have enough, so he said, “Okay, I’ll take you to someone I know.” And they all show up in my alley.
Well, I really didn’t have much to sell either. Dave had nothing. So I called a friend of mine—The General. The name was kind of a joke because he took ROTC in high school and he was pretty gung-ho about it. I didn’t do a lot of business with him. He was kind of a nervous kid, not really cut out to be a drug dealer. But he had a decent connection, which was more than Dave or I had then.
It turns out The General had taken all his pot out to the desert and buried it. So we get in his car with a couple of shovels and head east out past Horizon City and Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. We end up about forty miles outside the city limits in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Anyway, we dug up the pot, and I delivered it to the guys from Tennessee—about thirty-five pounds. They probably got a few pounds free because I forgot to bring a scale. But I got a good price and made a nice profit for a couple hours work.
These guys had never seen Mexican pot with the little white seeds before and had no idea what to expect. So we tried it out before they left town. About halfway through the second joint, they were falling all over themselves. They said it was the best pot they had ever smoked. They took my phone number and swore they would stay in touch. But a year later I still hadn’t heard a word.
At this point, Mike Halliday was just another hamster on the wheel, spinning in place as he sifted through the moment in search of spare parts he might fashion into something bigger and better. He and Dave Blott were selling all the pot they could get their hands on, but Dave’s product was overpriced and the quality inconsistent. Mike could only get a kilo or two at a time from his Phelps Dodge connections, but he sensed they were closer to the source than Dave Blott had ever been. A groundswell of pot smokers was emerging in America. And Mike Halliday knew he was standing on the ground that was swelling.
El Paso has always been a smugglers’ paradise, engraved with the colorful legend of a wide-open border town that defined the rules of commerce on its own terms. Smuggling was an important part of the area’s economy and largely viewed with a wink and a nod, as everything from human traffic and livestock to cosmetics and cigarettes flowed freely across the invisible boundary. We were a forgotten city, carved from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and slowed to a crawl by the ceaseless heat of an eternally blazing sun. Not quite Old Mexico, not quite New Mexico, not exactly Texas, but an isolated frontier town with a self-determining soul and an outlaw spirit. Laws were mere suggestions and contraband was just another word for bargain.
Living the better part of your childhood in a border town instills a Latino ethic that defies provenance. The rich and contagious culture became deeply embedded in our lives, heavily accented with the local spice of good friends, fiery food, and a language all its own. But while growing up gringo allowed us to absorb the best of a native heritage, we were spared the worst. The hometown that I knew in the 1970s was a largely integrated city, but not without discrimination. El Paso resided in poverty, controlled by the handful of Anglos who comprised its economic core.
If you were inside the great white bubble, opportunity would present itself. If you were Mexican, you waited at the back of the line. And you didn’t concern yourself with impractical laws that attempted to govern an ungovernable frontier. What stereotyping so unfairly sketched as a mañana mentality was simply an acceptance of the fact that when you’re powerless to make things happen, you have to let things happen.
Mike Halliday was certain that good things would happen within the confines of Phelps Dodge. But all he could do was go to work every day, stack his copper, and continue to build trust with los hermanos, who were beginning to accept him as “Guero,” a light-skinned Mexican. Mike knew he was getting close, just as he knew that he was living in the land of the all-night menudo parlor, where life moved to the rhythm of its own unhurried beat. Gather your family and friends, kill a goat, bury it in the coals, and pop a cool one. We’ll laugh, talk, and make music until the sun comes up. Then we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
MIKE HALLIDAY
In 1970, I’d been working at Phelps Dodge about a year and a half when I met Panchelli. He was a heroin addict, but a functional heroin addict. And he knew people. We’d been out drinking a few times and we smoked pot together. One day he offered to take me to Juarez, where he knew a guy who would sell us as much as we wanted. And then he would show me where to bring it across.
Just what I was looking for, right? The only problem was I didn’t have any money.
What got me started—what really set things in motion was a camping trip I took with my wife Karen up to Wall Lake in the Gila Wilderness. She was about seven and a half months pregnant at the time, but her doctor said it would be okay. Her father let me take an old school bus he had fixed up for camping.
From the ranger station on the highway, Wall Lake was about eight miles of very rough road. We got there as the sun was going down. Karen was riding in the back and all that bouncing around was not a smart idea. The first thing out of her mouth the next morning was, “I’m going to have the baby!”
So we pack up and head back to the Ranger station. The Ranger’s wife talked to Karen and told her husband to get a helicopter there right now. They turned out to be really great people. They took care of my son Michael John while we flew to Silver City in the helicopter.
Well, evidently, a pregnant couple in a helicopter is a pretty big news day in Silver City. We made the front page of the paper—a picture of us landing in the parking lot. Linda Jean Halliday was born on May 21, 1970. She stayed in the hospital for a little over a week.
Now, because Silver City is a big copper city, some of the bosses at Phelps Dodge got the newspaper from up there. I was still a big story when I got back to work. Before I drove back to Silver City to pick up Karen and the baby, the insurance people cut me a check for $700—made out to me, not the hospital!
That was the thing that really started everything rolling. That $700 got me my first Mexican load.
We were in my mom’s little white Valiant and Panchelli and I are driving along in Mexico with about twenty-five pounds of pot in the trunk. We might have been thinking about how we were going to spend the money—we were definitely not thinking about the speed limit. Not very smart—Mexican cops make a living on traffic tickets.
So this guy pulls us over for speeding and starts talking about going to see the judge. Panchelli got out to talk to him while I freaked out. I knew the guy would take a payoff, but I had spent every last dime on the weed, and Panchelli was a junkie—he never had any money. So he was talking to the cop and pointing to me in the car, and the whole time the cop kept nodding his head.
When Panchelli came back to the car, he told me to take off my watch but act like I didn’t want to give it up. So I kept shaking my head no while I handed to him. That watch probably cost about ten bucks new—it was junk. But that piece-of-shit watch saved our ass that day. We gave it to the cop like it was some kind of solid gold Rolex. He put it in his pocket and let us go. I just hoped we’d get across the river before it stopped running.
Panchelli had me drive to a place he knew down past Tornillo. He told me to carry the load across the river, and he’d drive back over the bridge and meet me on the other side of the levee, where I’d be hiding with the pot.
It was broad daylight, man, but the area was totally deserted. You could see a long way in any direction. I could have stopped and smoked a joint in the middle of the river. I walked across, climbed to the other side of the levee and found a nice little place to stash the weed. After about thirty minutes, here comes Panchelli in the Valiant and away we go.
After a couple of those kinds of deals, I started to get pretty tight with Panchelli’s connection. That was Hector—Hector was the guy. He was connected to Sinaloa—the big fields, the best pot. The problem was, you could only throw so many bags over your back and carry it across like that. What we needed was a four-wheel drive.