Sightings: Joe Thirtypack

I first heard about Joe and Mary Sixpack in 1982 when I was taking a political science class from Professor Hal Barger at Trinity University in San Antonio. Since that time, cable news commentators have begun to throw the term around like they invented it. Wikipedia defines Joe Sixpack on its page describing John Q. Public: John Q. Public:

"is a generic name in the United States to denote a hypothetical member of society deemed a "common man." He is presumed to have no strong political or social biases relevant to whatever topic is at hand, and to represent the randomly selected "man on the street."

Further according to the Wikiwikis, Joe Sixpack, is a term of deprecation. It seems to those making the Wikipedia entry, Joe Sixpack does not rise to the level of respect due to John Q. Public, John Doe or John Q. Taxpayer, to name a few. Too bad for the snobs at Wikipedia.

Joe and Mary Sixpack live in Hometown, USA. They have a median income and own their own home of median value. They have the statistically average number of children, cars, pets, and friends. Their very ordinary-ness makes them rather uninteresting to anyone other than demographers. Other ordinary Americans know the Sixpacks. They know them by many names. They are the neighbors that we know just well enough to say "Hi" to when we see them in their driveway. They are the neighbors whose kids are always coming and going from some kind of kid-thing (soccer, baseball). They're OK.

Lost in the all the naming and labelling of our neighbors the Sixpacks, is who they really are. From time to time I will address the perspectives of Joe and Mary Sixpack. With an election year coming up, I believe that their voice will ultimately be drowned out by shape-shifting candidates and their paid parrots. Regardless, we'll keep the Sixpacks centered on our radar screens.

Before we ever get to the politics of Joe and Mary Sixpack, however, I wanted to give you a little background. What we all forget is that the Sixpack's, just like all of us, have an extended family. And that extended family, just like all of ours, is pockmarked with colorful characters of all sorts. Some of us have crazy aunts or uncles, for the Sixpacks, it's their alcoholic cousin who I met last July 4th. Here's the story:

Michael and I were sitting on the front porch of our home near downtown Albuquerque relaxing and enjoying the sunset on our greatest national holiday. It was a warm Tuesday night and the front porch brought a cool breeze. The big beautiful blue sky was beginning to turn sunset colors. Every now and again someone walked by with their dog or rode by on a bicycle. A car hadn't passed by in over an hour.

Around 7 pm a particular bike rider caught our attention. He was moving kind of unsteadily as he approached from the south. In fact, he was pretty much wobbling northward as if he were going to lose control any moment. One hand was on the handle bars of the bike, but it was something else that really caught our eye: in the other hand and perched in between the bicyclist's legs was a 30-pack of beer. That's right -- a 30-pack!

Ever seen a 30-pack? It's bigger than a 12-pack by far. It's bigger than a case by six. It's a giant box of beer meant for the serious volume beer drinkers in this world. When you go to put a 30-pack on the counter at the store, you use two hands. When you put the 30-pack in the car, it's a two-handed affair. It's not something you'd normally see being transported on a bicycle.

But as our intrepid bicyclist rode by he held the 30-pack between his legs. Wobbling. Wobbling by he went, an intense look on his face. He was and became in that instant Joe Thirtypack. Slowly, unsteadily, but most earnestly, Joe disappeared down the street and -- we thought at the time -- out of our lives.

"Did you see that?" Michael said as he turned his head away from the street.

"I think so. Another sighting, I suppose."

"Sighting? What?"

"You know. How many times have we seen something out here that defies explanation? Giant lizards, for God's sake? A bicyclist with a 30-pack of beer between his legs? Sightings. That's what they are. Like aliens, UFOs, and liberal gay Republicans. If you admit to seeing one anywhere else in this country, people think you're crazy. But out here, they're all normal."

"We have seen some seriously crazy stuff out here, haven't we?"

"The problem is there's no context, ya' know. How do you describe that guy? That. . . that was. . . I don't know, I've heard of Joe Sixpack -- you know the average American? -- but this guy was . . ." The name popped into my head. "Joe Thirtypack. Anywhere else in this great nation we would never have seen him. But there he went."

"Weird somewhere else, normal here."

"Exactly. Oh, well, where are we going to watch fireworks?"

We like our front porch. It's a refuge from the phone, the television and the computer. It's western view is great for peaceful sunsets. So, it wasn't that odd that exactly one week later we were out on the porch again watching the sky. It was 7:00 or so -- Tuesday the 14th -- when Joe Thirtypack rode by on his bicycle again.

Just as last time, Joe rode by with only one hand on the handlebars. This time, he didn't have a huge box of beer between his legs. It was a sixpack. But something was still wrong: he had a cast on one arm. The arm he had been holding the 30-pack with the week before was in a cast from the top of his elbow down to the top of his hand.

"Another sighting?"

"A pretty good one, I think. How do you think he broke it?"

"Transporting a 30-pack?"

"Joe Thirtypack!"

It's hard to remember all the sightings out here in the Hinterland. It's a great place to live, believe me.

We remembered Joe Thirtypack and even told our friends about him after the second sighting. Everyone got a chuckle out of the story. None of us really knew Joe, but we let our imaginations run wild and came up with all kinds of scenarios involving Joe, his bicycle and that 30-pack of beer. We weren't trying to be mean. There was just too much irony. Too many hilarious possibilities. As with the first sighting, we never thought we'd see him again.

Tuesday, July 21. 7:00 pm. The front porch. Nice sunset. Calm, quiet neighborhood. A bicyclist approaches from the south.

"You're not going to believe this."

"Don't tell me . . ."

It was Joe. One hand on the handle bars. A sixpack between his legs. But something new: the cast on his arm had changed -- dramatically. It's called an "external fixator." "Scary immobilizer" is a better term. This cast ran from his shoulder down past his bent elbow to his fingers. It had a bar running from his chest to his wrist. Pins were visible running from one side of the cast, through the arm, and out the other side. It was nothing less than an emotional earthquake to see.

Joe pedalled by. He disappeared down the block just as he had before. Beer in between his legs, one hand on the handle bars. Arm, permanently immobilized at a right angle to his body, turned at the elbow.

We didn't -- couldn't -- say a word. Nothing came out of our mouths for over half an hour. I looked at Michael and he at me. Have you ever wondered what someone's face looks like when they've been simultaneously -- instantaneously -- horrified, shocked and amused to the point of peeing? It's a queer look, trust me. I can only imagine what my face looked like.

The "real" world melted briefly. It collapsed into a small speck on top of a rock in our yard. A different world came into focus. Momentarily I lived on a different planet. Planet Albuquerque, where giant Iguana's run toward oncoming traffic, goats ride atop open trailers on the freeway, rainbows lie flat upon the horizon, and torrential rain falls but never reaches the ground.

Whooosh. I was back.

We were out of town the following Tuesday and missed Joe. Sadly, we haven't seen him again. It's a shame, really.

It was a sighting. And here's the "so what?" Sightings open us up to questions. They make us briefly step outside our own worlds and into those of others. You can't think about them too much. But you do have to tell other people about them.

Finally, after it's all been said and done, here's what I've been able to definitively figure out about Joe:

I live down the street from Joe Thirtypack. He rides his bicycle in the evenings. He drinks a lot of beer. He broke his arm around July 4. He broke it again about a week later.

I'd like to tell him this: "Hope your arm gets better soon, Joe. Say 'Hello' to your cousins back in Hometown. See ya' next Tuesday?"

Dickie Malone, Unofficial Mayor

I'm going to step back away from Taos and New Mexico this entry in order to go even farther away -- back in time to the 1960's and in distance to far, far South Texas.


My grandfather, Dickie Malone, was frequently called the unofficial mayor of Riviera, Texas. It was an unofficial designation because Riviera wasn't an incorporated township. It was a place on the map and a postal designation. It was a place where legend has it that Poncho Villa was reputed to have robbed a bank. It is today, much as it was in my grandfather's day, a rural farm and ranch town near Baffin Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Every morning people came to the coffee shop in Riviera to catch up on the local goings-on and to take care of business. When they had problems, they knew that Dickie, the unofficial mayor, was one of the people who could help them with a solution. He solved problems just like you might expect from a mayor. He knew everybody, just like a mayor. He loved to help people, just like a mayor.

Dickie's roots ran deep in this far-away place. His father had come here with the railroad in the 1920's. As young boy growing up in the newly created Kleberg County, Dickie became best friends with the new sheriff's son. Their lifelong friendship was akin to brotherhood. After the county's first sheriff died, his son took over as sheriff. I remember at Dickie's funeral, his old friend, the sheriff wept as he eulogized my grandfather.  


Years later, in the opening dialog of Oscar Winning Best Picture "No Country for Old Men" Tommy Lee Jones' character narrates a story about that old sheriff -- Jim Scarborough.  Small world.

So, here's the turn of the card: Dickie was no saint. Not by a long stretch. He was really an outsider, or, some would say, an outlaw. He had spent a year or two of hard time in Huntsville, Texas as a young man. He wasn't afraid to bend the rules. At the same memorial service where the county sheriff spoke were dozens of people who spent their lives on the outside looking in. Some of them I knew had been in trouble with the law. Oddly, they wept the loudest and longest that day.

Riviera, Texas is at the northern edge of a wide expanse of hundreds of square miles running across South Texas known as the Wild Horse Desert. It is an unforgiving expanse of mesquite brush and prickly pear cactus. It is home of the King Ranch, the Armstrong Ranch, and the Kenedy Ranch, each in excess of 100,000 acres. It is where Vice President Dick Cheney shot his friend on a hunting trip in February 2006 (See, e.g., CNN's report on the affair.

The Wild Horse Desert is reputed to be the final resting place of untold numbers of those who tried unsuccessfully to cross it on foot. Out in the barren wasteland of scrub are rattlesnakes, roving packs of javelinas (also the mascot of Texas A&M Kingsville, feral hogs, and other predators. Unless you happen upon a water source intended for cattle, there are no creeks or streams running across this land. Only those prepared to cross hell itself would ever attempt this trip on foot.

But walk across it is just what thousands of illegals do each year as they have been doing for many years. And by the time they reach the northern edge of this forbidding expanse, they are frequently starving, severely dehydrated, exhausted, and, often, near death. They have transported and smuggled themselves at great personal risk. If they make it out of the Wild Horse Desert, they have crossed a major hurdle, but they have not found what they are seeking.

In my grandfather's time, ranchers and farmers throughout the Riviera area would find these illegal aliens on their land. In those days, there was only one thing to do: go into town to the coffee shop and talk to Dickie Malone. Without a doubt, talk to Dickie. He was the problem solver of the day. No one trusted the United States Government for anything. You certainly wouldn't invite them onto your property. It was a bad idea.

Dickie would do what was right and no questions had to be asked or answered.

At some point in his life, Dickie had taught himself Spanish. He would talk to the newcomers and find out their story. He knew the real from the phony. Often, it was just a meal, a shower and an overnight place to stay they needed. Many times it was clothes to replace those torn by the thorns and cactus on their passage north. Other times it was a temporary job. Sometimes it was finding a lost family member.

I'm not trying to glorify what Dickie did. It was probably illegal then, and it is definitely illegal now.   And illegal is illegal -- against the law, forbidden at the risk of your freedom.  


But I still can't help but wonder.  Why did he do it?   He did help those most desperately in need when no one else would. What else can you say about someone who fed, clothed, housed, and found jobs for people he had never met and would likely never meet more than once in his life?

If Dickie were alive today, he would no doubt be on some type of government "list" or he would be in federal prison. The application of conspiracy laws as they are today would require no intent to commit a crime. Dickie would be committing a felony simply by stepping forward and extending his hand to help another human being at what might be their most desperate hour.

In our time, the reality of illegal immigration is that it continues unabated.   It remains one of the most hotly emotional issues of our time.  But to men like Dickey who stood on the front lines of the human drama that is illegal immigration, numbers didn't mean much.  


He once told me that there would never be a way to stop the tide of humanity that risked life and limb to get work in the U.S.  If he were alive today, Dickie might have noticed fewer people some months and more in others, but they would have remained the same, each person taken on his own merits, each case different from all the others. If Dickie were alive today, he would have found other ways to do what needed to be done. Quieter and less public ways, but still he would have helped.