A Life Wasted

Texas Chase

The next sequence is one of those which I have memory gaps. From my arrest record I know that I escaped from Navy Shore Patrol early April 1975, and that my next official appearance was April 24, 1975. So only about three weeks passed, but it seems like more happened in that time than could have occurred in three weeks. With that in mind I will attempt to fill in the blanks.

From Jacksonville I must have hitch-hiked to Brownsville, Texas. I have a vague memory of wanting to leave the country, but little else. Brownsville is in southeast Texas, the southern most part of Texas and on the Mexican boarder. I crossed into Mexico and spent some time in Mexico, first in the border town of Matamoras then in Reynosa. Just floating around I ended back on the U.S. side, in McAllen, Texas, which is across the border from Reynosa and just a few miles up the Rio Grande River from Brownsville. I needed money, so I was looking for a score. In that part of the world money meant drugs and drug smugglers. I didn't have any qualms about stealing from those guys but I was pretty sure they all had guns, something I lacked. So I kept my eyes open until I spotted an opportunity. During the day I spotted a guy who looked suspicious getting out of a van and going into a small run down house on the outskirts of town. I waited around a while but didn't see him again. Being an optimist I walked to a store and spent some of my precious funds on a cheap backpack. After it got dark I hadn't spotted anything so I went back to that house. As soon as I got there I saw the guy carry a medium size bundle to the van, then go back inside. Always being one to seize the moment, I ran to the van and looked inside. It had a growing stack of bundles. I couldn't see what was in the tight wrapped plastic bags, but I could smell the marijuana plant just fine. I grabbed one of the bundles then ran back into the shadows. Before I could return for another the guy came out again and tossed another into the back of the van, but this time he closed the door and drove off.

The package felt like twenty pounds, so I decided to be happy with that. My quickly developed plan was to take the pot to Florida where it would be worth about $200 per pound. Four grand was a chunk of money back then, enough to set myself up with a new life in Mexico.

My next problem was that I was on foot. I had seen a number of Mexicans walking or catching a train out of south Texas, but I wasn't about to try that while wanted and with twenty pounds of pot on my back. Yet I did want to get away from the scene of the crime so I started walking north in the dark. It wasn't long before I cut across a road, which I followed until I reached a cross road. At the cross road was a big Kawasaki dealer. It was late and the place was closed so I broke in and stole a big Kawasaki KZ900. I wasn't into motorcycles, but I later learned the KZ900 was the fastest production motorcycle ever built (cir. 1975). I believed the claim.

The trip to Florida was going well. I stopped in Corpus Christy long enough to sell a pound of pot for $80, which was cheep for that far north but it was worth it as I needed cash for gas and food. Things were cheaper then so $80 was enough to get me to Coco Beach.

I'd decided to go to Ron Jon's and see if Captain Purple was still around. If he wasn't interested in the pot he might know who was. If not, I knew a few guys around there myself. When I opened the bag in Corpus Christi I discovered that I had twenty-five individually wrapped pounds. There was a nice nest egg in my back pack, especially if I sold it right. It wasn't until I reached Mobile Alabama that things began to go bad.

I made the mistake of waiting too long to get gas and had to stop in Mobile. I tried to avoid cities on the stolen motorcycle, but didn't have a choice this time. Fortunately I had already topped off my tank when the city cop tried to pull me over. I was pretty good on a motorcycle, but I had yet to be in a chase on one. It turned out to be pretty easy to loose the cop car in the city traffic but as soon as I lost the first one I'd run into another. This seemed to continue forever until I finally lost one and there were no others to take his place. After twenty minutes of hot dogging through traffic at high speeds I had to stop for gas again. I ended up north west of Mobile, the wrong side to reach Florida. I ran back roads until I was clear of Alabama and into Georgia, then drove south to Florida, picked up I-10 East and continued on my way.