“A friend of mine persuaded me to go,” Ron said. “He came by one evening and said he was catching a ride on a truck to Matamoros, Mexico in half an hour. When he got there he planned to wetback it to the States. I was a twenty year-old kid up for any kind of adventure so I went along.”
Ron was a promising young bass player back then and he frequently accompanied me at a little bar called The Last Resort. I ran into him at the airport and he invited me to his home.
“I’m glad it worked out for you,” I said.
“The best thing that happened was joining the U.S. Army,” he said. “Two weeks ago I retired with twenty years in service so I came home to Belize City. The only thing I have from the old days is this trunk my mama packed all my things in.”
“That trunk seems full of interesting things,” I told him.
“Yeah. See this ticket? The morning I left I had just put my bicycle tube in the shop to be repaired. When I was walking around the neighborhood this morning I noticed the bike shop was still there.”
He put the ticket in his shirt pocket and said, “Come on. Let’s have some fun.”
We walked over to the repair shop and Ron laid the ticket on the counter. The old man in the shop looked at, scratched his head and said, “Juss a minute.”
He disappeared through the door leading to the back of the shop and returned after eight or ten minutes.
He said, “Ya tube ready tomorrow.”
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