Small town cafes have long been a place for law enforcement officers to gather-up, discuss current events and get some grub.
Over coffee and a couple of tacos - or maybe a chicken-fried steak and some sweet tea – they’ll converse quietly at a table off to the side somewhere.
When old man so-andso walks over to tell them about the problem he’s having with his neighbor, they’ll listen and nod politely between bites before assuring the old guy they’ll look into it.
It is now as it was then in most places, and Brooks County back in the early eighties was no exception. Deputy Terry Cooper and Game Warden Norman Anthony both worked that area back then but haven’t sat down and talked over tacos since.
That all changed when they got together at a small-town café one day last week.
Sitting across the table from each other, they soon picked up where they left off. There were a lot of “hey – do you remembers” and “is he still alives” queried about.
They talked about big ol’ duty flashlights and the things you could do with them then that you can’t do now, and long nights on patrol when they never knew what they’d run in to.
“One night, I was sitting out on that road waiting for them planes to come in,” Terry began, referring to a remote section of Highway 285 between Falfurrias and Hebbronville that was sometimes used as a landing strip by drug traffickers.
It was late – the time of night when any light would draw suspicion.
He continued, “I saw a single light coming down the road towards me. When it got close, I could tell it was a truck with a busted headlight.”
Terry dropped in behind the truck after it passed. He was sure he saw three people in it.
Terry flipped on the red-and-blues, and the truck pulled over right away. As he was walking up to the d r i v e r ’s side door, T e r r y flashed his multi-purpose big ol’ duty flashlight into the bed of the truck and saw four huge white-tailed bucks that were still in velvet and quite dead.
When he flashed the light into the cab, there were only two people.
“Where’s the other guy?” Terry asked.
“What other guy? It’s just us,” the driver said.
Terry smelled a rat. Somehow, some highway Houdini must’ve found a way to disappear. He placed the two guys under arrest and put them, handcuffed, in the back seat of his patrol car.
As he began to backtrack to look for his Houdini, the missing man walked up and turned himself in. He said he had gotten scared and didn’t want to be left alone on the road at night.
Terry cuffed him and placed him in the car with the other two.
Then, Terry followed the tracks of the third guy back to a bandana tied on a fence post. Two very nice deer rifles were laying on the ground near that post.
The three violators denied ownership, but it didn’t matter. When all was said and done, the three guys lost the guns and the deer, and they all went to jail. Terry turned the cases for hunting deer out of season and all the evidence over to Norman.
More stories followed. Forty years is a lot of time between tacos, and forty years takes a toll. Terry and Norman are no longer young men. BUT - for an hour or so on that day at that table, they were young again and ready to ride.
Terry is currently an Atascosa County Deputy with 45 years of law enforcement service. Norman retired in 2003 after 36 years as a Texas Game Warden.
Jon Brauchle spent 29 years as a game warden.
