In the middle sixties, a bus ride from Ft Huachuca to Tucson cost about 8-10 dollars and took almost five hours. From the dorms at the U of A to the main gate of Huachuca is only 71 miles (a trip I am intimately familiar with, having courted MamaCharlie when she lived in Arizona Hall and I lived in the barracks at Huachuca). But the bus doesn't go to the dorms...it doesn't even go to Tucson...when you board the bus at Huachuca you go to Nogales (making numerous stops along the way), then head north toward Tucson (again, making several stops). There is a small airport at Huachuca, one or two flights a day from an airline that flies planes like Sky King used to fly (before your time? Think SMALL). Every Friday the service schools at Huachuca graduated several hundred soldiers who all had to find a way to the Tucson Airport...many took the bus. But an awful lot of them rode to Tucson crammed into the privately owned vehicles of some very enterprising young permanent party soldiers. For example, a middle sized GM product with bench rear and bucket front seats...say a GTO...could carry four grads and their duffle bags in relative comfort. At five dollars a head, they got a bargain and I...er...I mean the driver would get twenty bucks...and they got to the airport in a little over an hour vs almost five. My personal record was 45 minutes...but that was a late night run.
Most of the practitioners of the unauthorized limo service knew it was an ICC violation...but most practitioners didn't go overboard with it. Cicely did. He immediately saw a fortune to be made. He hauled two or three loads every friday then made more runs on Sunday, bringing new trainees from the Airport to Huachuca. He bought a 55 Pontiac Safari station wagon with a big roof rack on it. He would squeeze about nine grads into the wagon and storm out with a mountain of duffel bags tied to the top. Most of us did it only on occasion and just to pay for a weekend. Twenty bucks would cover gas, meals, and make a donation to a group motel room, if you were a joiner. The fellas I hung with never went to the airport on Sunday...the trip back after a week end was sort of a private affair and ICC would pay attention if too many people were snagging passengers from the terminal. It was one thing to snatch them up at the barracks...but in a busy plane terminal...that would draw fire.
I can't count the number of times I saw that old green station wagon flying out of the east gate, duffels tied on top, back bumper just inches off the ground, and Cicely driving like his hair was on fire. Several of us warned him that if it got too obvious, the officials would not be able to ignore the practice anymore. But his goal was to make a bunch of money then buy a newer wagon that could carry even more troops...a plan that was stymied by the fact that between Friday and Sunday, Cicely spent most of the weekend in a little town across the border called Naco...where he and his girl, Pocahontas, used a lot of the business capital to purchase wacky tobacky and servasa.
I left Huachuca in July of 67 and went home to The Box as a PFC (Private Freakin Civilian). That didn't work out so in October of the same year, I went back into the Army, married MamaCharlie, (not in that order) and drove down to Huachuca to visit the old crowd and show off the new wife. Lots of stuff happened in the few months since I had left. One of the things was that Greyhound finally had enough and filed a formal complaint with the ICC. The investigation that followed netted a large number of troops who had been making a business out of it. Cicely was caught up in the net. I was told that they were all required to get a business license, complete with back charges for late filing...their vehicles were inspected and they were required to bring them up to ICC standards...they all had to get chauffer's licenses...backdated to whenever ICC decided they began their enterprise. Once all that was done, they fined them a certain amount per day for every day they operated without proper certification...then revoked their licenses, confiscated their vehicles and assessed another big fine cause they could, I guess.
Ever heard of double jeopardy? Not Alex Trebec's kind...the legal kind. Well...if you are in the uniformed services, you fall under the juristiction of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you face charges in the civialian world...wlhen they are done with you, you can be charged with the same thing again uner the UCMJ. When the feds were all done with these boys...they were charged with a number of things under the UCMJ. There are any number of charges that can be levied...Article 134 is my favorite...it is called the General Article and states that you can be charged under this article if you can't find another one you like. Theres is always conduct unbecoming, too. Anyway, Cicely and those other boys sure learned a lesson. And me and Mrs Me...we slunk out under the cover of darkness...just in case there was still on open inquiry about a Metallic Emerald Green 65 GTO with black vinyl and three deuces.