Black Canyon Highway ran south through Phoenix, turned east just south of McDowell, and then came to an end at 40th Street. To get to Tucson you went south on 40th to Baseline, then east to some two-lane highway that went south to Casa Grande. Just past Casa Grande that highway finally reached the freeway that went to Tucson. That's how I did it almost every Sunday in June. The semester had ended at the University of Arizona and MamaCharlie and most of the other girls in the dorms had moved back home for the summer, or moved into apartments around campus. So instead of the hour drive from Huachuca to Tucson to see MC, June meant a 200-mile drive one way to see her. So I did it.
The GIs from Huachuca that dated girls from the dorms would drop their ladies off just before curfew and then we would meet up in groups at various locations: the Circle K for six-packs, the park (Randolph Park) or Sambo's for coffee. We had convoys of three or four cars that would run together back to post. When the term at UofA ended, so did the informal convoys. It was pretty much running solo from then on...for all of us.
Nights in Arizona are usually clear and bright, especially away from the cities. Even when there is no moon you can see for miles by starlight, but on a cloudy night you may as well be in a coal mine without a lantern. The air feels different at night, even if the temperature is not that much lower. It is calmer somehow. And you can smell flowers and sage...or around 40th Street, the stockyards. One particular night on the way back to Huachuca, as I came to the crest of the hills north of Casa Grande, I was struck by how much I could see in the dead of night. From that spot it is at least ten miles into the town (a generous description) and I could see all the streets and houses. It was a beautiful night; I had had a beautiful weekend with MC. I was twenty years old, newly back from Vietnam, ten feet tall and bulletproof...and I was strapped into a '65 GTO just like the song said, "...three deuces and a four-speed and a 389..." I let her fly.The road was straight, there wasn't another car anywhere, and I had the downgrade helping me out. In no time at all the needle on the speedometer was pegged. The motor screamed, the tailpipes roared, the tires hissed, and the wind going by the window sounded like a freight train.
On the edge of Casa Grande there is a gas station; in my memory it is always a Shell station but I may have imprinted that later. I don't know what kind of day the old cop had had. Maybe he was a slacker and spent every shift parked behind the gas station, or maybe it was break time or maybe he just thought that it was a neat place to catch speeders but whatever it was, that's where he was. I was at least five miles out of town when he lit up his roof rack...they were still all red in them days. I could see him as plain as day. The one feature of that highway that I failed to mention was the fact that there were no cross-streets...nowhere to turn off the road, not even a dirt track. My first reaction was that I had better slow down 'cause that cop had someone down there...then I realized the someone he had was me.
No dramatic car chase, no escape and evasion, I just pulled into the gas station next to the cop car to take my medicine. The old cop was friendly enough; we chatted while he wrote up the ticket. He told me that he had new radar that went up to 125 mph and I pegged it. I decided not to brag about the radar in California being more sophisticated; they had already informed me my little Goat was good for 132. The conversation turned to what a California boy was doing out in the middle of the Arizona desert after midnight. I explained that Fort Huachuca was a dump-zone for guys like me who came back from Vietnam with too much time left in the Army to discharge right away. That led to a lengthy discussion of the differences between Vietnam and WWII or Korea, both of which he had participated in.
We kinda ran out of things to talk about after about a half an hour or so. He looked down at his boots (Arizona law men all wear expensive cowboy boots) for a few minutes. Then he looked up at me and told me that his tickets were numbered and once he wrote one, he couldn't tear it up...so he handed me all the copies of the ticket and told me to go slower through his town from then on. I stupidly asked if he was sure; some infantile chunk of my pea brain was worried that he would get in trouble. He half-grinned and told me that they would be a little upset but since he was the senior cop in town...scroom. We shook hands. I motored calmly, sedately, and smoothly out of the gas station, through the "town" of Casa Grande, and scooted out to the freeway.
I have had some interesting exchanges with Arizona lawmen; some were scary and some were just pathetic. But the old cop in Casa Grande is by far my favorite desert cop.
