A local tale

[joebill]

Bully L., one of my late friends from my early days in Tucson was a professional drummer and (of all things) a bicycle mechanic, neither of which provided him much of a living, but  nearly every young musician on the "way up"  in Tucson at the time could work part time at the old downtown tradition..."the Chicago store" where they sold anything and everything concerning the creation of music, and last week I took a trip down nostalgia lane when I saw they had opened an annex in a bit safer neighborhood. There are lots and lots of good stories originating in the Chicago store from those years, and one concerns Billy and his friend Bucky, also a starving music man.


They were both working the counter one afternoon, when a VERY highly placed official from nearby Mexico stopped in and with him were two VERY young girls that he introduced as his "Nieces"  to Billy, but Billy knew better because the little girls were dressed more like hookers, and the guy was known around Tucson to have those kinds of tastes and that kind of ultimate power.  Billy excused himself from waiting on the guy.

Next, the guy approached Bucky and inquired if he spoke spanish, and bucky told him "SI" and nodded his head, so the guy started jabbering high speed on and on and on, and Bucky just kept nodding like he understood....UNTIL.....the guy obviously asked a question and paused, waiting for an answer. ....blank look from Bucky, so the guy jabbered on again and re-asked the question, and Bucky told him the old "no comprehende" whereupon the guy flew off the handle, claiming that Bucky had professed to speak and understand Spanish.

Bucky smiled, said Oh, SI! ESPNIOL!

Then began ticking words off on his fingers..."Buenos Dias, Buenos noches, taco, por favor", then paused, thinking, obviously completely out of words he knew! 

The guy went into a rage and the little girls got obviously fearful and ran out to the car.  Billy and Bucky just stood and smiled, acting like they were trying to recall more words.

The deal was, Billy had waited on him at various bike shops around Tucson and had long figured out that underage hookers are the norm for high Mexican officials, and often got paid with a new bicycle or stringed instrument.  Anything they could do to throw a monkey wrench into THAT arrangement was fair game.

The official? Well, prob'ly not wise to write his name since none of this can be proven, but suffice to say there was no higher government official at the time and all of his web pictures are in black and white.....Joe

[joebill]

OK, this is a true story about "Ray", one of Janet's late relatives in the area. He and his wife moved to New Mexico when they both were discharged from the service, and planned to hatch a whole house full of children, but it was not to be. One or the other of them could not quite get the job done, and so they commenced the adoption process....and never quit!

When we first came west, he was employed as a foreman at a concrete company that was union all of the way, but union contracts were few and far between at that time in Tucson, and less and less as the months rolled by. He soon gave notice and went out on his own as a subcontractor, pouring slabs for friends who were building a house or even a shed, often bringing some of the kids along to scoop gravel or level forms. I never once interacted with him when he seemed short on cash, so either he was doing well or was a really good actor. Urged his wife to design the new house he was building for her in which the kitchen represented most of the living area and was bigger than the total area of first house Janet and I bought....including our attached garage!

Anyhow, a building contractor stopped by my shop one day and we both spotted one of Ray's pickups driving by and began a discussion about him and his wife and kids, and the contractor told me a story about him I had never heard and might never have dreamed of, since Ray always seemed to me like a guy who went along to get along.

It seems he had finished the slab for a big shed that the contractor had hired him to do, and was there to pick up stuff and collect the check, when the homeowner's wife showed up and spotted the kids hauling trash to the pickup and began quizzing Ray about how many kids he had. Ray cheerfully confessed to 8 or 10 or whatever the count was at the time, and the woman cussed him up one side and down the other and hinted that he must be too stupid to have heard of birth control and his wife must be just as stupid to hang around and let him use her as a brood mare!

The contractor arrived in the middle of this tirade and was waiting for Ray to come unglued all over her, but he and the kids were wearing smiles, watching the woman make a bloody fool of herself, and could hardly wait to get into the truck before bursting out laughing. Thew contractor never told her, either!

Almost everybody in town except her knew that all of those kids were adopted, so no doubt she also learned that fact when it was just too late! .....Joe

[farmrbrown]

Your 1st post reminded me of an old joke and I couldn't resist posting here, lol.

Juan comes up to the Mexican border on his bicycle. He has two large bags over his shoulders. The guard stops him and says, "What's in the bags?"

"Sand," answered Juan.

The guard says, "We'll just see about that. Get off the bike." The guard takes the bags and rips them apart; he empties them out and finds nothing in them but sand. He detains Juan overnight and has the sand analyzed, only to discover that there is nothing but pure sand in the bags The guard releases Juan, puts the sand into new bags, hefts them onto the man's shoulders, and lets him cross the border.

A week later, the same thing happens. The guard asks, "What have you got?"

"Sand," says Juan.

The guard does his thorough examination and discovers that the bags contain nothing but sand. He gives the sand back to Juan, and Juan crosses the border on his bicycle.

This sequence of events is repeated every day for three years. Finally, Juan doesn't show up one day and the guard meets him in a Cantina in Mexico.

"Hey, Buddy," says the guard, "I know you are smuggling something. It's driving me crazy. It's all I think about..... I can't sleep. Just between you and me, what are you smuggling?"

Juan sips his beer and says, "Bicycles."

[joebill]

In "real life". there used to be one of those guys around here who bought gas and diesel from the batch plant and hauled it around to the ranches and filled their yard tanks that they used for fueling the trucks and tractors. His name was, of all things, OPIE, and his daughter was my daughter's best friend.

Eventually, some smug drugglers built an exact replica of Opie's 60 series chevy tank truck, complete with all of the license and DOT permit numbers, and operated in the area back and forth across the border for months before getting caught. After that, Opie could hardly go anywhere without getting pulled over at gun-point and threw in the towell.....Joe

[ceresone]

the tale around here was that it was wheelbarrows--which is what makes this stoty funny.
hubby parked his truckstop overnight, and had it broken into. nothing was stolen--it was full of wheelbarrows