vacaenbaja
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Calamity Jane Sees a Ghost
By John Hilton
On one of our trips my wife an daughter had flown
down as far as Bahia de los Angeles with Major Monte-
negro. The Major, at that time, was a special aide to the
new Governor. He was known throughout northern Baja
California as one of the best fliers and one of the fastest
pistol shots in the country. When the Governor had to
get somewhere fast, Ernesto Montengro took him there
in his single-engine plane and landed on anything that
was fairly solid and smooth. When there was real trouble
the Governor sent the Major to take over, as he did in the
cleanup in Tijuana.
The Major was a character straight out of some adven-
ture writer's book. Brave beyond belief, fast in his think-
ing and actions, a fluent linguist, immaculate in appear-
ance, and a gentlemen to his finger tips. The only differ-
ence between Major Montenegro and the fiction writer's
ideal hero is that the Major is a real living person. With
all of his dashing actions and appearance he is a devoted
father to his children and a faithful husban to his beau-
titful wife. In the few years that Barbara and I have known
him, we have come to think a good deal of this man.
When Bralulio Maldonando discovered tht Barbara and
Sharon were going to spend the summer with me down
the coast, he insisted that the Major fly them down and
and spare them the long, hot dusty ride. He did not have to
sell this idea. The gals had seen the road the year before
and they were willing to swap four days of bumps, dust,
and heat for two hours and fifteen minutes in the air. I
had left one day ahead of them in the Jeep. Traveling
alone down the peninsula with no other company than
Calamity Jane, our small Shetland sheep dog, this trip
gave me a great deal of time to think of many things.
It had been a bad journey in many ways. The Jeep had
blown its head gasket before I left the pavement below
Ensenada and I had lost half a day in San Vicente waiting
for another and getting it installed. Finally, on my way
again, I made the mistake of trying to make up the time.
The pressures and urgencies of civilization had not yet
left me or I would have shrugged and camped right there
for the night. As it was, I decided that I could make it to
El Rosario sometime that night and thus be practically
on schedule. I had heard that the new road was graded
almost to El Rosario so it seemed practical.
Everything went just fine until I reached San Quintin.
It was dusk by then. The road started to get worse and
worse. Sure, it was graded but the grade was constructed
of the country silt which is as fine as talcum powder and
the trucks had cut this into a deep ruts full of chuckholes
that were heartbreaking. It was necessary to put the Jeep
in compound and travel in second gear in order to keep
moving and still not bounce everything to pieces.
As it was, things did start to fall apart. I had built a bed
on top of the Jeep, held up by four posts. The bed was
insaide a plywood box which opened to make a half-roof
and windbreak. The bed itself was foam rubber. There
was acompartment alongside for my rifle, fishing poles,
and other long objects. The whole box had been made
dust-tight by stripping the hinged edges with canvas sat-
urated with rubber cement and by zippers with flaps.
This part worked fine but the tremendous chuckholes in
the new "highway" soon found the weak spot in my con-
stuction. There was not enough cross bracing. The
lurching foward and backward of this large though shal-
low box on top started to tear the cab of the Jeep apart. It
was an aluninum cab purchased from a mail-order house
and it soon becaame obvious that like many other itmes
it was "made to sell." It came knocked down and looked
wonderful after a day's work putting it together but the
gauge of the aluminum was far too thin to withstand the
battering of Baja California roads. Rivets began popping
like pistol shots. Of course the more rivets that went the
wider became the openings and the freer the motion of
destruction.
The trip degenerated into a nightmare. Now an then
I would stop and wade about in the foot-deep dust put-
ting in bolts where the rivets had been. The night wore
on and I decided that I could not spend all of it trying to
repair the cab.
By now the right door would fly open each time I hit
a heavy chuckhole, so it was with some relief that I saw
a man standing in the middle of the road thumbing a
ride. He said he lived in El Rosario and wanted to take
money to his family, so I told him he could ride if he
would hold the door close for me.
PART 2 TO FOLLOW
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desertcpl
Super Nomad
Posts: 2405
Registered: 10-26-2008
Location: yuma,az
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love it,
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 65345
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Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Sweet!
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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The Major sounds like Ollie North. I'm expecting him to step in and save the day in the followig chapters. 
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capt. mike
Elite Nomad
Posts: 8085
Registered: 11-26-2002
Location: Bat Cave
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Mood: Sling time!
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isn't there a "calamity Jane" in Mulege??
formerly Ordained in Rev. Ewing\'s Church by Mail - busted on tax fraud.......
Now joined L. Ron Hoover\'s church of Appliantology
\"Remember there is a big difference between kneeling down and bending over....\"
www.facebook.com/michael.l.goering |
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mulegemichael
Super Nomad
Posts: 2310
Registered: 12-24-2007
Location: sequim,wa. and mulege
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Mood: up on step
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there is truly a calamity jane in mulege...and she's not a sheep dog...but as the nickname implies, she is a true "calamity" in her own right....lots
of stories here.
dyslexia is never having to say you\'re yrros.
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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| Quote: | Originally posted by mulegemichael
....lots of stories here. |
Start at the beginning, please.....
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mulegemichael
Super Nomad
Posts: 2310
Registered: 12-24-2007
Location: sequim,wa. and mulege
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Mood: up on step
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not sure if there IS a beginning; sort of on a loop, so to speak.
dyslexia is never having to say you\'re yrros.
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vacaenbaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 642
Registered: 4-4-2006
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Calamity Jane Sees A Ghost PART TWO
This man introduced himself as Benny and said in
good Spanish that he could speak good English. Then he
spouted a sample and I assured him that I understood
Spanish much better than English, which was the truth
in his case. He seemed relived and launched into a com-
plete account of his life story. Roughly the data were as
follows: age thirty-two, residence and birthplace El Ro-
sario, parentage German-Mexican, Family one wife and
seven children--possibly seven and a half--an uncle
had died and left him a little ranch near the old mission.
Benny's present occupation was fishing contraband
lobsters. There was a group of the lobster fishermen
camped where I had picked him up. A car would come
and pick up fifty to seventy-five dozen lobsters each trip
and haul them to Ensenada, where they would be boiled
and finally taken to Long Beach, California. Benny was
getting magnificent wages on this job and bragged that in the last week he had made enough that he could take
over forty dollars to his family.
I smiled to myself as we bounced along. I carried in my
pocket an honorary membership in the State Security
Police. It was not natural that he should have told me
all of this but it became apparent that Benny was not al-
together sober. Presently he could stand it no longer and
blurted, "You drinkee tequila, ver' good tequila?" Right
then I could have drunk very bad tequila and, as it turned
out, that was exactly what he had!
He assured me that it was only nineteen miles to El
Rosario and I should be able to make it very well in two
hours and a half. It took three hours and a half. There are
good tequilas that are a real pleasure to drink, but the
type of white tequila carried by Benny was the sort that
can be appreciated only after three drinks. By then the
taste buds are paralyzed. Nevertheless, I am certain that I
would have never made it to El Rosario that night if it
had not been for Benny and his uninhibited conversation
and caustic tequila.
Benny and I discussed a good many things between
jolts of the road and jolts of tequila but mostly we dis-
cussed contraband lobsters. I realized that this was a very
small part of a large operation. I asked him if he realized
that about one third of the lobsters eaten on the west
coast of the United States were illegal lobsters from Mex-
ico and he proudly agreed. He said that the government
was trying to take food from the mouths of honest
people by putting through laws restricting the trapping
and transporting of lobsters. I tried to explain that it was
a matter of conservation and that, if something were not
done, the great lobster fisheries of the coast would be-
come worthless.
He disagreed. "Senor Hilton, the lobsters are so thick
on the rocks we are only doing them a favor to trap some
to make room for the next generation. The law is an
oppression."
I realized that it was rather hard to sell long-range con-
servation to someone like Benny with forty American
dollars in his pocket for what he considered very little
work. I could not help but to think of the big boys in the
business in the Long Beach and San Diego fish markets
who sell the lobsters. I thought of the veritable fleet of
small planes manned by ex-army fliers who found things
too dull after getting out of the service. I thought of how
some of these boys had made a "killing" with a small
investment in a war surplus plane used in transporting
contraband lobsters.
I also remembered some that had been shot down and
others who had remained in Mexican jails for months or
years. It was a big gamble. A proper law regarding entry
of these illegal lobsters in the United States would stamp
out the whole jolly racket and I would be glad to pay
more for a poorer grade lobster shipped in from some-
where else. As it is, they can get cold cash for "hot" lob-
sters and the racket goes on.
The lobster planes are so easily spotted at the Long
Beach airport that it is a standard joke. In what other sort
of business would they be with the seats replaced by
storage boxes and the back windows painted over? I know
some of the Mexican officers who are paid to enforce the
law. They have a job that is far too great for them. The
coast is rugged, the landing fields are small. A contraband
plane can look for another place to land. The contraband
plane is usally hopped up. It can dump its load and out-
run the police plane, then it can land as piously as any-
thing on the U.S. side and enter the home country legally
while the Mexican officer fumes on the landing field on
the Mexican side.
I know some of the boys flying the contraband planes.
They say it's a cinch if you keep in with the right gang
but this takes some doing. Some of the fliers claim to
hve immunity from the Mexican flying police because
they snitch on the movements of others. Sevedral can play
at this game, with unpleasant results. When they pass
the U.S. boarder, they stop and enter the lobsters legally
with a slip of paper that they have printed to match
the small clearance slips issued by the Mexican cooperat-
tive fisheries on legal lobsters.
The men at the boarder must know that these are not
legal lobsters, but as one told me when I tried to bring in
some roast pork during a hoof-and-mouth disease scare,
"Our orders are to stop meat. We know that cooked meat
cannot bring in the disease but the book says meat, and
what you are carrying is meat, so hand it over. I am not
hired to interpret the law, I am hired to enforce it just as
it is written in the book." This kind of attitude makes it
very easy for the contraband fliers. All they haved to do is find
out what the book calls for as a clearance and produce a
reasonable facsimile of same.
The Mexican fish and game people are now fighting
the battle on the ground, nipping at the sources of the
lobsters and setting up patrol stations and men with Jeeps
who roam the areas. Soon Benny and his kind will lose
their jobs and a lot of young U.S.. adventurers will have
to look somewhere else for remunerative excitement.
The conservation laws will win in the end.
PART THREE TO FOLLOW
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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OK.....now we have Eugene Hasenfus flying contra contraband langosta and the plot thickens.
Ollie waits.........
I'm on the edge of my seat.
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vacaenbaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 642
Registered: 4-4-2006
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Calamity Jane Sees A Ghost PART 3
Finally the powdery dust gave way to a rocky road that
was even harder on the Jeep but a great relief to us. We
dipped into the long, steep grade that drops from the
mesa to El Rosario. We were still making all of five miles
per hour but at last the lights appeared. We drove on
past the two rival service stations and stores , down into
the arroyo, and finally stopped just beyond the old mis-
sion. Here was Benny's ranch and not a minute too soon.
The stimulayion of the tequila was wearing off and it was
one a.m. Benny finally gained asmittance to his house
and I opened up the top of the bed and climbed in. I had
eaten no supper or did I feel hungry even now--just
numb and tired and so glad that the piece of road was
behind me. Calamity , who had kept a philosophical si-
lence, lapped up some water and refused food.
The following morning I opened up the back end of the
Jeep, which contains a complete kitchen, and cooked
some breakfast for Calamity and myself. She ate very
little but drank a good deal of water. I found that I had
practically no appetite.
"Possibly, senor, it is that we have all eaten too much
dust to feel hungry for anything else," sai Benny. He
could have been right.
Benny had seven children, all blonds and all girls but
the youngest. although he was only half German and his
wife had only a trace of Nordic ancestry, the children
looked as if they had been born in Oslo or Belin. They
were a shy lot and sat in a row with the tallestat the end
holding little brother, and the others stairstepped down
the old adobe ruin which they used as an observation
bench. They accepted candy but would not eat it until
Benny told them to. Then they sat there in a row like a
lot of little birds nibbling daintilly at the candy with
rather surprised expressions on their faces.
Benny suggested that we take out all the bolts in the
cab and put washers on each side of every one and re-
place the spots where new rivets had popped out. By the
time this was done and I had gassed up it was almost
eleven.
Again on the road it was a nightmare of dust, and when
taht gave out the rocks took over. The hills seemed steep-
er and the roads rougher to Calamity and me because
everything on my Jeep was falling apart. A check that
morning had brought out the fact that I hqad lost two
Jeep cans full of water, a brand new shovel, and several
other items without even hearing them fall off. The din
Every time I went down one of the impossibly steep
hills, the bed on top would drag forward and every time I
ground up one in compound low it would slip backward.
I stopped so many times that day to fix things and tie
things on that I lost count.
Places that the year before had cold beer had none
now. I traveled for six hours without passing anyone.
Poor Calamity would try to drop off to sleep only to
awaken on the very next bump. Each place where they
had no beer, they put a dish of cool water from an olla
in front of the little dog. She would lap it up and then
drop off to sleep right there beside the empty dish. When
I would awaken her and tell her to jump up onto the Jeep,
she would look at me as if to say, "Is this trip really neces-
sary?" Then she would obediently take her place behind
the safety strap I had designed to keep her from being
thrown too hard and resign herself to another beating.
Finally, just as the shadows were low, we came into the
old ranch of San Agustin. They not only had a dish of
cool water for the dog but cold beer in the refrigerator.
They explained that travel had dropped off so sharply,
due to the worsened conditions of the roads, that the
places down the road felt that they could not afford to buy
butane to keep their gas refrigerators running. I presume
that there is not a great deal of profit in hauling beer all
this way over such roads and then hauling gas to refrig-
erate it when the beer still sells for approximately the
same price that they ask in the better bars in Tijuana.
Here Calamity drank two dishes of water and I had two
beers. the proprietor nodded approvingly, "One cannot
fly on one wing, senor."
Now we were ready to "fly" again. I grinned to myself
at the remark of an American the first day out who had
looked at my outlandish outfit over and walked away say-
ing, "I don't know what the hell it is but I'll bet it will
never fly."
Just as the dull, red sun slipped down behind a flat-
topped hill, I pulled up the Jeep up beside the deserted adobe
ranch house of Agua Dulce. All the hills around us were
flat-topped now, showing the effects of an ancient sea.
There was a quiet peace about this deserted ranch that
has somehow, drawn me back. I had camped there the
year before with Barbara and Sharon and we had all liked
the place.
I let down the rear end of the grub box, which turns
into a table, pumped up the gasoline stove, and in a few
minutes has supper on the way. Calamity Jane scurried
about smelling all the new smells and then coming back
to sit and wag her tail. How happy she was to be out of
that Jeep! Just as I was about to take the food off the stove,
she suddenly started acting very strangely. There was a
New moon hanging low, a silver scimitar in a rosy after-
glow framed by the black, sharply chiseled hills. The
little dog seemed to be taking in all this, turning and
looking up, sniffing and twitching her nose in the strange
manner which she had.
Suddenly she stiffened and the hair stood up on the
back of her neck. She braced all four legs and started
tp growl deep in her chest. i had never seen her act this
way before. There were some cows nearby and I thought
one might be approaching through the dusk, but then I
saw that she was "pointing" toward a spot between the
Jeep and the crumbling adobe of the old ranch house.
This lasted about ten seconds and then she relaxed her
pose and started wagging her tail and walking in that
direction as happy as if she had just made a new friend.
I stopped what I was doing and watched intently. This
was no ordinary occurance. When she got almost to the
wall, she sat back on her haunches and put up her right
paw as if to shake hands with someone who, so far as I
was concerned simply was not there. then she turned
and still wagging her tail gaily trotted around the end
of the building just as if she was following someone. A
strange chill came over me though the night was warm
and sultry. I left the Jeep and followed the dog. She was
trotting down a trail into the dusk. Suddenly, I was glad
that she was so well trained that I could call her back even if she was chasing a rabbit. I called and she turned
and looked back, then she looked reluctantly down the
trail and trotted back to me.
I fed her and a few minutes after I had eaten, I put her
up on the foot of my bed. Very shortly I followed he and
lay there thinking of the stories I had read about Shelties
being "fey" and having the ability to see the unseen.
The sliver of moon had disappeared, the afterglow had
faded nd the hard, bright stars blinked down on a man
and a dog in a lonely, silent world who slept the sleep of
healthy exhaustion.
FINIS
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captkw
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3850
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Location: el charro b.c.s.
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Mood: new dog/missing the old 1
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NICE !!!
AND A THANKS
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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That was fun...and well written. Thanks.
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desertcpl
Super Nomad
Posts: 2405
Registered: 10-26-2008
Location: yuma,az
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thanks nice read
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