My father had been divorced from my mother for less than a year before he decided to get married again. This took me by surprise because he had been very critical of his marriage to Mom. I didn't expect him to want to go through all that again so quickly, especially since he had somewhat rushed into marriage with Mom. (He was 20 and she was 19. There was no romantic proposal. They simply discussed it and decided marriage was a good idea. As bad as Dad said it was, he stuck with it for 27 years.)
He told me that he and Gred were going to get married in Taos, NM on Friday, May 10th, 1991. He wanted me and Loyd to be there. He said he would pay our way.
I planned to take a week off of work, so I could spend time with both Mom and Dad in Artesia. I also had recently gotten in contact with my old college friend Kird and made plans to drive to Alamogordo to see him. (I was going to borrow one of my Mom's cars.)
I was still dealing with the car from hell, so I was going to have to take Greyhound again to get to Roswell. Seriously, there was no other time other than 3:30pm to leave Denver and arrive in Roswell less than 15 hours later. All the other routes took at least 24 hours.
It was less hectic at the bus station this time. They only had one bus running the route, but it was almost fully packed. I remember this one guy about my age who looked like "Weird Al" Yankovic. He wore purple clothes and had an obvious Texas accent. There was another man around 40 years old who had dark hair and a mustache. This odd pair became bus buddies. They sat across the aisle from me. From time to time, the seat next to me would be vacant. This one Hispanic man sat next to me. He was carrying on a conversation with the other two. At one point, the 40-year-old man showed the Hispanic man a prescription bottle and talked about how much the pills cost.
There were no incidents that caused a delay in the bus' traveling time during the first leg of the route. We stopped at McDonald's like we had last time. Everybody reboarded the bus. For some reason, "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old guy sat separately. We were waiting for what seemed a longer than expected time. A police car pulled up next to the bus. Two officers came on board and went up to "Weird Al" One of them told him to get off the bus. "Why?" "The bus driver doesn't want you on here." "Weird Al" grabbed his stuff and walked out. Then the officer turned to the 40-year-old guy. "You, too!" He calmly replied, "I didn't do anything." The Hispanic guy said, "Yes, you did! You had drugs! You showed me!" The 40-year-old guy stood up and walked outside.
At this point, I was afraid that the Hispanic guy was going to start pointing his finger at me. I had long hair and looked like someone who would have been doing drugs. But the Hispanic guy left the bus and the officers followed. WHEW!
The bus stayed in place while "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old man talked to the police. After a few minutes, the two were able to come back on board. One of the officers apologized to the two and left the bus. As we were leaving, I could see the Hispanic guy with the officers. They looked like they were going to beat him up. "Weird Al" and the 40-year-old man shook hands.
Now, if I had been asked to leave the bus, I'm pretty certain I would have been freaking out. I probably would have told the cops that I saw the drugs the 40-year-old man had in hopes of getting out of that mess. I don't know about "Weird Al," but I'm pretty certain the 40-year-old man had experienced run-ins with the law before. After he got off the bus, the probably told "Weird Al" to keep his mouth shut and let him do all the talking. If I was there, he probably would have told me the same thing, too. I probably would have complied, unless things looked like they were going to get hairy with the cops. I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.
Despite that delay, we made it to Amarillo in plenty of time to catch the connection to Roswell. Again, Dad and Loyd picked me up and drove me over to Mom's house to sleep. After I woke up, I just tooled around Artesia for the day. Nothing of note happened, except that Mom was not very happy about Dad getting married and I was a bad son, because I didn't do anything to acknowledge her concerns. Even worse was that I was reminded of that before going to the wedding and I still said nothing.
As for tomorrow's post, I'll detail my reunion with Kird.
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