Free I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability by Ron White Page B

experiences running a pottery business in Reynoso, Mexico, along the border from McAllen, Texas.
    Now, because of its advantageous location, Reynoso was a considerable trans-shipment point for illegal drug traffic. Not that there were many drugs to be had in Reynoso itself. The cartels didn't want some petty local action interfering with their pipeline; they wanted a nice quiet town to run their shipments through. And if you stayed out of their way, they never gave you a second thought.
    That said, it was also true that "tragic accident" was a very popular category of death in Reynoso. And anyone who interfered with the drug trade was a likely candidate for it.
    "Look there, now, isn't that a pity? Five bullets to the back of the head. What a tragic accident."
    How I got to be in the pottery business in Reynoso, Mexico, is that I was living with this woman I couldn't stand on Lake Lyndon Baines Johnson, just northwest of Austin, Texas. And she couldn't stand me either, like all the women I was involved with in that part of my life. I'm gonna call her Phyllis, so I can tell you what happened.
    Now aside from my relationship, living on Lake LBJ is nirvana, I'm in my fucking heaven. I got a house, not a great house at all, but it's a lake house. It sits right on this cove of Lake LBJ, which is a twenty-two-mile-long lake on the Colorado River that LBJ had dammed up. And he just happened to own three thousand acres right on the side there. So he flooded his neighbors' land, and now he's got beachfront property. That's a lucky coincidence there.
    It's good to be the king. You can adjust some shit: "Well, there should be a pond here, I think."
    Johnson City is near there, and you can tour LBJ's childhood home if you want. I did, and halfway through the tour when they said his wife's name I went, "Ladybird. Oh, I thought Larry Bird lived here. When I didn't see a basketball hoop outside, I was wondering, How'd he get so good? "
    Phyllis was kind of an artist-craftsperson--she wasn't making any money. But my career was going pretty good. I was making $1,800 a week and airfare, and that was good, solid headliner money then. And I was banging, I was doing a good job, and I was popular with the club owners.
    The relationship has gotten to the point where I can't stand Phyllis and she can't stand me. But at the same time, I'm still wishing that it can work. I'm seeing these glimpses of things in the relationship that are not fixable, but I'm trying not to see them.
    She used to say, "I know you think I'm stupit ."
    "No, honey, I don't think you're stupid . At all."
    But I'm making good money, like I said. And there's not a lot of hassle involved. The Funny Bone at one time owned twenty-one clubs. So the majority of my year I could book with one phone call with the people who ran the Funny Bone clubs. They were my anchor gigs.
    But in the early '90s the clubs weren't doing the business they used to do. Some of the audience that got excited about going to comedy clubs in the 1980s, when the comedy club scene really exploded, were parents with kids and they weren't going out anymore like they used to. So the club owners felt that squeeze, and sooner or later so did everybody who worked for 'em.
    The Funny Bone management tells me this year it's not gonna be $1,800/week and airfare, it's gonna be $1,500 flat. I told them, "Go eat a bowl of steaming fuck." Which was fun to say, but expensive.
    'Cause right about then comedy clubs were closing up all over. It wasn't like I had all these alternative clubs to go play.
    So I needed my girlfriend, Phyllis, to get a job. We got a house payment, I got a $500/month payment on my custom van, I got $500/month child-support payment. And I just got my pay cut by a third or more when you figure in what I'm going to have spend on airfare.
    Now, I knew this guy who was related to people at Southwest Airlines. So I figured if Phyllis got a job with Southwest, I could fly for free and that would be worth