Fences

 

The Havana Conference

Fences

The Mob

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            People wanted to gamble, we helped ‘em gamble; The needed booze, cigarettes and meat durin’ the war, we took care of that. Sure, here and there we would squeeze some guys, but on the other hand, look at all the money we was puttin’ in circulation just from other good businessmen buyin’ our protection … There wasn’t a politician or a cop who could hold on to none of the money we paid him off with … they spent it as soon as they got it, and that was very good for the American economy.

Lucky Luciano

The Havana Conference

            Fences

            Pepe and I spent the week working on fence.

            To those who have never worked on a 90-year-old fencing infrastructure, the byword is hands. It is a time that gloves are necessary. They aren’t just a mechanism to keep your hands soft and your fingernails clean akin to city dwellers. They keep you in the game to return the next day and the next to keep progress positive.

            They also protect you from the dreaded woes of barbed wire. It is no secret I detest barbed wire, but it is a necessary evil that keeps our world organized to the extent possible. There is an interesting corollary, though, in long stretches of working on historical barbed wire fences. The array of different wire and the discovery of the craftmanship that went into those old fences is fascinating.

            Today, the extent of new wire is framed around the selection of two point, or four point, or Gaucho wire, and the wilderness of active law of the federal Specifications for Structural Range Improvements. In the days of the Depression, the discussion had to have been more first-generation esoterica with pony barbs, 2-Point Baker, 2-Point Glidden, Western Union transitions, and double bitted saddle axes.

            Nonetheless, a mile of repaired fence stands in the morning sun behind us, and it will hold a cow.

            That isn’t at all what the Border Patrol is feeling.

            It’s interesting staring into the eyes of border agents these days. There is seemingly 500 acres of open space in those blank stares as they return your gaze. As I go through the I-10 checkpoint each morning, the waves from familiar faces is an indicator of common ground. These fellows are sensing their government (and in this case their employer) is not listening to them. They don’t know any more than we do why the figure head in the White House has opened the gates to all comers, indeed, to the 120 countries whose citizens have paid the fees to cross the southern American border this year.

            Hell, welcome to our world, boys (and girls)!

            Like us, though, the Border Patrol does understand the essential nature of fences for the purpose of keeping our lands and our homes safeguarded and managed. They also know that the current administration officials were briefed and informed about the strategies that were working prior to January 20 when the Democrat standdown order was issued.

            The question now isn’t why the administration is standing in juxtaposition with anti-American defense strategies because words are not going to change their position. They know what they are doing and any matter of our side of the discussion being reinterpreted to make a difference to them doesn’t matter at all.

            Something else is in play, and … the inner workings are likely horrifying.

            The Havana Conference

            In 1946, the various family leaders and their trusted consiglieres of the Mob were called to a grand meeting in Havana, Cuba.

            It was there that new strategies were to be discussed and it was there that the idea of the Boss of Bosses was supposed to take place. In a nutshell, cowboy talk would have described it as a big junta where the Italian and Jewish underworld mobsters were going to talk wilder turkey.

            Change was in the air, but the old guard standing in the way was antagonistic to moving into junk (drugs) and certainly wanted nothing to do with overtly moving into government. The reality was that they had theretofore handled government with bribes and mordida. The raucous laughter that resulted when Luciano winked at Meyer Lansky following the opening remark hereinabove was indicative of that truth.

            History will show that Luciano’s reign as the Boss of Bosses was not just short lived it was largely ceremonial and nonexistent. The new wave led by Vito Genovese prevailed and drugs became a world changing endeavor. It was so important to organized crime that our southern border couldn’t then, and certainly now, can’t be closed.

            The greater question about government, though, looms.

            The Mob

            In the book, Killing the Mob, the authors leave the reader with the distinct impression that The Mob has been reduced dramatically in form from the heights of its former influence into its structure of the modern era.

            Is that true?

            The counter point becomes narcotics. Nobody can say the Mob declined to deal in drugs to honor God Father Lucky’s preference to stay out of that arena. Why then can the idea the Mob declined to infiltrate and take over government be discounted? By simply arraying the great profit centers of the modern era makes the whole concept plausible. The emergence of the NEA, the abortion industry, the prescription drug conflagration, the cornering of the press, the eruption of NGO and agency star chamber kingdoms, global warming, and now the COVID center ring eventing all reek of profiteering and historical mobster tactics on a scale unimaginable … except certain minds that once came together in Cuba. 

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The Biden administration along with the primary Italian and Jewish bosses of congress have paid an estimated $1.3B to border wall contractors to hold in place nonwork on binding contracts. Remember, Trump was going to be impeached for transferring similar amounts of defense funds to the border for continued construction.”