Roadies

At the end of spring semester, ca 1972 or so, my friends Barry and David and I decided to take road trip from Waco to Nuevo Laredo just across the border in Mexico. I liked Barry and David in no small part due to my being taller than them, and I’m not very tall.

Our plan was to start a revolution by smuggling Mary Jane (a ghost like presence among us) INTO Mexico. Exactly how this would work we left undetermined. We left Waco in a bright yellow short bed truck that had been used in seismic exploration and which my dad bought for me after it was retired from the fields.

Now we pause for a short digression in praise of the trucks of that era. Extended cabs were few and far between. They existed but I cannot recall ever seeing one. The cab in this one had a bench seat that extended door-to-door. The seat was spring loaded, meaning that going over a bump caused the passengers to bounce up and down, which was a lot of fun for boys barely out of their adolescence.

It got poor gas mileage, which wasn’t that big of an issue when gas was in the 30 cent per gallon range. It had a three-on-the-tree gear shift – the gear shift lever was attached to the steering wheel column. The truck would lurch forth in first gear, wheezing and gasping, lurching again in second gear at a slightly faster pace, then finally reaching cruising speed. This truck probably went from 0 to 60 miles per hour in slightly under a minute, or at least it felt that way. The truck had 260 air-conditioning – two windows down and 60 MPH to generate wind.

So it is that we left after the spring semester ended and headed south for an approximately six-hour trip. We travelled at between sixty and seventy miles per hour (no cruise control then), bumping up and down as we went through the flat scruffy brushland of South Texas.

Miles and miles and miles of scruffy brushland can lull you into a trancelike state with the help of Mary Jane. All of a sudden, we came across a giant tower structure of some kind that somehow scared the bejesus out of us. I looked over and saw David scrunched into Barry’s arms and Barry scrunched into the door, eyes open like saucers. We relaxed when we figured out the tower was not coming toward us and no snipers on it visible. We returned to our trancelike state.

By-the-by we came to the border crossing, which took us by surprise, and I lurched to the right and made several right turns hoping not to get lost. We caucused and determined we would abandon our plan to start a revolution in Mexico and ditched Mary Jane. We got safely across into the festive streets of tourist traps with chintzy souvenirs. We drove around a little and learned that Mexican drivers regarded stop signs and stop lights as mere suggestions and not mandatory. We thenceforth approached intersections with great caution.

David talked Barry out of his wish to visit “Boys Town” in Nuevo Laredo, where yellow roses plied their trade for the yanqui dollar. I was just an innocent bystander, of course.

Once as we were wandering the streets, a little man ran up to us jabbering. We couldn’t understand him, so we stopped and stared. He quickly ran back to his old camera on a tripod, flipped a black cape over his head, squeezed a bulb and FLASH! we had our picture taken. He developed three black and white 8×10 copies on the spot and sold them to us for a dollar each. We forked over the dough, a little puzzled over the whole escapade. I still have mine and it is an absolute treasure.

We headed back over the border, three mangy hippies in a yellow truck so naturally we got pulled over by a skinny, crusty agent in khakis and an Open Road Stetson fedora. Our mamas didn’t raise no fools, so we cheerfully piled out of the truck. It was searched and no illegal substances were found, probably disappointing the agent.

The trip back to Waco was uneventful and, yes, Montezuma got his revenge.

John Clack, August 19, 2023

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