Chapter 2: What is one of the funniest things you've ever done?
Originally written December 28, 2020
I've done a lot of "funny things," but this story from the mid 80s popped into my head when I saw the question.
It was on a trip to Juarez with my old pal, the late Erik Ness.
Erik was one of my very best friends, going all the way back to our college years in the early '70s. He'd moved to Las Cruces, where he got a job working as a spokesman and media whiz for the New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau.
Although when I met him in the fall of 1972 we both were enthusiastic backers of George McGovern, by the time he started with the Farm Bureau, he'd turned super conservative. That led to occasional political arguments between us, but those arguments always ended in laughter and did nothing to strain our friendship.
When visiting Erik down in Cruces or El Paso during the time he lived there, we'd usually make a trip to Juarez. At least once we brought our guitars and played on the streets as well as a taco joint we'd dubbed "Rathole Tacos," where the locals seemed to love the crazy gringos singing Elvis and Hank Williams songs.
On one drunken Juarez trip, Erik and I were sitting in a bar and we were kind of bored. "I've got an idea," I said. "Let's play detectives."
We made up a story that we were private detectives. He was "Phil Marlowe" and I was "Lew Archer." We'd been hired by a "wealthy planter" from nearby to search for his missing daughter, Carlotta Gomez.
Her description: "Early 20s, average height, about 120 pounds, black hair, brown eyes ..." So far it could be about half the females in Juarez. But our final descriptor helped narrow it down:
"And hooters out to here."
Some perspective: We both loved telling outrageous lies to strangers who might believe them.
On one trip, we were sitting in a bar called "The English Pub" with our guitars when some drunk college kid saw us and asked if we were musicians. I'd read earlier that Kenny Rogers had played in El Paso the night before.
So I told the kid we were in Kenny's band. Erik and I then started telling twisted, false and slanderous tales of Kenny being some kind of crazed acid head prone to running naked and screaming down hotel halls.
The kid ate it up and who knows how many wild urban legends about Kenny Rogers sprang from that. My apologies to friends and loved ones of the late country-pop star.
But I digress.
Back to the Carlotta Gomez adventure, Erik and I told the story of the missing plantation heiress and gave the description to any bartender, cab driver and street hustler we'd come across.
And most of the time, the person would claim to have seen the girl and tell us where she might be. We'd always go to the places they suggested -- sleaze bars, clip joints, whore houses, whatever.
After about an hour of our "search" for Carlotta, Erik and I were walking down some back street in Juarez's red-light district when a police car came from behind then blocked our path. Next thing we knew we were surrounded by Juarez cops.
Hands up! Backs against the wall!
A little further back up the street I noticed one of the street cigarette sellers we'd questioned about Carlotta earlier that night. Obviously, he'd tipped off the cops about the suspicious gringos.
I don't speak Spanish but the officer in charge said something about us being "detectos" -- which I later found out is not the Spanish word for "detectives."
I was flashing back on descriptions of the Juarez jail I'd heard from friends who had been there. I really did not want to find out for myself.
So I said, "Listen, I'm a reporter from New Mexico." (That part was true. At the time I was covering Santa Fe City Council for the Albuquerque Journal.) "So if anything happens to me, every goddamn investigative reporter in the Southwest is going to come looking for your ass…"
As if I were some boozed-up Don Bolles.
It was ridiculous. But it worked.
The head cop pointed at Erik and asked whether he was a reporter too. "Naw, I said. He's a flack for the Farm Bureau."
The cops all laughed and Erik was pissed. Maybe he wanted me to ditch "Phil Marlowe" and "Lew Archer" and claim we were "Bob Woodward" and "Carl Bernstein."
So we skulked back across the border bridge and we never "played detective" again.
But through the years we'd often greet each other with a hearty, "Hey, Detecto!"
Erik died of cancer in 2012. He was the star of many funny stories in my life.
I only wish there could have been more.
El Detecto!
Intrepid gringo buskers!