Dear Chief

In the middle of April the roadside was covered with wildflowers as I drove south through the King Ranch looking for Harlingen, Texas, a town I had never heard of until I received a telegram to report for duty with the Border Patrol in Harlingen.  At first I thought, “Oh, I know just where that is; that’s the little town between Dallas and Fort Worth,” until I looked on the map and realized that was Arlington, Texas, not Harlingen.  I finally found Harlingen on another map and saw that it was on the very southern tip of Texas, very close to the Rio Grande River.  That would be my duty station for the next four years.

After ten years’ duty in the U.S. Air Force, I was looking forward to this change of careers which had started over six months before when I took the written Civil Service test for the Border Patrol.  That was the hardest test I’d ever taken in my life.  I took it in Albany, Georgia, with 12 other people whom I never saw or heard of after the test.  I did pass the written test and was then told to report to Tallahassee, Florida to the Border Patrol Office where I would be given an oral interview.

There were only three of us for the interview, and the first man inside to meet the board seemed to be inside an awfully long time.  Naturally, it seemed longer to the other two of us who were sitting outside waiting our turn.  When he finally did leave the office, he just looked at us with a pitying glance and went right on out the door without ever saying a word.

The next man in was a policeman from Pensacola, Florida, as I’d found out when we talked outside.  He wasn’t in the interview room but a very few minutes.  When he came back out, he looked at me and said, “They told me to lose 20 pounds and they would reinterview.”  Then he told me to go in.

Well, as they say, it was my turn in the barrel.  I found myself standing before two Chiefs in their green dress uniforms and one Supervisor-Investigator in civilian clothes who were the sternest-looking people I have ever faced.  That was appropriate for the situation, as they would decide my fate for the next 20 years.

The interview consisted of a review of my personal history statement, which was a part of my application, and answering questions based on hypothetical situations, a couple of which I remember.  The first one was:  If I were a Border Patrolman patrolling the river and observed three aliens coming up the riverbank out of the water and one fell back in the water, and I could apprehend the two or assist the one who had fallen back in the river and was about to drown, what would I do?  My answer must have been the right answer because we went on to the next situation.

If I were inspecting a train and encountered a group of aliens being smuggled into the United States on the train, how would I determine who was the smuggler?  I got through the part by saying that I would ask the conductor to assist me and check their tickets.  We established that the tickets were in sequence.  I was stumped as to how to identify the smuggler, but since the tickets were in sequence, it was logical that the smuggler would be the person with the next numbered ticket, either the lower number or the next higher number.

After that we went on to review the personal history statement, and I had to give an explanation to one of the questions which asked, “Were you ever convicted of a crime?”  I had answered, “Yes.”  I had received a summary court martial while in the Air Force.  I gave an explanation of how this incident had occurred and how it began with my First Sergeant’s conducting an inspection of my room and finding a sock stuffed into one of my boots.  The incident progressed into an argument with the First Sergeant’s reporting me to my Commanding Officer, who wanted to take a stripe.