Fort Huachuca was a pretty isolated place in the middle sixties. Three drive-in restaurants...one drive-in theater...one dancin' and drinkin' honky tonk...one Sambo's out on the edge of town...and a daytime only radio station. There were two laundromats and there must have been other stores and town stuff, but I never used anything else.
The daytime radio station played a mix of pop and country and for news it read the Tucson morning paper and the police blotter for the county...which included all the action that took place each day in the southeast desert. We would sit around in the evening as the station was about to go off the air, listening to the final recap of the day's news...we usually got a chuckle out of which drunks were arrested for urinating on a cop car or some other silly story. It was a pretty low rent operation.
One particular evening as the news was read, we all slowly got wrapped up in a mini-drama that unfolded from the county sheriff's blotter. Heree is how the story went. An Arizona Highway Patrolman stopped a car on a routine traffic stop. The officer asked for the license and registration as usual. The driver patted his pockets in ritual preparation for pulling out his wallet when instead he pulled out a .38 caliber and opened up on the policeman. With the exception of two or three, everyone in that barracks was recently returned from Vietnam. We were very familiar with weapons and surprises...and the outcome of ambushes.
You need to drop back 40 years in sophistication. Things were simpler then...less dramatic. We could see the cop leaning on the fender or perhaps with his boot up on the bumper...one hand holding the ticket pad, the other holding his pen poised over the pad, ready to write. Practically a helpless pose. The driver comes out with a revolver and starts blasting away...cop doesn't stand a chance, right? Wrong! The outcome was cop wounded in the leg...perp shot six times in the chest. And that's the news for tonight...we'll be signing on again at 5:30 with more hits and all the scoop on what's happening throughout the county...good night.
The National Anthem then static. We all sat through several moments of static going over the story in our minds...putting pictures to the words...I looked across the aisle at Rask...he looked as dumbfounded as I felt. Batman Tinney broke the silence with a quiet assessment, "Holy S***"". The barracks quickly filled with chatter about the quality of the driver's shooting or the quickness of the patrolman. We all agreed on one thing. Give the Arizona Highway Patrol wide berth. Well, we agreed on one other thing, too. There was NO FREAKING WAY that story happened as played. "