This morning as I sat conspicuously long-haired and bearded in the Wellton Border Patrol office lobby waiting for my appointment to begin, the agents brought in one of two big trucks they’d intercepted out in the desert. The drivers had run off, consigning their cargo — about a ton and a half of fine Mexican sinsemilla — to the tender mercies of federal law enforcement.
I went out with the gang to look at the first truck they brought in, still loaded with bud. One after another, about half the agents took me aside to joke meaningfully about their college days. Wanna know what three quarters of a ton of pot looks like? It looks like a bunch of plastic-wrapped bales of something tied with packing tape. The second truck was mired and it would apparently take them a while to tow it out of the desert, whereupon the local representatives of the Drug Enforcement Agency would haul all the pot away for burning, and not in that nice way the agents recollected from their undergraduate days .
I went off to watch a couple Power Point presentations before my trip to the field, then Agent Mike Crelia, my tour guide for the day, gassed up a Border Patrol truck for us. We hopped in and headed west on Interstate 8 over the Gila Mountains to look at a few popular border crossing spots.
At the base of the freeway grade on the Gilas’ east side we passed an Arizona DOT “Adopt-A-Highway” sign: “In Memory of Jerry Garcia, 1942-1995.”
Atop the pass a mile or so onward, two large shiny pickup trucks with familiar-looking bales in their beds were pulled over on each shoulder of Interstate 8. The DEA guys had failed to secure their loads. One of the bales had tumbled out into traffic, rolled to the left shoulder and burst. Mike Crelia said “this isn’t good,” pulled us over onto the shoulder, put on his flashing lights. We stood and watched, chuckling, as the discomfited DEA agents picked through the weeds and gravel and broken glass at roadside putting several hundred spilled buds into plastic evidence bags— enough to supply a good-sized dormitory for a month.
Rest in peace, Jerry.
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12 comments on "A taste for the brothers who can’t be here with us today"Ha. I love it. Good story. I look forward to the rest…
I know you rider, gonna miss you when you’re gone.
Great story! RIP Jerry, indeed.
In August of 1995, I was walking through Manhattan, having just seen Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia at Lincoln Center (“Surely a hermit who takes the newspaper is not one in whom we can have confidence.”) I learned of Jerry’s death from the news ticker in Times Square.
Blame Charles for opening the “where were you when . . .?” can of worms.
I was in Moquegua, Peru, working on a salvage excavation at Chen Chen, a late Tiwakanu colony in the middle Osmore Valley. Being salvage, we had been pulling people off the street who had anything that looked like archaeological experience if you squinted at it, and our houses were full to the rafters.
We were divided into two teams: domestic (lame, early risers), mortuary (cool, we get there when we get there [it’s difficult to create a sense of urgency in this context]). The domestic team rose before dawn and ate cold cereals that were set out for them the night before by the restaurant. The mortuary team rolled out of bed at least two hours later and did breakfast right.
One morning, I was trying to sleep through the horror that is a house more than half full with morning people. They were being louder and more talkative than usual. When they finally left, I did manage to drop back into fitful sleep. Around lunch time, “Uncle John’s Band,” came up on one of the three mix tapes we had, and I suddenly said, “I think Jerry Garcia is dead.” The two American women working with me (one of whom was a major Deadhead) looked at me like I was nuts. I repeated myself in Spanish for the benefit of the Peruvians working with us, at which point M, the Deadhead, informed me that this wasn’t particularly funny.
I said, “I’m serious . . . I think he died today.”
“How would you know?”
“Uh, it came to me in a dream?”
Of course, the domestic team had gotten the news earlier and had been discussing it at the house. In my pre-coffee state, I’d pushed the information to the back of my mind. Weird moment, though.
Duuuuude. Heinous!
Hola, encontre esta pagina de una forma tan extraña..pero no podia irme sin decir que lei el poema que escribiste en español..me encanto!
exitos,
meliza
te recomiendo esta pagiana http://www.dudadesnuda.blogspot.com ahi encontraras mucha poesia en español…poesia argentina, si es que hay mucha diferencia entre las de otros paises.
en fin…!
Great story, CMD!
OOPS! Forgot to add, “Rest in peace, Syd.”
I once came upon a dropped bag (1.5 0z) of some emrald on a SF Muni bus after deciding to humor my Dad and participate in a chain letter. This story almost made me wish I still smoked. BTW, anyone sign the online petition for the Jerry stamp? C’mon people, Elvis got one, Jerry deserves no less!! Remember, he was said to have had a smile on his face when they found him at Serenity Knolls.