Frank Begins His Work In Hell Paso

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about one of the best Texas Rangers to ever wear the badge, the great Frank Hamer, who was brought out of retirement to take down Bonnie and Clyde.

Recap
In the last post of this series Frank was assigned to the most violent and dangerous city and section of the border with Mexico along the Rio Grand River. The area was so bad they called El Paso, HELL Paso.

Prohibition and the outlawing of alcohol sales and distribution had hit the country and smugglers were going crazy bringing it over the river at El Paso.

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The losses for law enforcement was heavy. Most of the Mexican smugglers were members of Pancho Villa's forces who found themselves unemployed after his defeat in 1919. (In the Mexican Revolution). So obviously this meant that the smugglers were experienced fighters who were used to killing.

On the other hand you had green Prohibition agents brought in from the East and North who knew nothing, basically. Plus they were trying to follow the rules and play fair by attempting to arrest the smugglers.

Astounding profits

The smugglers never surrendered, they would rather go down fighting than surrender. They thought it was worth the risk and here's why: A gallon of whiskey could be purchased in Mexico for $2 or $3 and then sold in Texas for $40.

That's the equivalent of $500 in today's money! So the profits were insane and to them it was worth getting killed over.

Frank contacts the Rurales

No one had thought of getting in touch with the Mexican Rurales(the federal mounted rural police) for some reason. It seems like kind of the logical thing to do though. So Frank rode over one day and talked to them on his own.

Here's a great photo of a company of Rurales taken around 1920:

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I assume that guy in all white is the leader? lol..I don't know but when they were battling the bandits and smugglers along the Rio Grand I'm fairly certain they didn't wear their huge 10 gallon sombreros. Those would stick out like a neon sign saying "Here I am, shoot here!"

They agreed to meet with U.S. forces and work out an agreement to help each other with tips of smuggler movements, times, and information like that. It would be nice if we had that kind of cooperation today but sadly we don't.

It was a news worthy event and a newspaper photographer accompanied the U.S. Prohibition agents to take photos. Here's one of them, Frank is on the right end. It seems like he always wore a tie:

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Both sides continued to work together for the next decade or so.

Frank has to show them how to take down smugglers in the next post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

PS- Most of you know that I've been finding unusual vending machines for awhile now and this one is highly unusual! They call it The Passive Aggressive Machine and it breaks glassware and China.

It's supposed to help you deal with your frustrations by being able to break something. It drops them to the bottom so you can see them shatter.

I don't know if it can help people or if it's the dumbest thing I've ever seen! lol. What to you all think?

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