We Don't Need No Stinking Weapons
El Centro Part Two
When we left off Dick and I were in the desert along our southern border chasing someone of someones who snuck into our country illegally along the hundreds of miles of border that has no walls, no fence, nothing short of surveillance by Border Partrol Guards. “There are places along this border where you could drive a tractor trailer across and never be seen. It’s just a game of cat and mouse. They come across sometimes we catch them, sometimes we don’t. If we do, we haul them up to San Diego where they languish in air conditioned comfort watching color TV before we give them a bus ride back home.”
On this night, our guy made it in without getting caught. He crossed the north border road and probably caught a ride on I-8 only ten miles from the border. Oh well. Time to go home. We met up with the rest of the team, half who were going off duty the other half ready to “hit the dirt” again. He introduced me as his cousin Frankie from New York and we chatted for a while then jumped in Dick’s pickup and started heading out of the desert. The night was hot and the windows down as the desert air wafted through the truck. Suddenly Dick slammed on his brakes and grabbed a manilla envelope and jumped out of the truck. He crossed in front of the truck and scooped up a small crab like creature crawling alongside the highway; a scorpion. Passing my window he tossed the envelope through my window the envelope landing in my lap. “JESUS!” I jumped, the envelope sliding onto the floor. “He can’t sting you through the envelope, he laughed.” “Thanks for tell me asshole,” I replied.
We purchased a dessert glass at a little shop in town and liquid lucite with a hardener. We dispatched the scorpion with an alchohol bath and placed his upside in the down in the dessert glass then mixed the lucite with the hardener and filled the glass to the brim. The photo below is my little paperweight from that night on the dessert with my cousin Dick.
After our adventure on the dessert he asked me if I wanted to stop off for something to eat. After all that excitement I was all in. We pulled into a little all-night diner, got out and the two of us, he in uniform, me in jeans and t-shirt, both with our side arms holstered at the ready strolled into the diner. Amazing how much respect people show you when you have a gun on you, and how tall you walk. You don’t have to say a word, or do a thing other than walk in, grab a seat at the counter and ask for your coffee and cream.