URBAN MYTH: THE SUPERFLY IS SEIZED WITH 32 TONS OF POT ON BOARD: FORTUNES ARE MADE

By Juan Montoya

Ask any longtime Brownsville resident who partook of the devil weed about the seizure of the Superfly coastal freighter picked up in the Gulf of Mexico by the Durable, the Coast Guard cutter that was stationed in the Port of Brownsville in August 1978 and you will get a smile of recognition.

"That was all red bud, buddy," recalled one recently. "It smelled a little like diesel, but the quality made you forget about it. We hadn't seem stuff like that around here in years."

I was a new reporter on the Brownsville Herald when we got a call from the Coast Guard station that the USCGS Durable was coming into port hauling in the Superfly II.

For those of us who still remember the 1970s movie, it was about a ghetto hero who turned the tables on the man from outside the hood and took over the street drug business.

"I'm you mama, I'm you daddy, I'm the n----r in the caddy...," went the song by Curtis Mayfield.

When I and photographer (Ron Schade?) got to the docks, the sailors were unloading huge bales of the high-grade Colombian marijuana and doing field tests on its quality. One of them pulled apart a red bud and put it in the test tube. The reaction was immediate as the liquid turned color almost instantly.

"It's high-grade Red Bud Colombian." the sailor announced.

County dump trucks were used by the Coast Guard and sheriff's department to haul the 32 1/2 tons packed in bales to a large pit dung into a corner of the landfill at the port.

The cutter seized the 111-foot coastal freighter Superfly II when the boarding party located the "high-grade Columbian" marijuana on board.

Her 16-man crew was taken into custody and a prize crew was placed on board. The cutter then escorted her prize back to Brownsville, arriving there on the morning of August 19.

The cutter went on to make more seizures that year and for the period of 6 December 1977 through 31 August 1978, she seized nine vessels and 311,000 pounds of marijuana.

In recognition of her outstanding performance in both search and rescue and law enforcement activities during the period from December 1977 through August 1978, the commander of the Atlantic Area, VADM R. T. Price, awarded the cutter and crew the Coast Guard Meritorious Unit Commendation.

That was good for the Durable and her crew. But the best was yet to come in regards to the Superfly and her kick ass load. After the pot was dumped in the trench and doused with diesel, a huge black plume rose over the hole. The Herald being an afternoon paper, we carried the story to every corner of Brownsville by 1 p.m. A distant shot of the plume of smoke was on every front page.

Resident who saw the story merely had to look east to see the smoke emanating from the port.

Then came the storm. At perhaps 2:30 or 3 p.m., a heavy thunderstorm hit the area. By any measure, it was a good dousing. Every weed smoker in town thought the same thing: Not all of those 32 tons are going to burn.

Having written my story and turned in for the evening, I ran into my late brother Joe, then in junior college.

"Thanks for the heads up, bro!" he said laughing, pointing at a copy of the paper.

I had no idea what he was talking about until I walked in to the travel trailer we shared on our parent's property.

The house stunk of weed and diesel.

"How did you...?" I started asking.

"They were taking weed out of the dump by the truckloads," he said. "I went with a few friends and there were guys riding shotgun with the entire beds of pickup tucks filled to the top with bales. It's all over town."

As the year wore on, it soon became apparent that several enterprising groups of several neighborhoods had struck gold. A couple of families near the port used the income from selling the weed to better their lot. Others came all the way from Las Prietas and La Muralla to pick up pounds and pounds of the weed.

Small fortunes were made running the weed to Houston and point further north. At the time, getting it past the Sarita checkpoint was not as difficult as it is in these days of Homeland Security.

"Ah, yes," recalled my friend. "People who were around back then remember the good old Superfly II."