Okay. Three pieces of Mexican Leather Luggage: a satchel, a briefcase and tubular duffle that I got in Mazatlan in 1973.




     The second time I went to Mazatlan, in 1973, I wound up in the hands of the police and a whole lot more. This was the last adventure we had with the Morehouse commune. Patti and I had moved to the organization's Lafayette property, and we were trying to figure out what to do next. Someone out there got the idea to buy a couple of used tour buses from the local transit company, tear out the seats, put in beds, stereos, and refrigerators; paint them purple and go to Guatemala or somewhere; the end game was always vague. It didn't matter; whatever the destination, we were not going to get there.

     In a month or so, we took off, with the remodeling partly done, about 30 of us as I recall; men, women, kids (Johnny was 2 1/2), and two pregnant women. The convoy consisted of two purple buses, a limousine, and a Mercedes sedan.

     We were a mixed bag of seekers, a lawyer, a doctor, an airline pilot, teachers, Buddhists, head trippers, bon vivants, good-natured hedonists, former smugglers, and one perfectly normal mild-mannered bus driver. When I was in college, I had supported myself as a school bus and charter bus driver for a couple of years, so I was the only one of the tribe with any experience in the matter. I gave a short lesson to a driver for the other bus and away we went. The group's lawyer, Blackie, rode in the front seat across from the driver's spot and kept me company as we cruised across the Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta to Interstate-5 and headed south. Blackie had been watching me drive like "the monkey and the engineer", and after a couple hundred miles, he wanted to take the wheel. I was happy to share. I had schooled trainee bus drivers before. It's not too hard if you know the basics of driving a stick shift, and we all did back then, when we were young that's all there was. He soon had the hang of it, and there wasn't a lot of shifting to be done, as on the freeway, it's mainly steering and adjusting the speed.

     We stopped at a roadside diner to feed everybody, and when we got back aboard the bus, Blackie slid into the driver's seat again and started the engine. He put it in 1st gear, but his foot slipped off the clutch pedal, which sprung up suddenly. "Popping the clutch", it's called. It was too abrupt an impact for the clutch and the bus lurched with the engine came to a stop suddenly. When he started it up again, he couldn't get it in gear. The clutch wouldn't disengage. 1100 miles later, in a repair shop deep in Mexico, a mechanic took it apart and we found out what was the matter. The shattered clutch plate had wedged itself between the flywheel and pressure plate and it was all locked together, so that the engine could not be disconnected from the rear wheels except by slipping the transmission into neutral.

     Well, by this time in my life, I had driven all kinds of vehicles, big and small, and they all had been stick shifts. My whole life riding around in cars and trucks with my father I gained an intuitive sense of shifting of gears; by listening to the revving or backing off on the engine's speed, and the growling or whining of the transmission's functions. If you had an old car or pickup with a worn transmission, you learned that you could shift gears without using the clutch and not grinding; you just knew from the sound when the timing was just right and the gears would slide together softly. It was something you could do to amuse and challenge yourself. Turns out, I was expert in the singular skill it would take to continue on our bus trip.

     It was good that I was going to take the wheel again, because we were approaching the "Grapevine" which is a mountainous stretch where a lot of gear changing was going to have to be done. When I was a kid, the Grapevine was so named not only for the wild grapes that were growing there when the Spanish explorers passed through, but mainly for all the switchbacks it had taken to get the major roadway through the mountains. Along about 1960 they straightened it out with a wide modern freeway, but there were still plenty of up grades and down grades, where a lot of down shifting and up shifting was going have to be done.

     Most of the time, I could operate the bus so you couldn't tell there was a problem. I learned strategies for never having to come to a full stop, and when I had to park, to find a place with a little downhill in front of it so I would never have to back up, and for a little rolling start to get it moving before putting it in gear.

     The problem was, of course, getting it into first gear from a dead stop on flat ground. The big stick shift came out of the floor to the right of the driver's seat, and it was pretty much in the middle of the aisle that ran back between the seats. From a standing start, if you tried to push the stick forward into 1st gear, there would be a lot of metal grinding and vibration in the stick, and it wouldn't go in. If you had any sensibilities for what was happening to those gears, you just couldn't bring yourself to push it in. Blackie felt guilty for breaking it in the first place, and he took up the responsibility of jamming it into first gear. When we were in such a situation where we had to come to a stop, Blackie would step up to the front of the aisle and take hold of the stick. I would let the engine idle down as slow as it could go. Blackie would take a deep breath and lunge forward with a confident thrust that got past the necessary gear-grinding all in one "perchunk!" The whole bus would lurch and heave, and start into motion, and I could drive it smoothly from there.

     I had been this route before, in a much smaller bus. Traveling along into Mexico, from time to time you come to a checkpoint full of policemen and you have to stop while they look you over. I wore a white shirt and had a clip-on bowtie that I would put on when came to one of these places. Seeing it coming, we would clean up our act, and make an effort to look somewhat normal, with me looking like a tour bus driver. We'd coast up smoothly to a stop and kill the engine. A cop would stick his head in, take a glance, and sometimes step in and walk to the back. Mark Taylor, our trip manager, would go in the guardhouse with them and make the various payoffs they required to let us proceed. Then came time to pull away. I would start the engine, and let it idle down very slow and give Blackie the nod. Perchunk! and the bus would shake, buck violently and Woomf! Woomf! Woomf! three times and then drive off normally, leaving a big cloud of black exhaust when we did, and the policia standing there dumbfounded.

     The farther you go into Mexico, the fewer checkpoints you get, and the old bus was running great. I could relax, have a beer and smoke a joint while driving along, bow tie ready. About 200 miles south of the border there's a long uphill grade before you get to Hermosillo. I could anticipate a problem but I had no way to communicate with the other driver. You could stay in 4th gear all the way up, but it wasn't wise. You should downshift, which I did, going up the whole grade in 3rd. Taking a grade in too high a gear is called "lugging it" and the gear ratio asks too much of the engine. By the time we reached Hermosillo, the engine on the other bus had given out, and could no longer be driven. It was decided to leave the broken bus with a mechanic in town. I took the people that had been in my bus another 100 miles down to a resort at Bahia San Carlos, near Guaymas, dropped everybody off and drove myself back to Hermosillo to get the rest of the people. The plan was to stay at the resort until Bus #2 was fixed. A Volkswagen "Thing", a kind of Jeep-like model with high rollover stats, was rented to augment the caravan.

     We stayed there about a week and discovered that the repair was going to take even longer, of course, and we might as well push on to Mazatlan, 800 miles farther south, all of us in the #1 bus and the two cars still with us, the Mercedes and the Thing (the Limousine had turned back in San Diego). We continued on the next three days, and finally rolled into the city. We checked into a big hotel on the beach and took the #1 bus to a shop where the clutch could be repaired. We were going to settle in until we had two working buses. The fellow who had financed the trip, JC, decided to treat everyone to a shopping spree at a local boutique since the trip wasn't going quite as planned; and we all took advantage of the opportunity. I got some Mexican leather luggage that I am writing about today, and a favorite shirt I wore until it began to decompose in humid Hawaii a decade later.



     Because I had bus-driving responsibilities and would occasionally come into contact with Mexican authorities, in my clip-on bowtie; I didn't participate in the psychedelics on the long bus ride down, and contented myself with lighter intoxicants. Finally, in Mazatlan, I would be able to let my hair down (I still had hair), and join in that part of the revelry, because we were going to be there at least a week, maybe more, at the local mechanics' work pace. I would have plenty of time to take a trip and re-enter before I would have the responsibility of driving the bus again.

     The day came when I could fully embrace my Mexican vacation and at about 11:00 in the morning I swallowed some LSD. I laid down on the bed for a while and let the rush pass its accelerating phase. In an hour I was reaching a plateau, so I took off my jewelry: my watch; my wedding ring, a silver, turquoise and coral ring that Dick had given me, my Morehouse necklace, and left them on my bedside table. I was heading toward the beach, a little after noon, to go into the ocean and didn't want to lose my jewelry.

     The hotel had a restaurant cafe that extended out doors and right onto the broad sandy beach. Several friends were having lunch there and we joined them. We had been there a short time when Blackie appeared and came to our table. He was shook up. He said, "They're up in our rooms with the police!"

     All of us at the table, and our cohorts nearby were getting the word and we all had the same idea. It would be a good time to go for a walk. People settled their tabs and drifted away from the patio cafe. A couple of hundred yards up the beach, about 10 of us congregated to wait and see what was going to happen next. After about a half hour we could see another member of our group being escorted toward us by a lone policeman up the beach from the hotel. We began to disperse. Some sat still, some ambled further up the beach, some went in the water and some went toward the dunes inland. Up and over the dunes came a line of 15 soldiers with machine guns.

     We were escorted back down the beach and into an alley behind the hotel. Two ground floor rooms were set up for a purpose. One room had all of our luggage and stuff, the other room was where we would be interrogated.

     Here was the plot; JC, the fellow who had bankrolled the whole expedition, was part of a very wealthy family, and had gobs of money, that never was the problem. He just hadn't bothered to tell American Express that there were going to be all these expenditures on his card in Mexico. First, the car rental was originally for one week and he hadn't bothered to tell the rental company he decided to keep it longer, so it was considered a stolen car. Second, when American Express could not immediately confirm that the boutique owner, who had thousands of dollars of goodies purchased from his store was going to be paid. The boutique owner had contacted the police, and they went with the maids into our rooms to retrieve the boutique goods, that he would hold until the bill was settled. The maids came across our communal pot stash under one fellow's bed.

     By the time we were in the alley, we had to deal with the local Mazatlan Police, the Immigration officials, machine-gun toting soldiers, and a band of Federal Narcotics agents.

     One by one each couple was being brought into the interrogation room, then to the luggage room to pick out what was our stuff, and then go back into the interrogation room while they searched it in front of us. Patti and I didn't have anything of concern in our belongings, but I never saw my jewelry again, and we were let back into the alley.

     I was sitting on the low brick wall of the alley and Blackie came over. We surveyed the situation. Of all the officials, cops and soldiers milling about in the alley, the one doing the least, but that everyone deferred to, was the leader of the Federal Narcs, Ramon. He and his team were all in casual street clothes. Ramon had a chrome-plated .45 automatic pistol stuck through his belt, and it was always cocked.

     Blackie and I went over to strike up a conversation with him. He was amenable to our friendly gestures and at one point he asked if there was anything he could do to make us more comfortable. We responded that letting us go would be helpful. He laughed and said he couldn't do that right now, but, "What else?"

     We jokingly suggested that cold beer would be nice. He turned and made a gesture to one of his plain clothes agents, who came over and exchanged a few words with the jefe, then disappeared into the hotel. In a few minutes, two hotel waiters came into the alley carrying big trays piled high with cans of cold Tecate Beer, maybe two cases. Everybody got a beer; cops, narcs, soldiers and detainees. My acid trip was proceeding just fine. I had been watching this all go down with great amusement.

     In continued conversation, we learned that Ramon and his men had been shadowing us for the last thousand miles, mingling with us when we stopped at restaurants and bars. They had even danced with some of our ladies, and that was their regular routine; to monitor the traffic coming down from the US and figure out who was who, and what was what. They knew about us long before Mazatlan.

     After a while, Ramon appealed to the other officials to let the mothers with children go, then after a while longer, he had the pregnant women released, and then everyone released except the unfortunate fellow who had the stash under his bed and JC, the guy with the most money. Mexican justice was simple: keep these two for ransom, and deport the rest. The Mexican authorities kept those two locked up for a couple weeks, until everyone was paid off. The rest were told we were "voluntarily deported", that we had to leave the country as soon as possible, but there would be no problem if we wanted to re-enter. We were just nuisances in the present situation.

     Some brave souls chose to remain in Mexico for a little while longer because they were hitting it off with the band of narcs. In reports I heard much later, the narcs were partying harder and harder with a lot of cocaine fueling their machismo, and the last night there was a lot of aggressive edginess and drawn guns twirling. My friends were staying at the same motel. When they awoke next morning, the narcs were all in the courtyard in camouflage combat gear with automatic weapons. They climbed into jeeps and drove out to waiting helicopters to raid nearby marijuana fields. Their regular gig was to have gunfights with real criminals. We were just a bunch of jokers that had provided them a day off from all that. About the pot and the cocaine that the narcs were enjoying, when asked about the contradiction, they were said to have responded: "It's all financial." We had provided Ramon and his team with two Purple Pinatas, a profitable welcome comic relief from their usual dangerous routine.

     We caught a plane back to San Diego, rented a car, and drove home. And that's where I got this Mexican leather luggage.


 

 

 

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