By Dan Bodine

 

With two days left before the end of May [which by custom we usually call ‘start of Summer’], this past Memorial Day weekend honoring our fallen troops was more than a bit different, I’m thinking it was for most of us. For my wife, Noemi, daughter, Maiya Kareli, and me, it was especially so. Think: “The kindness of a community,” it was.

It marked the anniversary (last Sunday) 16 years ago when we moved from Presidio to El Paso — e.g., not just “moved” but for me personally ending a unique, close relationship with a community who (starting the last week of October of 1979) had taken in an old wandering and weakened desert straggler who, as my ol’ friend Luis Armendariz wanting to rib me occasionally always would say, “didn’t even have a pot to pee in when he came here!”

True, I only had an association initially with Presidio through a newspaper for which I worked, the now defunct The International Presidio Paper. It and the community it reflected helped me find sobriety as an alcoholic. Hopefully, in writing this, I can express my heartfelt gratitude for my new life!

Yes, I came  to Presidio from riding high horses in the DFW area, e.g., managing editor of a mid-size daily at one time; publisher of several weeklies; possessing many honorable writing awards… But still as an ol’ alcoholic, too; what stood out — e.g., I was beaten-down and divorced; in short, a former newspaper writer/editor/weekly publisher who’d gone kaplunked.

And here into The Land of Dos Rios he came — e.g., answering an ad in a Texas Press Association journal for a reporter/city editor job at The International Presidio Paper, a weekly — I came exhausted and at life’s rock bottom.

But I didn’t stay inactive long. I still had fight left in me! Notched-up scrambling, my life became; determined I was, to git outta that hole! Writing, writing, writing newspaper stories was giving me my old groove back. But a writing groove and a financial groove are two separate wind whiffs!

Little did I know then that about a year and a half later I would be given the choice of either buying that weekly paper (on a note arrangement), or (my phrase) “hitting the road” again — e.g., in search of another job.

New Reality

A stark reality that’d crept in was this Morman couple with 11 kids who’d started up the paper had sold their printing presses already; were in the process of shutting down The International Presidio Paper they’d started up, too (“fastest-growing weekly in the State of Texas” is how it was advertised in the ad); and were going home (somewhere, New Mexico?).

They’d drifted down originally from the Texas’ Panhandle, with success at what I remembered was a goat publication.

And had performed quite a feat, admittedly, in the Big Bend, too — e.g., starting up not only the Presidio paper but earlier, one in nearby Fort Davis also, which they sold for a nice profit.

They’d rode into the Big Bend with the Sunbelt expansion fever sweeping the country, was my initial thought; and when it stalled in the late or mid-’70s, was undecided now which way that fever would turn, if any at all?

But good business people usually can find an “escape card” plan.

What about Dan? their thinking got around to later, more or less I’m guessing.

And with my background, the thought He knows how to hustle advertising revenue, probably crossed their thoughts.

If we sold it to him, he’d maybe keep it running for a few years. And all that time he’d be sending his note payments to us! And if he ever defaulted, we could take our paper back, and sell it again.

Escaping from economic stalls or failures, admittedly, especially involving ghost-ridden “high horses,” is as American as apple pie, let’s remember.

But Me?

Was Jethro the drunk cornered then?

I swallowed hard at the thought, and probably later when the papers were ready to sign, mumbled something like “Ouch!”

But I put all my heart into keeping The International Presidio Paper alive then.

Such was the reason I — or an assistant, Armando — would drive the newspaper’s made-up pages 3 hrs. to The Pecos Enterprise late each Wednesday night, and back, for printing — for several years, i.e.

Even though for me then it would mean three back-to-back days with little or no sleeping. “Ye-oww!”

And I never once crashed on one ot those dangerous, mountainous roadways.

When my eyelids got too heavy to fight it anymore (usually on the return trips at 3-4 a.m. in the mornings), I’d simply stop on the side of the highway — and run windsprints up and down the highway!

Quoting Yogi Berra, the late, great hind-catcher for the New York Yankees — I kept holding onto another stark reality: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over!”

— Tag-Along Son —

A long beginning, that’s all been, too.

But I just couldn’t let this past weekend’s uniqueness slip by without writing about other unique experiences, too, especially about being fortunate enough to be a Spanish community’s cultural tag-along son for almost 30 years — e.g., the last 17 even as their judge, their Presidio County, Pct. 2, Justice of the Peace.

Elected again and again…An ol’ boy who despite having an advanced education, most people in that roughly 3,500 pop. community were poignantly aware, too, that absent a keen court clerk and translator, he’d be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. It was the kindness of a community that was behind me.

Members of the Lions Club I joined, i.e., despite Spanish being their first language, would kindly interrupt other members in mid-sentence during routine monthly meetings to remind the speaker: “Dan is present — English please.”

That tag-a-long cultural non-fitter, who with his stuttering may not’ve been learning Spanish too rapidly, members may’ve felt. But because, too, “He’s universally kind and fitting himself in enough as it is, we don’t need to be putting any more obstacles on his shoulders than necessary. So: English, please.”

That was my energy: “…He most certainly deserves us conducting our affairs in English” was their special tip-of-the-hat to me. And I appreciated it, guys! Thank you.

But as good of an alcoholic as I was, I kept riding that role out ’til almost my last dying breath, too. Thank God and good people like the Lions and their wives for my recovery.

The key moment, maybe about a year-and-a-half or two on in this odd relationship, happened late one Saturday night, when I was roused at home in an intoxicated slumber by phone, by the county jail’s dispatcher in Marfa.

She was notifying me a Texas DPS highway patrolman and a county deputy were at my Presidio judge’s office with an intoxicated prisoner.

He needed to be arraigned (advised of rights); before being taken 60 miles up the mountains to the county jail in Marfa — home of the only jail in an expansive Presidio County. [Expensive, revamped and tightened jail standards had shut down many small jails across Texas, like the City of Presidio’s, a couple of decades earlier.]

Puzzled

Well, the burning question in my mind while driving slowly to the office  late that night was this: How does one drunk, magistrate another drunk?!

No, this is not an ol’ Amos ‘n Andy sitcom, but a bad, real-life situation, I’ll venture to say now, that the state’s jail standards commission off-handedly put numerous small communities like Presidio in — e.g., while the state legislature sluggishly was “reforming” the rules in the mid-70s.

Hell, a simple holding cell offers a drunk a night of peaceful sleep — before he’s released the next morning on bond. Why do we have to have New York (or other big city) rules way out here in Texas?

But none-the-less, I somehow staggered into the office that night — not daring to breathe directly in front of anyone — and with former Deputy [now Sheriff] Danny Dominguez standing on the right side of me, and Trooper Robert Lujan standing on the other (to keep me from falling) — I stuttered out The Rights to this one poor s.o.b.; and had him sign the paper acknowledging it.

And then went back home (e.g., sobered up enough now to be ashamed of myself), and knelt by the bedside. And asked God to forgive me. Then crying myself to sleep.

The next day I started looking for help. And found it with the aid of a state social agency there. And in the process, eventually, became a “founding member” of a new Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter in the Presidio, TX/Ojinaga, Chih., MX Valley.

Thank you, good people, on both sides of the Rio Grande. From there, I was able to meet my future wife and the mother of our future adopted child.

God is Good, definitely yes!

 

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