JACK STRICKLIN
1970
Bottom to top: Jack Stricklin, Mike and Karen Halliday, Dave and Joyce Blott, ca. 1970
After four months and twenty-six days in maximum security, the Navy drove me to the middle of downtown Boston and let me out. Under their own guidelines, they couldn’t give me a dishonorable discharge so I got a BCD (bad conduct discharge). I honestly didn’t care. I was out—that was all that mattered.
My family had a cabin in Durango, Colorado—that’s where I went first. I didn’t have a car. I had sold my Plymouth when I went in the Navy. My goal at the time was to earn $10,000. I don’t know why I picked that amount or what I would do if I ever earned that much. But that’s what I wanted to do. And I was headed to El Paso to hook up with Mike and Dave.
My parents had no idea how I’d finished out my time in the Navy. My sister Bonnie knew. I’d send her letters and she’d send them to a friend of mine on the ship, and he’d send them to my folks.
I only stayed a couple of days in Durango. About the time I was thinking of leaving, Dad says, “Jack, what are you going to do now?”
“Well, I’m going to El Paso, earn a little money and see some friends.”
“What are you going to be driving?”
“I don’t know, I’ll probably buy some old jalopy when I get there.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Jack. We’re going to shut down the cabin for the winter anyway. Why don’t you take the Scout and drive it ’til you find something else. You can bring it back in the spring.”
“Welcome to Texas,” read the sign by the side of the road. Within range of El Paso at last, Jack Stricklin drummed the wheel to the rhythm of the radio as the four-wheel drive International Scout carried him home. Just to the north, La Tuna Federal Correctional Institute crowned a gradual rise. It was a quiet presence to all but the unfortunate souls housed within.
With the Franklin Mountains just ahead, Jack looked out over Mexico to the south, where primitive huts randomly dotted the small mesa that rose from the trickle of the Rio Grande. Tendrils of wood smoke drifted from makeshift chimneys, merging with the poisonous reek from the towering smokestack of El Paso’s ASARCO lead smelter. As if total poverty was not enough, the riverside colonia endured an air quality that condemned its children to the lethal fate of lead poisoning.
Just past ASARCO and the University, Interstate 10 came to a slingshot curve, skirting the southern tip of Mount Franklin and heading east. The edge of downtown El Paso and its sleepy railroad yard, once so important to the economy, flew by in a blink. Jack Stricklin was back on the border, where the only law that really mattered was: Don’t get caught.
Jack Stricklin never thought of himself as a criminal. He believed in justice and more than a few of the Thou Shalt Not’s. But he didn’t believe in all of them. As far as he was concerned, a crime without a victim was an opportunity. Enforcing the prohibition of marijuana made no more sense than enforcing the prohibition against alcohol. It was a mistake in the 1930s, it is a mistake now. And just like the bootleggers before him, it was a mistake Jack Stricklin fully intended to exploit.
JACK STRICKLIN
When I pulled into the alley where Mike Halliday lived, the last person I expected to see was Dave Blott. I honked the horn and started to get out, and here came Mike out of one house and Dave out the other one. I’d been trying to get these two assholes together the whole time I was in the Navy, and here they were living twenty feet away from each other.
When I got out to say hello, they walked right past me. They were staring at that four-wheel drive Scout like it was a carne asada. The first thing either one of them said to me was, “Jack, we need to borrow your truck.”
MIKE HALLIDAY
When Jack shows up in our alley in that Scout, Dave and I come out and walk right past him. Jack’s like, “I’m home!” And we’re thinking, Oh, thank you God—this is perfect!
We got him to take us for a ride down to the place where we wanted to bring a load across. Once you got past Fabens, the river is bone dry—the farmers have taken all the water. You could dribble a basketball across. So you drive through the riverbed, then you’ve got the levee on the other side, and there’s a big ditch that’s even steeper than the riverbank itself. So we walked across and showed Jack what we had in mind and he said, “Oh, hell yeah.” We locked the hubs into four-wheel drive and drove across and back—easy. That little Scout ate it up.
So that night we did our first load. Jack couldn’t go—we didn’t have room for three guys and all the pot, so he stayed home.
JACK STRICKLIN
The night Mike and Dave took the Scout was probably the longest night of my life. I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up. That might have been the first time I ever worried about anything. I wasn’t worried when the Navy sent me to Portsmouth. I never worried about school—nothing. But I let two idiots go out in my father’s Scout to bring a load of pot across the river, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how many ways they could fuck it up.
I paced the floor, chainsmoked joints, and cussed myself for being such a dumbass. I actually made a vow that night that I would never feel that way again. The next time anybody brought a load of pot across the river, I was going to be there to make damn sure we did it right.
MIKE HALLIDAY
That was the night I discovered how different everything looks in the dark. Your whole world comes down to what’s right in front of your face. You have no idea what’s out there. It was just Dave and me. We didn’t have any radios, no spotters—just two clueless guys driving around in the dark with 250 pounds of pot.
The first place we pulled in along the river was the wrong place—it was too muddy. We didn’t have our headlights on and we couldn’t see shit. And when we got to the river there was nowhere to cross so we had to backtrack. The whole time we just knew the Border Patrol was going to pop up out of the bushes. We were sure the cicadas were sending some kind of secret fed signal. It was like every cell in my brain was sending a different message. And time just stopped. When we finally got to a dry spot in the river, I was ready to just floor the motherfucker and keep on going.
We somehow managed to keep it together. “Bump, bump, bump,” down the bank and across the riverbed. “Bump, bump, bump”—up the bank, over the levee and gone.
Dave and I couldn’t stop laughing. It worked perfect. It was the highest of highs I had ever experienced in my life. It was only 250 pounds or so, but it was our first real smuggle. We couldn’t get over ourselves.
THE GRANDMOTHER OF ALL CONNECTIONS
MIKE HALLIDAY
That first smuggle with Jack’s Scout—that got things moving pretty fast. But now we were looking for buyers. One day Dave Blott came by and said, “I got these guys, they’re sitting in a motel, and they want some pot. You want to go with me to meet with them?”
So