bodies, we were carefull not to destroy any tracks, or evidence at the scene, so we parked the car and walking up to the scene in single file avoiding anything that remotely resembled possible evidence. What we found when we arrived was five hispanic featured men, with their hands tied behind them each possessing large gaping wounds in the back of their heads, each appearing to have been murdered execution style with a large caliber handgun. Their bodies spread out randomly over an area of about twenty five yards.
Their bodies were still in deep rigor, exhibiting blood pooling in the body areas making contact with the ground. We had contacted the Sublette County Sheriff's Office on our way to the scene, and after we completed a preliminary examination of the bodies to determine whether anyone was alive, we secured the scene and then turned it over to the Sheriff of Sublette County in whose jurisdiction the murders had occured, upon his arrival on the scene.
They began one of the most incompetent murder investigations I have ever seen, lacking any kind of investigative protocol, destroyed most of the tire track and foot print evidence that the Sarge and I had been so diligent to preserve before it could be properly recovered.
The Sarge and I gave statements to the investigative officer, and then left in disgust. It was later determined that the five men were illegal aliens from Mexico who had secured a ride with a stranger from where they were working in Idaho intending to make it back to Mexico and that and unkown person had murdered them for the money they were taking back to their families in Mexico.
The Sublette County Sheriff's Office subsequently arrested the wrong man, and Gary and I both testified at his trial as to our involvement in the initial phase of the case. The case was so badly botched that the jury acquitted the man they accused of the crime and to my knowledge no one was ever convicted of this terrible crime.
Five poor little Mexican campesinos, no one but their fatherless families and I remember, and justice was never served.
Feral Horse Adventure.
During the winter of 1971-72 fresh out of the Maine Corps I moved my budding family back to my home state of New Mexico with the intent of getting into the cattle business. We moved into a small house located on the edge of the desert near the Uvas Mountains with a view of the Rio Grande Valley north of Radium Springs.
Riding jobs that earned enough to keep my little family going were few and far between, and so I ended going to work at White Sands Missile Range as a steel tier and an apprentice concrete finisher.
On the week ends I cowboyed when I could and looked around for horses to break to supplement our income. In about the middle of March 1972 I saw an add in a paper advertising a horse auction to be held at a location near Alamagordo, NM, the horses being feral horses gathered by the Bureau of Land Management off of the huge White Sands Missile Range.
They were advertising good unbroke saddle stock, mares and studs for the low price of $125.00 dollars a head. I decided to take a horse trailer to the sale with the intent of buying a horse I could break for myself.
On the Saturday of the sale my brother and I hauled a borrowed trailer to the livestock sale in Almogordo about 150 miles away over the San Andreas Mountains to the east of us in the foothills of the San Francisco mountains west of Ruidoso. There were many people already there when we arrived and we saw that the lot of horses numbering about two hundred head were a sorry lot.
There were some old rangy studs and mares, but it appeared that I would not be able to find a good horses in which I wanted to invest my $125.00. After searching and eyeing each horse individually, we finally found a pretty good looking bay stud horse that had some good conformation, but looked as though he had been starved and didn't weigh over 700 pounds but with a little feed he might grow to weigh at least 1,000 lbs.
When the time came I bid on the horse and ended up buying him. Once I had him then came the hard part, getting him loaded into the trailer. It took us about two hours to load him because I didn't have a horse to pull him into the trailer, and no matter how I tried I could not get a mounted cowboy to help me load him. This horse was the kickingest, bitingest animal I have ever seen, he didn't want to load in the trialer and when we finally forced him using ropes, he kicked the trailer sides and fought and whinnied the entire trip back home.
We finally got him home and unloaded him into a small pen I built next to the house just for him. The next morning I started trying to break him, or perhaps he started breaking me. After several weeks of working with the horse I finally concluded that this horse was too old, had been wild too long and had been a stud too long to be much good to me as a saddle horse. I decided to sell him as a bucking horse to a rodeo stock contractor, and he could sure buck.
A strange thing happened with this horse when we had him. If a person entered his pen he would automatically charge towards you and then whirl and kick. Several times he almost gave me a viscious kick in this manner and so I watched him carefully all the time. One Saturday I was home working around the house when my wife screamed at me to look out at the horse corral. I ran immediately to where I could see the horse in the corral and there saw something that made my heart almost stop.
Our fifteen month old toddler Justin was inside the corral sitting directly under this wild horse with him arms wrapped around one of the horse's back legs, pulling his fetlock hair and just cooing away to the horse. I had no idea how he got there, or when he did it, but I knew that it was going to be impossible to get him out from under that horse without him being killed.
The funny thing is that this wild range stud with little to no previous contact with man was standing there like a statue. He did not move a muscle, but his head was turned as far under his body as it would go and he was calmly and softly nickering and sniffing Justin from diaper to head. All this tough old wild horse had to do was step on the little fellow, or kick him and he would be dead.
My wife who has always been a marvel at handling horses walked slowly up to the corral fence and started clucking at Justin saying, "Justin, come on son, come to momma." Justin stayed under the horse for a few more terrifying moments during which time the horse never moved and then with a happy laugh crawled towards his mother and when he was close enough she was able to reach under the corral's bottom rail and snatch him from danger and into her grateful arms.
My wife and I with our little son hugged between us gave a prayer of thanks to our God for saving the life of our little first born son. Unable to break him I eventually sold this horse to a stock contractor who used him as a rodeo bareback bronc horse, and I was told he was a good one. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for this horse who could have easily killed my son, but who seemed to instinctively know he was a baby and nothing to fear.
Riding jobs that earned enough to keep my little family going were few and far between, and so I ended going to work at White Sands Missile Range as a steel tier and an apprentice concrete finisher.
On the week ends I cowboyed when I could and looked around for horses to break to supplement our income. In about the middle of March 1972 I saw an add in a paper advertising a horse auction to be held at a location near Alamagordo, NM, the horses being feral horses gathered by the Bureau of Land Management off of the huge White Sands Missile Range.
They were advertising good unbroke saddle stock, mares and studs for the low price of $125.00 dollars a head. I decided to take a horse trailer to the sale with the intent of buying a horse I could break for myself.
On the Saturday of the sale my brother and I hauled a borrowed trailer to the livestock sale in Almogordo about 150 miles away over the San Andreas Mountains to the east of us in the foothills of the San Francisco mountains west of Ruidoso. There were many people already there when we arrived and we saw that the lot of horses numbering about two hundred head were a sorry lot.
There were some old rangy studs and mares, but it appeared that I would not be able to find a good horses in which I wanted to invest my $125.00. After searching and eyeing each horse individually, we finally found a pretty good looking bay stud horse that had some good conformation, but looked as though he had been starved and didn't weigh over 700 pounds but with a little feed he might grow to weigh at least 1,000 lbs.
When the time came I bid on the horse and ended up buying him. Once I had him then came the hard part, getting him loaded into the trailer. It took us about two hours to load him because I didn't have a horse to pull him into the trailer, and no matter how I tried I could not get a mounted cowboy to help me load him. This horse was the kickingest, bitingest animal I have ever seen, he didn't want to load in the trialer and when we finally forced him using ropes, he kicked the trailer sides and fought and whinnied the entire trip back home.
We finally got him home and unloaded him into a small pen I built next to the house just for him. The next morning I started trying to break him, or perhaps he started breaking me. After several weeks of working with the horse I finally concluded that this horse was too old, had been wild too long and had been a stud too long to be much good to me as a saddle horse. I decided to sell him as a bucking horse to a rodeo stock contractor, and he could sure buck.
A strange thing happened with this horse when we had him. If a person entered his pen he would automatically charge towards you and then whirl and kick. Several times he almost gave me a viscious kick in this manner and so I watched him carefully all the time. One Saturday I was home working around the house when my wife screamed at me to look out at the horse corral. I ran immediately to where I could see the horse in the corral and there saw something that made my heart almost stop.
Our fifteen month old toddler Justin was inside the corral sitting directly under this wild horse with him arms wrapped around one of the horse's back legs, pulling his fetlock hair and just cooing away to the horse. I had no idea how he got there, or when he did it, but I knew that it was going to be impossible to get him out from under that horse without him being killed.
The funny thing is that this wild range stud with little to no previous contact with man was standing there like a statue. He did not move a muscle, but his head was turned as far under his body as it would go and he was calmly and softly nickering and sniffing Justin from diaper to head. All this tough old wild horse had to do was step on the little fellow, or kick him and he would be dead.
My wife who has always been a marvel at handling horses walked slowly up to the corral fence and started clucking at Justin saying, "Justin, come on son, come to momma." Justin stayed under the horse for a few more terrifying moments during which time the horse never moved and then with a happy laugh crawled towards his mother and when he was close enough she was able to reach under the corral's bottom rail and snatch him from danger and into her grateful arms.
My wife and I with our little son hugged between us gave a prayer of thanks to our God for saving the life of our little first born son. Unable to break him I eventually sold this horse to a stock contractor who used him as a rodeo bareback bronc horse, and I was told he was a good one. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for this horse who could have easily killed my son, but who seemed to instinctively know he was a baby and nothing to fear.
Animal Realities.
When I was a child during the 1940's, 50's and 60's New Mexico's population was less than one half million people, most of that amount living in small towns. The predominant income of those who lived outside of the city was agriculture, because the land was only suited for it. Most of the farming being carried out along the Rio Grande, San Juan and the Pecos Rivers, with some dry farming along the eastern border with Texas. Water is the life blood of the desert and livestock raising, or ranching was done where rain runoff could be captured in earthen tanks, or sucked from the ground by windmill power.
The northern regions of New Mexico beginning just a little south of Albuquerque possessed some of the best grassland in the world, and the area where I was born known as the Staked Plains is just a sea of tall flowing grass in good years and it is only suited for cattle production.
The vast majority of southern New Mexico is a harsh desert environment where a rancher can only run a cow calf pair per section of land (640) acres when grass and water is available. It is a difficult, poor way to try to make a living in a treacherous non forgiving environment, but it is a way of life that has been cherished by the ranchers, the Spanish since the late 1500's when the first Spanish soldiers traveled to New Mexico from Mexico.
The first anglos who came to New Mexico in the 1840's fell in love with the beauty of the state and soon adopted the ranching practises of the Spanish settlers. They adopted the language out of necessity to communicate, riding gear of the Spanish vaqueros and today it is hard to distinguish the three major cultures that live and work side by side together in the livestock industry. The Indians being the third culture to adopt the Spanish ranching culture as well.
I am certain that it is difficult to impossible for a person who was not raised in this unique environment to understand it, especially a person who has been raised in the city where dogs and cats are the predominant animal of choice, and they are able to lavish attention on these animals, beloved pets who in essence become a part of the family. I know people who spend thousands of dollars on veterinary bills per year on their pets and this crowd believes that this should be the norm everywhere.
Where I grew up there were no veterinarians, if one was to be found it was necessary to travel a hundred miles to a city such as Albuquerque, Roswell or Hobbs at times to see one and so most ranchers did their own veterinary work themselves. It was necessary to be able to castrate bulls, doctor for screw worms, help pull a calf from its mother, and at times put an animal down that was suffering from an injury that could not be treated. This was reality because of the circumstances.
Because New Mexico was at that time a predominantly livestock state, the laws of the land were written to facilitate the raising of livestock. Loose dogs cannot be tolerated in a livestock environment, and so feral dogs or in some cases dogs who had ecaped an owner in town were killed by ranchers to protect their livestock, and the law was behind the rancher.
If you wanted to keep a dog, keep your dog in your yard. There was no SPCA, or animal pounds at that time nor personnel whose job it was to catch errant animals.
The dog or cat was killed for two reasons: To protect livestock, and as a deterant to hydrophobia that was rampant with skunks. The fear of an animal with hydrophobia was burned deeply into my brain when I was kid because it was a real thing. I knew childhood friends who received the extremely painful injections, and I knew of a child who died a horrible death due to contracting hydrophobia from an infected cat.
I have shot and killed my own beloved dogs whose suffering could not be remedied, one who was dying a horrible death from being bitten in the face by a rattlesnake; his breathing passages shutting off due to the effects of injection of venom from the snake. I have shot and killed horses whose legs were broken beyond repair, who were too far away from a veterinarian and could not have been hauled to one anyhow.
These were life and death issues common to all who live in that harsh environment, and other livestock environments throughout the world. Before anyone judges the harshness used by us to deal with the reality of life, remember to not apply the "norm" of your city life animal care. It does not exist and never will exist in most environments outside of your world.
The northern regions of New Mexico beginning just a little south of Albuquerque possessed some of the best grassland in the world, and the area where I was born known as the Staked Plains is just a sea of tall flowing grass in good years and it is only suited for cattle production.
The vast majority of southern New Mexico is a harsh desert environment where a rancher can only run a cow calf pair per section of land (640) acres when grass and water is available. It is a difficult, poor way to try to make a living in a treacherous non forgiving environment, but it is a way of life that has been cherished by the ranchers, the Spanish since the late 1500's when the first Spanish soldiers traveled to New Mexico from Mexico.
The first anglos who came to New Mexico in the 1840's fell in love with the beauty of the state and soon adopted the ranching practises of the Spanish settlers. They adopted the language out of necessity to communicate, riding gear of the Spanish vaqueros and today it is hard to distinguish the three major cultures that live and work side by side together in the livestock industry. The Indians being the third culture to adopt the Spanish ranching culture as well.
I am certain that it is difficult to impossible for a person who was not raised in this unique environment to understand it, especially a person who has been raised in the city where dogs and cats are the predominant animal of choice, and they are able to lavish attention on these animals, beloved pets who in essence become a part of the family. I know people who spend thousands of dollars on veterinary bills per year on their pets and this crowd believes that this should be the norm everywhere.
Where I grew up there were no veterinarians, if one was to be found it was necessary to travel a hundred miles to a city such as Albuquerque, Roswell or Hobbs at times to see one and so most ranchers did their own veterinary work themselves. It was necessary to be able to castrate bulls, doctor for screw worms, help pull a calf from its mother, and at times put an animal down that was suffering from an injury that could not be treated. This was reality because of the circumstances.
Because New Mexico was at that time a predominantly livestock state, the laws of the land were written to facilitate the raising of livestock. Loose dogs cannot be tolerated in a livestock environment, and so feral dogs or in some cases dogs who had ecaped an owner in town were killed by ranchers to protect their livestock, and the law was behind the rancher.
If you wanted to keep a dog, keep your dog in your yard. There was no SPCA, or animal pounds at that time nor personnel whose job it was to catch errant animals.
The dog or cat was killed for two reasons: To protect livestock, and as a deterant to hydrophobia that was rampant with skunks. The fear of an animal with hydrophobia was burned deeply into my brain when I was kid because it was a real thing. I knew childhood friends who received the extremely painful injections, and I knew of a child who died a horrible death due to contracting hydrophobia from an infected cat.
I have shot and killed my own beloved dogs whose suffering could not be remedied, one who was dying a horrible death from being bitten in the face by a rattlesnake; his breathing passages shutting off due to the effects of injection of venom from the snake. I have shot and killed horses whose legs were broken beyond repair, who were too far away from a veterinarian and could not have been hauled to one anyhow.
These were life and death issues common to all who live in that harsh environment, and other livestock environments throughout the world. Before anyone judges the harshness used by us to deal with the reality of life, remember to not apply the "norm" of your city life animal care. It does not exist and never will exist in most environments outside of your world.
Flatulent Adventures
There is a set of tunnels about one half mile long that were bored through the yellow sandstone cliffs that tower above the town north of Greenriver, Wyoming. Each tunnel, one east bound, one westbound facilitate two lanes of vehicular traffic each on Interstate 80. When the wind blows just right in the winter, it sometimes blows snow into the tunnels, and the roadway becomes covered with black ice. Many spectacular traffic accidents have occuring in these tunnels, and it takes nerves of steel for a Patrolman to enter the tunnels to attend to the injured, and tow disabled vehicle out of the tunnels to clear the roadway for traffic.
It takes a coordinated effort by many police officers outside of the tunnels to stop drivers who will not slow down, or become confused by the lights, or are just totally oblivious to what is going on around them. It is imperative a vehicle be stopped from entering the tunnels before they become part of the wreck.
This particular situation that I am about to describe entailed a multi vehicle accident taking place in the west bound tunnels, and two Patrolmen were working feverishly inside of the tunnels trying to unblock the roadway and I was manning a roadblock placed at the entrance to the tunnels, charged with stopping any traffic that might slip through the two other roadblocks east of my location.
Suddenly I received a radio message telling that there was an old man in a sedan who had run the two roadblocks east me, and that I needed to stop him before he entered the tunnels. The vehicle was not traveling very fast when he reached my location, but he obviously was not going to stop. Seeing this I took my five cell Kellight aluminum flashlight and threw it through the windshield with much force, shattering the windshield of the vehicle but causing the driver to stop. An investigation was done and it was found that the driver was intoxicated, and so he was arrested, taken to jail and his vehicle was towed away. I was happy because I saved my shift mates who could have been injured or killed by the errant vehicle.
The very next day I was called into the Sergeant's office and was issued a letter of reprimand for breaking the window on the suspect's vehicle. The Sarge could not be budged from issuing the letter, and no matter what I said, he would not see my side of it. I thought I deserved a medal.
About two weeks later I was investigating a double fatality accident that occured a little south of Farson, Wyoming on a two lane road in the early morning before sun up. The Sergeant had to respond to any fatality accident and so he arrived and I asked him to try to control the heavy traffic on the roadway while I completed the coroner's report with the coroner.
While attempting to control the traffic he had a speeding car that would not slow down, even though the roadblock was well marked and the Sarge's car was light up like a christmas tree with all of his emergency lighting. When the vehicle refused to slow down, the Sarge took his issue Kellite five cell flashlight and threw it through the windshield of the errant vehicle, shattering the winshield, but causing the driver to stop.
When I became aware of what the Sarge had done, I walked up to him and said, "You're gonna pull my letter, right?" He ducked his head mumbling something like, "Yeah", but under his breath. True to his word he pulled the letter of reprimand, and then like I had been required to do he had to write a letter of explanation. I felt justificed.
This is not the end of this story, it is a well known fact that I love red hot pinto beans. I just can't live without them, but they hate me because when I eat them it is like a terrorist attack in my bowels and the whole world suffers. My family conspires against me and will not allow me to eat beans at home, because my home becomes a biohazard location for days and my wife has threatened to leave me on several occasions, especially after I pull the covers over her head in bed and let a particularly excellent one.
One day I met my friend Carl at Red Desert Cafe east of Rock Springs, especially because they served some of the greatest chile beans on the planet. I ate two large bowls of the musical fruit, with chopped onions and cheese on top and then I parted Carl's company to run traffic on Interstate 80.
Well it didn't take long until the beans began to work their magic, and soon not even rolling down the windows with the air conditioner on could cut the stench. It was our habit at that time on the Highway Patrol to bring errant traffic violators back to our vehicle to allow them to see the radar screen to verify their speed, and then write them a citation.
After several drivers entered my car and almost upchucked from the smell, I had mercy on the next traffic violator who would enter my car, and stopped at a convenience store and bought an aerosol can of Pine scented air freshener. I thought the scent worked well, but one burly truck driver I sat in my car asked me what the scent was he smelled, I told him pine scent. He opined, "Huh, you could have fooled me, it smells like somebody s**t a Christmas tree."
That night when I went home I forgot the can of Pine air freshener on the dashboard of my car, and entered the house and went to bed.
The next morning I left the house rather late, and when I entered my patrol vehicle the enterior windows of the car were covered in an oily film, and I discovered that the aerosol can of pine scented air freshener had exploded in the super heated interior of the car and blew a fist sized hole in the front windshield.
I knew the Sarge would never believe this if I called him and told him about it, and so I cleaned the windows of the oily pine scented residue, and drove into town. Even though he saw the evidence of what happened, he still did not want to believe me. He actually thought that I had accidently shot a hole in the window and made the story up as a cover.
After much arguing and showing him the evidence he finally accepted my story and counted it as non chargeable damage to Patrol property, but the story became legend.
It takes a coordinated effort by many police officers outside of the tunnels to stop drivers who will not slow down, or become confused by the lights, or are just totally oblivious to what is going on around them. It is imperative a vehicle be stopped from entering the tunnels before they become part of the wreck.
This particular situation that I am about to describe entailed a multi vehicle accident taking place in the west bound tunnels, and two Patrolmen were working feverishly inside of the tunnels trying to unblock the roadway and I was manning a roadblock placed at the entrance to the tunnels, charged with stopping any traffic that might slip through the two other roadblocks east of my location.
Suddenly I received a radio message telling that there was an old man in a sedan who had run the two roadblocks east me, and that I needed to stop him before he entered the tunnels. The vehicle was not traveling very fast when he reached my location, but he obviously was not going to stop. Seeing this I took my five cell Kellight aluminum flashlight and threw it through the windshield with much force, shattering the windshield of the vehicle but causing the driver to stop. An investigation was done and it was found that the driver was intoxicated, and so he was arrested, taken to jail and his vehicle was towed away. I was happy because I saved my shift mates who could have been injured or killed by the errant vehicle.
The very next day I was called into the Sergeant's office and was issued a letter of reprimand for breaking the window on the suspect's vehicle. The Sarge could not be budged from issuing the letter, and no matter what I said, he would not see my side of it. I thought I deserved a medal.
About two weeks later I was investigating a double fatality accident that occured a little south of Farson, Wyoming on a two lane road in the early morning before sun up. The Sergeant had to respond to any fatality accident and so he arrived and I asked him to try to control the heavy traffic on the roadway while I completed the coroner's report with the coroner.
While attempting to control the traffic he had a speeding car that would not slow down, even though the roadblock was well marked and the Sarge's car was light up like a christmas tree with all of his emergency lighting. When the vehicle refused to slow down, the Sarge took his issue Kellite five cell flashlight and threw it through the windshield of the errant vehicle, shattering the winshield, but causing the driver to stop.
When I became aware of what the Sarge had done, I walked up to him and said, "You're gonna pull my letter, right?" He ducked his head mumbling something like, "Yeah", but under his breath. True to his word he pulled the letter of reprimand, and then like I had been required to do he had to write a letter of explanation. I felt justificed.
This is not the end of this story, it is a well known fact that I love red hot pinto beans. I just can't live without them, but they hate me because when I eat them it is like a terrorist attack in my bowels and the whole world suffers. My family conspires against me and will not allow me to eat beans at home, because my home becomes a biohazard location for days and my wife has threatened to leave me on several occasions, especially after I pull the covers over her head in bed and let a particularly excellent one.
One day I met my friend Carl at Red Desert Cafe east of Rock Springs, especially because they served some of the greatest chile beans on the planet. I ate two large bowls of the musical fruit, with chopped onions and cheese on top and then I parted Carl's company to run traffic on Interstate 80.
Well it didn't take long until the beans began to work their magic, and soon not even rolling down the windows with the air conditioner on could cut the stench. It was our habit at that time on the Highway Patrol to bring errant traffic violators back to our vehicle to allow them to see the radar screen to verify their speed, and then write them a citation.
After several drivers entered my car and almost upchucked from the smell, I had mercy on the next traffic violator who would enter my car, and stopped at a convenience store and bought an aerosol can of Pine scented air freshener. I thought the scent worked well, but one burly truck driver I sat in my car asked me what the scent was he smelled, I told him pine scent. He opined, "Huh, you could have fooled me, it smells like somebody s**t a Christmas tree."
That night when I went home I forgot the can of Pine air freshener on the dashboard of my car, and entered the house and went to bed.
The next morning I left the house rather late, and when I entered my patrol vehicle the enterior windows of the car were covered in an oily film, and I discovered that the aerosol can of pine scented air freshener had exploded in the super heated interior of the car and blew a fist sized hole in the front windshield.
I knew the Sarge would never believe this if I called him and told him about it, and so I cleaned the windows of the oily pine scented residue, and drove into town. Even though he saw the evidence of what happened, he still did not want to believe me. He actually thought that I had accidently shot a hole in the window and made the story up as a cover.
After much arguing and showing him the evidence he finally accepted my story and counted it as non chargeable damage to Patrol property, but the story became legend.
Courage is Simple When Viewed From Afar.
My entire life has been plagued by men who display courage of a verbal nature, but when confronted face to face seem to wither on the vine. When I attended electronics school as a Marine, at Redstone arsenal in the late sixties, I belonged to a class of ten men who spent ten months training to become electronic and hydraulic technicians on the Marine Corps Hawk surface to air missile system.
I did not wish to be there, I instead wished to be with my friends who went to the grunts, 0311's, real men. The Naval services test each recruit when they enter bootcamp and based upon the results of the testing are assigned to a specific MOS, Military Occupation Specialty. My grades were high and so I was assigned to attend electronics school.
I had two choices, flunk out quickly and be sent to Viet Nam as a grunt, or stick out the schooling. Something in me would not allow me to flunk out and even though I would rather be elsewhere I finished the accelerated schooling at the bottom of my class.
The top of our class was a very intelligent individual named Swan and a really great fellow. The second highest scoring individual was a young man named Fenway. It was common knowledge within the class that Fenway reached his position in the class by cheating off of Swan and the worst thing about Fenway was that he bragged incessantly about how much better he was than the rest of the class. My grade of 85% was the lowest in the class, but it was an honest score.
For nine long months the class endured Fenway's mouth, and to a man we each were just itching to put him in his place. On the day of graduation the guest speaker of the graduation was Warner Van Braun, the father of the American space program. After the graduation like all good Marines we decided to celebrate by drinking a little beer at the local enlisted men's club on the base.
The celebration started out well but as the afternoon wore on and we began to feel the effects of the alcohol, Fenway began to brag incessantly about how he had scored second in the class. I finally had had enough and I read to him from the book about how everyone knew he was a cheat and fraud, and that he didn't deserve to be second highest in the class because he had cheated to get the grade.
His reaction was to throw a punch at me which I ducked and then grabbing me in a bear hug began to run carrying me with him and then slamming me into a brick wall. The only trouble was he didn't pin my arms and so I worked his face over pretty good with my fists, breaking his nose and closing both of his eyes.One of my most cherished photographs is of Fenway, lying in his bunk with his nose taped and popsicle sticks up his nostrals, taken by my friend John F. from Pontatoc, Mississippi, the Vacationland of the south.
I was the one who finally put Fenway in his place, I was the toast of the party and the celebration of the event continued on into the next morning. I had to be happy with the accolades of my friends, because over the next three and one half years Fenway who followed me to every duty station I went to during my enlistment, always made rank three months before me because my conduct and proficiency marks were lower than his because of the fight.
I do not regret breaking Fenways nose! I was worth it and I would do it again if I had the chance, because someone has to put a blowhard, loud mouth in his place.
I did not wish to be there, I instead wished to be with my friends who went to the grunts, 0311's, real men. The Naval services test each recruit when they enter bootcamp and based upon the results of the testing are assigned to a specific MOS, Military Occupation Specialty. My grades were high and so I was assigned to attend electronics school.
I had two choices, flunk out quickly and be sent to Viet Nam as a grunt, or stick out the schooling. Something in me would not allow me to flunk out and even though I would rather be elsewhere I finished the accelerated schooling at the bottom of my class.
The top of our class was a very intelligent individual named Swan and a really great fellow. The second highest scoring individual was a young man named Fenway. It was common knowledge within the class that Fenway reached his position in the class by cheating off of Swan and the worst thing about Fenway was that he bragged incessantly about how much better he was than the rest of the class. My grade of 85% was the lowest in the class, but it was an honest score.
For nine long months the class endured Fenway's mouth, and to a man we each were just itching to put him in his place. On the day of graduation the guest speaker of the graduation was Warner Van Braun, the father of the American space program. After the graduation like all good Marines we decided to celebrate by drinking a little beer at the local enlisted men's club on the base.
The celebration started out well but as the afternoon wore on and we began to feel the effects of the alcohol, Fenway began to brag incessantly about how he had scored second in the class. I finally had had enough and I read to him from the book about how everyone knew he was a cheat and fraud, and that he didn't deserve to be second highest in the class because he had cheated to get the grade.
His reaction was to throw a punch at me which I ducked and then grabbing me in a bear hug began to run carrying me with him and then slamming me into a brick wall. The only trouble was he didn't pin my arms and so I worked his face over pretty good with my fists, breaking his nose and closing both of his eyes.One of my most cherished photographs is of Fenway, lying in his bunk with his nose taped and popsicle sticks up his nostrals, taken by my friend John F. from Pontatoc, Mississippi, the Vacationland of the south.
I was the one who finally put Fenway in his place, I was the toast of the party and the celebration of the event continued on into the next morning. I had to be happy with the accolades of my friends, because over the next three and one half years Fenway who followed me to every duty station I went to during my enlistment, always made rank three months before me because my conduct and proficiency marks were lower than his because of the fight.
I do not regret breaking Fenways nose! I was worth it and I would do it again if I had the chance, because someone has to put a blowhard, loud mouth in his place.
Chivalry
Yesterday I stopped in to the same convenience store that I have been frequenting for months, to pick up my farvorite little snack. While in the store that is quite popular, I noticed a nice looking woman browsing through a rack of greeting cards, totally oblivious to anything happening around her, engrossed in choosing a card to buy.
Unbeknownst to her she was the object of attention of a middle aged man, who was staring at her, all but salivating down the front of his shirt.
It took me but a moment to pick up my snack, and when I approached the check out line at the check out counter, the nice looking young woman was at the counter, another man was in front of me and from out of nowhere the man whom I had observed staring at the girl cut in front of the man in front of me which placed him immediately behind the girl.
This irritated me but not desiring a confrontation allowed him to do so. As the girl was attempting to pay for her card, the man who was standing directly behind her interrupted the girl while she was speaking to the check out clerk saying: "That is a beautiful card." The girl shocked and nervously said, "Thank you.", and continued speaking with the clerk. The man interrupted her again as she counting her money preparing to give it to the clerk saying, "Would you help me pick out a card"? The girl by this time was obviously nervous, because he had his body almost against her and she was pinned up against the counter in front of her. She hurriedly gave the clerk her money, squeezed herself around the offensive man, and started out the door.
Instead of paying for his purchase the man began to follow her out of the store. The girl, now with a terrified look on her face and looking over her shoulder, was almost panicing to get away and the man began to follow her out the door. I reached up and placed my left hand on the right shoulder of his shirt grabbed a handfull of cloth, and tugging forcefully brought the man to a halt.
The girl seemed frozen in place where she stood, and so with my right hand I motioned to her to leave and she ran out of the front door.
I politely told the man that he was acting badly and the girl was frightened of him. He had a startled look on his face, but I then released my grip on his shirt and he suddenly remembered why he was at the counter and paid for his purchase. I paid for mine and as I did so I watched the man leave the store, get in his car and leave the parking lot in a hurry.
When I went to my car in the parking lot another car drove up beside me and I saw that the driver was the same girl I had rescued in the store. She thanked me several times for what I had done, stating that the man had frightened her badly and that she was terrified he would follow her out of the store.
Perhaps this man's intentions were honorable, but he gave a clear sign that he was pursuing this girl and she wanted nothing to do with him. Should I have intefered? You be the judge.
Unbeknownst to her she was the object of attention of a middle aged man, who was staring at her, all but salivating down the front of his shirt.
It took me but a moment to pick up my snack, and when I approached the check out line at the check out counter, the nice looking young woman was at the counter, another man was in front of me and from out of nowhere the man whom I had observed staring at the girl cut in front of the man in front of me which placed him immediately behind the girl.
This irritated me but not desiring a confrontation allowed him to do so. As the girl was attempting to pay for her card, the man who was standing directly behind her interrupted the girl while she was speaking to the check out clerk saying: "That is a beautiful card." The girl shocked and nervously said, "Thank you.", and continued speaking with the clerk. The man interrupted her again as she counting her money preparing to give it to the clerk saying, "Would you help me pick out a card"? The girl by this time was obviously nervous, because he had his body almost against her and she was pinned up against the counter in front of her. She hurriedly gave the clerk her money, squeezed herself around the offensive man, and started out the door.
Instead of paying for his purchase the man began to follow her out of the store. The girl, now with a terrified look on her face and looking over her shoulder, was almost panicing to get away and the man began to follow her out the door. I reached up and placed my left hand on the right shoulder of his shirt grabbed a handfull of cloth, and tugging forcefully brought the man to a halt.
The girl seemed frozen in place where she stood, and so with my right hand I motioned to her to leave and she ran out of the front door.
I politely told the man that he was acting badly and the girl was frightened of him. He had a startled look on his face, but I then released my grip on his shirt and he suddenly remembered why he was at the counter and paid for his purchase. I paid for mine and as I did so I watched the man leave the store, get in his car and leave the parking lot in a hurry.
When I went to my car in the parking lot another car drove up beside me and I saw that the driver was the same girl I had rescued in the store. She thanked me several times for what I had done, stating that the man had frightened her badly and that she was terrified he would follow her out of the store.
Perhaps this man's intentions were honorable, but he gave a clear sign that he was pursuing this girl and she wanted nothing to do with him. Should I have intefered? You be the judge.
Old Friends
Yesterday an old friend stopped by the Casino where I work. We had not spoken face to face in twenty years. Lee is retired from police work now and he and his friend Dennis, currently a police captain in an Arizona town were coming back from a road trip to the California coast on their Harley Davidson motorcycles. We spent the better part of two hours re-living the past, catching up on family and bemoaning the decline of good lawmen in this country.
Lee was twenty one years old when he came to the La Paz county Sheriff's Office as a Deputy in 1983 from a small town in eastern Arizona. I being the resident Deputy in the town in which we were both stationed, broke him into the new job and he and I became friends. Lee has always had an outstanding sense of humor and always seemed to view the humor in even the worst situation, and he is the type of man who would stick with you in a fight. We fought and tamed a lawless community that had been abusing the good people there long before we came, and the methods we used were effective, but crude and definitely unacceptable in todays politically correct environment.
In visiting with Lee's friend Dennis I found that he and I had mutual friends in law enforcement in southeast Arizona and I was able to re-acquaint myself with old comrades with whom I have not had contact in many years.
It is important to me to stay in contact with men such as these to help remember the stories of the past, and to re-kindle friendships with a breed of men that have always been willing and able to place their lives between the peaceable and those who prey on society. Between the three of us visiting together yesterday, there was a total of ninty fives years of experience in the profession of protecting others. To be alive to remember the past after all that we have been through, is amazing in itself. To be considered to be a peer to men such as these is humbling.
Lee was twenty one years old when he came to the La Paz county Sheriff's Office as a Deputy in 1983 from a small town in eastern Arizona. I being the resident Deputy in the town in which we were both stationed, broke him into the new job and he and I became friends. Lee has always had an outstanding sense of humor and always seemed to view the humor in even the worst situation, and he is the type of man who would stick with you in a fight. We fought and tamed a lawless community that had been abusing the good people there long before we came, and the methods we used were effective, but crude and definitely unacceptable in todays politically correct environment.
In visiting with Lee's friend Dennis I found that he and I had mutual friends in law enforcement in southeast Arizona and I was able to re-acquaint myself with old comrades with whom I have not had contact in many years.
It is important to me to stay in contact with men such as these to help remember the stories of the past, and to re-kindle friendships with a breed of men that have always been willing and able to place their lives between the peaceable and those who prey on society. Between the three of us visiting together yesterday, there was a total of ninty fives years of experience in the profession of protecting others. To be alive to remember the past after all that we have been through, is amazing in itself. To be considered to be a peer to men such as these is humbling.
The Outlaw Carl K
I met Carl K at a dance in the old mining town of Lake Valley when I was sixteen years old, through a mutual friend who had known him all his life. Carl came from an old ranching family having roots in the rough and tumble days of early New Mexico. He was a handsome young man then who had an easy way about him, and a confident smile that seemed to draw people to him.
The harsh reality of ranching in the upper Chihuahuan desert along the border with Mexico caused young men like Carl to grow up quickly, and because responsibility was thrust upon them early they were expected to be men at an age that most city kids were still considered to be children. Carl was a grown man at sixteen, and he cut a pretty good sized swath through life even then.
We developed a casual friendship during the next few years, but then life causes us to lose track of our friends sometimes and I never had anything to do with him for the next twenty five years.
When I became Chief of Police in Columbus, New Mexico I became aware that Carl had been caught by Border Patrol Agents with a load of marijuana unconcealed in the back of an open four horse trailer, after the Agents had tracked Carl from where he crossed the Mexican Border with the trailer and had driven it to his home a few miles north of the border fence.
I was dismayed by the news and I knew that he was out on bond awaiting trial, and so I intended to look him up the first chance I had. I met Carl but not in the way I had intended.
One night while patroling on a well maintained dirt road west of Columbus while following a set of interesting foot prints, believing the prints belonged to a burglary suspect for whom I was searching, suddenly the beam of my flashlight revealed that I had driven right into what appeared to a group of vehicles with people around them, who I later confirmed were in the act of transfering a load of marijuana from one set of vehicles to another set of vehicles in the dark.
I don't know who was more surprised, me; or the smugglers. I had been driving with my headlights off using a flashlight to see in the dark, driving slowly along the roadway with my driver's side door propped open with my foot, so I could follow the obvious foot prints in the dirt of the roadway. The smugglers had their pickup stereos turned up on the highest level, playing Mexican norteno music and I guess they did not hear my car approach until I was right on top of them so to speak. I didn't hear their music because my hearing is bad. Somewhat laughable in different circumstances, but this situation was deadly serious.
When I became aware that there were men in front of me on the roadway I turned on my vehicle headlights and the sudden brilliant light revealed that there were at least ten men in the act of transfering what appeared to be saran wrapped bundles of marijuana.
Everyone froze for a moment when the lights came on and then I reacted to the situation by placing my vehicle in reverse and driving backwards down the road I was following to quickly place distance between myself and the smugglers.
I then turned on my high intensity beam spotlight which really lit up the scene, and then the men doing the transfer dropped their bundles and began running towards the interior of their vehicles to retrieve rifles and shotguns with the obvious intent of dealing with the threat my sudden presence imposed.
Suddenly there appeared in the beam of my lights a man in a cowboy hat who screamed at the men with the guns to stop and not shoot in a loud voice in spanish. The men did as directed and lowered their guns, and then the man in the cowboy hat began approaching my vehicle with his hands up, shouting at me not to shoot him.
When he reached a point within twenty feet of the front of my car, I ordered him to stop, and placed my patrol shotgun into the light so that he could see it. The man said, "Is that you T?" Confused I answered, "Yeah, but who the hell are you?" He returned with, "It's Carl K., don't shoot me, I wanta talk." To say that I was surprised is an understatement. I haven't had contact with this man for twenty five years and this is how it happens?"
I asked him what he wanted and he stated that if I wanted to live I had better backup down the road quickly and get away, and told me the obvious that I did not have a chance to survive a shoot out with the ten men he had with him. He said that he was sorry that this had happened the way it had happened and simply turned around and walked back towards his men.
I immediately backed my car up to a point where I could turn around in the road and traveled back into town as quickly as I could, trying desperately to contact Border Patrol on my radio for help. I finally contacted the Border Patrol Agents working the area and we went back to the area where I had seen Carl K. in force, but the marijuana and all of the participants were long gone.
One day several weeks later I was seated in a booth in Norma's Cafe in Columbus when Carl K. walks through the door, and sits down across from me. Carl looking old and with the weight of a coming trial obviously on his shoulders, still with the grin he had when he was a kid, reaches across the table with his right hand and of all things says, "Still friends?"
I hesitated for a moment but finally shook his hand stating, "I'll shake your hand for old times sake, but I can never be friends with a smuggler!"
He said, "T you should be thanking me, those boys would have killed you if
I hadn't done what I said. You stumbled into something you shouldn't have, you were badly outgunned and I saved you, you should be grateful!"
Well needless to say a rather heated discussion ensued about what I thought about what my former friend had become. He discussed the fact that he regretted what he had become, but I do give Carl some credit, he never tried to blame his actions on anything or anyone else, stating simply that he had began smuggling because the money was good.
There were no outstanding warrants out for Carl at the time of our meeting, and he had gotten away with smuggling the marijuana I had seen he and his men with, so hense no evidence; so there was no reason for me to hold him at that time. He left as suddenly as he showed up and I didn't shake his hand before he left.
The next I heard about Carl was that he did not show up for his trial date, jumped bond and fled into Mexico to avoid prosecution.
Several months later some Customs Agent friends of mine told me that Mexican authorities had found a dead body in a burning car near the border, and had found Carl K's passport and driver's license on the body. The identity of the body could not be confirmed as being Carl and so it was surmised that Carl had set it up in an attempt to convince the authorities that he was dead. No one was convinced that he was dead.
Almost a year later I heard that Carl had been arrested in Willcox, Arizona at a livestock auction, so he must have illegally entered the U.S. possible thinking that his ruse in Mexico had worked and that he was now free to return to the U.S. under another identity. He was tried and convicted on Federal drug smuggling charges and served his five year sentence at La Tuna Federal Pentitentiary located just north of El Paso, Texas.
The next I heard about Carl was from a friend who had visited Carl often in prison. He stated that on the day Carl was released from prison after serving his term, while driving home to Deming, New Mexico was involved in a traffic accident and was killed. I later confirmed this report as being true.
Thus ended the tragic life of my former childhood friend.
The harsh reality of ranching in the upper Chihuahuan desert along the border with Mexico caused young men like Carl to grow up quickly, and because responsibility was thrust upon them early they were expected to be men at an age that most city kids were still considered to be children. Carl was a grown man at sixteen, and he cut a pretty good sized swath through life even then.
We developed a casual friendship during the next few years, but then life causes us to lose track of our friends sometimes and I never had anything to do with him for the next twenty five years.
When I became Chief of Police in Columbus, New Mexico I became aware that Carl had been caught by Border Patrol Agents with a load of marijuana unconcealed in the back of an open four horse trailer, after the Agents had tracked Carl from where he crossed the Mexican Border with the trailer and had driven it to his home a few miles north of the border fence.
I was dismayed by the news and I knew that he was out on bond awaiting trial, and so I intended to look him up the first chance I had. I met Carl but not in the way I had intended.
One night while patroling on a well maintained dirt road west of Columbus while following a set of interesting foot prints, believing the prints belonged to a burglary suspect for whom I was searching, suddenly the beam of my flashlight revealed that I had driven right into what appeared to a group of vehicles with people around them, who I later confirmed were in the act of transfering a load of marijuana from one set of vehicles to another set of vehicles in the dark.
I don't know who was more surprised, me; or the smugglers. I had been driving with my headlights off using a flashlight to see in the dark, driving slowly along the roadway with my driver's side door propped open with my foot, so I could follow the obvious foot prints in the dirt of the roadway. The smugglers had their pickup stereos turned up on the highest level, playing Mexican norteno music and I guess they did not hear my car approach until I was right on top of them so to speak. I didn't hear their music because my hearing is bad. Somewhat laughable in different circumstances, but this situation was deadly serious.
When I became aware that there were men in front of me on the roadway I turned on my vehicle headlights and the sudden brilliant light revealed that there were at least ten men in the act of transfering what appeared to be saran wrapped bundles of marijuana.
Everyone froze for a moment when the lights came on and then I reacted to the situation by placing my vehicle in reverse and driving backwards down the road I was following to quickly place distance between myself and the smugglers.
I then turned on my high intensity beam spotlight which really lit up the scene, and then the men doing the transfer dropped their bundles and began running towards the interior of their vehicles to retrieve rifles and shotguns with the obvious intent of dealing with the threat my sudden presence imposed.
Suddenly there appeared in the beam of my lights a man in a cowboy hat who screamed at the men with the guns to stop and not shoot in a loud voice in spanish. The men did as directed and lowered their guns, and then the man in the cowboy hat began approaching my vehicle with his hands up, shouting at me not to shoot him.
When he reached a point within twenty feet of the front of my car, I ordered him to stop, and placed my patrol shotgun into the light so that he could see it. The man said, "Is that you T?" Confused I answered, "Yeah, but who the hell are you?" He returned with, "It's Carl K., don't shoot me, I wanta talk." To say that I was surprised is an understatement. I haven't had contact with this man for twenty five years and this is how it happens?"
I asked him what he wanted and he stated that if I wanted to live I had better backup down the road quickly and get away, and told me the obvious that I did not have a chance to survive a shoot out with the ten men he had with him. He said that he was sorry that this had happened the way it had happened and simply turned around and walked back towards his men.
I immediately backed my car up to a point where I could turn around in the road and traveled back into town as quickly as I could, trying desperately to contact Border Patrol on my radio for help. I finally contacted the Border Patrol Agents working the area and we went back to the area where I had seen Carl K. in force, but the marijuana and all of the participants were long gone.
One day several weeks later I was seated in a booth in Norma's Cafe in Columbus when Carl K. walks through the door, and sits down across from me. Carl looking old and with the weight of a coming trial obviously on his shoulders, still with the grin he had when he was a kid, reaches across the table with his right hand and of all things says, "Still friends?"
I hesitated for a moment but finally shook his hand stating, "I'll shake your hand for old times sake, but I can never be friends with a smuggler!"
He said, "T you should be thanking me, those boys would have killed you if
I hadn't done what I said. You stumbled into something you shouldn't have, you were badly outgunned and I saved you, you should be grateful!"
Well needless to say a rather heated discussion ensued about what I thought about what my former friend had become. He discussed the fact that he regretted what he had become, but I do give Carl some credit, he never tried to blame his actions on anything or anyone else, stating simply that he had began smuggling because the money was good.
There were no outstanding warrants out for Carl at the time of our meeting, and he had gotten away with smuggling the marijuana I had seen he and his men with, so hense no evidence; so there was no reason for me to hold him at that time. He left as suddenly as he showed up and I didn't shake his hand before he left.
The next I heard about Carl was that he did not show up for his trial date, jumped bond and fled into Mexico to avoid prosecution.
Several months later some Customs Agent friends of mine told me that Mexican authorities had found a dead body in a burning car near the border, and had found Carl K's passport and driver's license on the body. The identity of the body could not be confirmed as being Carl and so it was surmised that Carl had set it up in an attempt to convince the authorities that he was dead. No one was convinced that he was dead.
Almost a year later I heard that Carl had been arrested in Willcox, Arizona at a livestock auction, so he must have illegally entered the U.S. possible thinking that his ruse in Mexico had worked and that he was now free to return to the U.S. under another identity. He was tried and convicted on Federal drug smuggling charges and served his five year sentence at La Tuna Federal Pentitentiary located just north of El Paso, Texas.
The next I heard about Carl was from a friend who had visited Carl often in prison. He stated that on the day Carl was released from prison after serving his term, while driving home to Deming, New Mexico was involved in a traffic accident and was killed. I later confirmed this report as being true.
Thus ended the tragic life of my former childhood friend.
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