We stopped in El Paso at the Border Patrol Museum. It gives you an appreciation of how dangerous the work is. There you find a whole memorial wall dedicated to Border Patrol personnel who have lost their lives in the line of duty. The Border Patrol’s annual budget has been doubled in recent years which explains the increase in presence we see and high tech equipment they seem to be hauling.
Every time we are stopped at a check point the sniffer dogs go crazy. No, we aren’t drug mules hauling Columbian Cocaine. We have canine friendly cats who like to sit in the motor home picture window and wave at the duty dog of the day.
The museum theme was a historical look at the Border Patrol. It made me feel old. I have owned or used much of the equipment in the museum. There was a 1948 Johnson 3-horse outboard. I used to have one of those. A snowmobile (yes, we do have a northern border too!) that was manufactured just after Sergeant Prestons dogs died. A ring that was also a pistol. No, I never had one of those but I think I saw it in an old 007 movie.
When we pull up to a checkpoint there are several odd looking devices at the entrance. We haven’t quite figured out what each individual piece of equipment does, but we are guessing all the time. We think one is a sniffer. It must really get a kick out of our rig passing by. We have been eating so much Mexican food for the last month I don’t even leave the hot water heater pilot light on. Another piece looks like a listening device. We are not sure. To test our theory, the next time we pass by it I’m going to have Gaila say, “I put the two kilo in the septic holding tank.” We can kill two birds with one stone. We will know if the equipment is a listening device, and I will get my septic tank emptied for free.
It seems like a one way turnstile. We spent a week at Pancho Villa State Park in New Mexico, just three miles north of a border crossing station. A steel wall ran the length of the border to the outskirts of Palomas, Mexico. Every time we went into Mexico no one ever challenged us, questioned us, or even looked twice at us. But coming out at the U.S. side we needed passports, answered questions and watched intensive vehicle inspections. I’m thinking some real money could be made if we manufactured drugs in the U.S. and smuggled them into Mexico. We brought a two pound bag of fresh ground coffee back one day. When I was going through U.S. customs I started thinking, “I hope that was coffee the woman ground into this bag.” I didn’t want to do hard time for a little caffein fix. I don’t mean to make light of the border problems but it does seem a bit surreal. I think if the U.S. would have kept it’s nose out of Mexico’s politics in 1916, Pancho Villa would have straightened the whole country out and we could be saving 2.4 billion dollars a year on surveillance. Some things never change. --Keep Smilin’, Dick E. Bird
