I Told You All That So I Could Tell You This
In preparation for writing this article, I google mapped Sierra Vista and it's environs. I was amazed at how poorly I remembered how the road was laid out until I looked at the sattelite image, then I could see that the Charleston Road from Sierra Vista to Tombstone has been redone in the last forty years. Big shock. Looking at the satellite photos, I could see the old road winding like a sidewinder on steroids...
Tom was a big guy from LA. Really big. He married a go-go dancer and brought her to Ft Huachuca with the intention that she would hang around the trailer park during the day and entertain him in the evening. That worked for a couple weeks. Then she wanted some entertainment of her own and started playing footsie (funny how that takes on new meaning in light of current events) with one of the cooks from our mess hall. Somehow, Tom got wind of it and decided to put a stop to it. He approached the cook in the mess hall during food prep time and threatened to cut off his offending appendage...with a 10" cook's knife. The cook made a dash for the back door and flew out on to the company street.
Dave, Gordy, and I had just moved out of the common barracks into "cadre rooms" in the student barracks...a little nicer set up for us. Dave had been driving around with a civilian buddy of his and they stopped by the barracks to pick up...I don't remember...something...and left the civilian kid's brand new Firebird 400 idling in front of the barracks. The cook, the one with the wayward appendage...ran right up to the Firebird, jammed it into gear and burned the tires up trying to escape Tom...who was about 4 steps behind with the big knife. Dave and his buddy were coming out of the barracks as this happened...the kid was screaming like he'd been knifed...but Dave ran across the parking lot to the MP station and breathlessly reported the theft. For most of the time I was there, the MPs spent most of their time waving cars in and out of the gates, chasing GIs out of the WAC barracks, and snoozing on the fringe of the desert...so a stolen car...a hot pursuit...it was an all out effort. Unfortunately, by the time the all out effort got launched, the Firebird was out the gate and storming north on Highway 90.
The MPs got the call out to the local police and sheriff and the Highway Patrol. Just happened to be a HP car coming south on the highway and he spotted the Firebird coming at him, went to lights, and prepared to make the stop. The cook had no intention of stoppiing, though. I'm thinking he heard the same news story I heard about the shoot out and didn't want to be on the next blotter awarded his tickets posthumously. He did an admirable 180 right in front of the A & W and screamed back south, into a 90 degree left in front of the main gate, raced past the Sheriff and Sierra Vista cop cars that were a little late getting the information on the change of direction. Just past Sue and Herbs another Sheriff car was fixing to block the way so the cook made a squealing left turn on to the old Charleston Road.
This road was reputed to be the old stage coach trail from Tombstone. Starting from the Sierra Vista end, it went north a short way then curved east into a straight away about 2 miles long. The another hard curve to the north again. Less than a mile later the road (barely two lanes wide) did a very hard 90 degree to the right and over a bridge and immediately did another hard 90 degree to the north again...up a short grade, soft curve to the right at the top...then it was an honest to gosh roller coaster the rest of the way to Tombstone. And in them days, there were no other roads off of it. A couple of dirt tracks requiring 4X4s but nothing a car could manage. So once on the Charleston, your next stop was Tombstone.
The Highway Patrol car was the first law enforcement car in the chase...a brand new Plymouth with all the pursuit goodies they used to put in cop cars...boy were they proud of 'em, too. The HP car had to back off abit in the first curve...goosed into the straight. Couldn't believe his eyes when the Firebird kept getting smaller. Into the second curve back to the north, he really had to brake it down...and couldn't get full value out of all those cubic inches because the turns over the bridge were coming up fast. Once over the dry river bed and pointed north again...the patrol man barely made out the back of the Firerbird topping the rise. By the time the HP car got to the top, the Bird was no longer visible in all the twists and turns and drops and rises. The HP car called the pursuit off. The Sheriff cars slowed, too. They had called their boss, who had a road block waiting at the bottom of the last hill approaching Tombstone. After all the excitement of the chase, everyone just sat and waited for the Firebird to show up.
After waiting longer than it would take to make the drive even at regular speeds...the Sheriff told his deputies on the Sierra Vista end to start up the road paying close attention to where the Bird may have flown off the road. They found the Firebird just below the crest of the last hill...it hadn't made the top...ran out of gas on the Sierra Vista side and couldn't quite coast over the ridge. If he had, he could have coasted down to the waiting arms of the local police. They found the cook wandering around off the road, trying to find a path into town...he hid from the cops until he was sure it was the sheriff and not the patrol that found him. I guess he really did hear that news report.
It all came out okay. Tom calmed down...got over his rage. The MPs decided not to file assault charges, since none of them saw anything and the rest of us that witnessed the mess hall confrontation got amnesia. His go-go girl went back to LA. Dave's buddy got his Firebird back, without gas but relatively unscathed...and by the way...with a killer reputation, it out ran the AHP by a bunch! The cook faced GTA, evading, resisting, speeding, reckless, and the worst charge of all...embarassing the Highway Patrol.
Mostly taken from the next days news, read from the blotter, on our local, daylight radio station. Some blanks filled in by witnesses."