“Jickey”, that’s the only description I can give you of Day 1 of the Jake Carrizal trial Harry spent just trying to get in the place. Cars are parked everywhere downtown but you don’t see any people. You see candy striper convicts putting up cattle barriers and police with squiggly earplugs everywhere wearing bullet proof vests. I was concentrating in staying inside the lines of the cattle barrier maze trying to at least look cool while pretty puckered up at the weaponry and an occasional gunned up officer from God knows what alphabetic agency darting in and out of the alleyways. They had three white tents up to hide the jury panel as they walked by, to me white tents usually mean a party with catering, this was not that. Police cars are parked here and there, some have occupants, some don’t. Times have changed since citizens smoked in the Rotunda and the friendly ashtrays sat there waiting for a Trusty to clean them, third floor water fountains are gone too.
The best juror line came from a woman in her late fifties who said she couldn’t be on the jury because she was Catholic and she couldn’t understand why on earth a bunch of old men wanted to go fun around on motorcycles in the first place. Then we have the TWIN PEAKS “come on down” manager, the reserved patio, the DPS, ATF, Waco PD, Sheriff’s deputies and no ambulance or fire trucks. It just doesn’t seem logical that law enforcement all gunned up will take on a bunch of gunned up citizens at mealtime over and over again. Haven’t we learned? I have no answers, I do want to see the guy who does. Who is in charge, get this guy over here. What did they think was going to happen. Did the Cossacks getting there early mess their plan up? What? Come on.
Talk about atmospheric pressure. Gun sounds, just deputies walking around with guns you hear gun sounds, we are primal beings and the sounds attack your “flight or fight” for sure, it’s disconcerting but necessary, I don’t know but I have had a DPS cruiser or two pull up behind me on I35 and it’s best described as a “piss shiver”, I know you know what I mean.
If you’re go back far enough at the courthouse, you can remember the room in the basement where blind “Mimi”, used to sell coffee, candy and doughnuts, everyone just helped her make change and told her if it was a “$5”, or a “10”, you could smoke like a chimney all over the place. Believe me, if ever one needed a cigarette, Day 1 made me miss Marlboro Reds like crazy.
I have a new theory, if your lawyer doesn’t have a pack of emergency cigarettes they whip out and light up somewhere three blocks away from the courthouse, they’re not worth a damn. Yes, Casie Gotro, who’s lightening fast can be seen with a cigarette from time to time between her fingers.
The message is the worst written law one could ever read, either out loud or over and over again, some pompous over educated ass wrote it and what it says is that if you are a Bandido, you’re bad. No way around it. No individuality.
I saw people I know I should know, when they looked at me and their faces said, “I thought you were dead.”
The “US”, and the “THEM” is alive, it’s all a Brotherhood and patches and rules and Presidents. Shriners, Boy Scouts, even a garden club has patches. Colors, rules, and dues.
All this impersonal stuff is going on and Jacob Carrizal is there in the courtroom guilty because he is a Bandido. The law and basically the testimony of the experts.
For days and days, Jacob Carrizal has just been the man of mystery in the courtroom, guilty because he was there, when they read his dad’s name as one of those he was charged with attempting to murder, he blanched for just a second with a pain that did not go unnoticed by our Skeptical Jurors.
A friend of mine once said, “You can mess with the entire world from Waco, Texas, Harry”. As with other epic mealtime gunned up Waco Historical disasters, it’s true.
It’s “Us” or “Them”, and “They” took the damned water fountain.
Harry
