The Cartel Just Over The Border?

The scorching Sonoran Desert serves as the perfect backdrop for Bob the Blade's unfiltered observations on everyday life. Broadcasting from his tin shack in 102-degree heat, Bob delivers sharp commentary that cuts through pretense and finds humor in the mundane.

Bob takes us on a journey through his desert town, where anachronisms like one-hour photo services still exist despite photos now taking mere seconds to process. His frustration boils over when describing people who maintain ridiculous 20-foot distances in lines—forcing others to wait outside in the blistering heat. "That's a restraining order," he quips, capturing the absurdity with characteristic bluntness.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Desert
• 1:29 Social Distance Frustrations
• 2:47 Life Philosophy and Local Streets
• 4:40 Mexican Workers and Immigration Reality
• 6:08 Grocery Store Encounters
• 9:54 Small Town Law Enforcement
• 13:04 Episode Conclusion

Transcript

Intro: 0:02

All Blade content is available at BobTheBladecom. This is the Blade Video Podcast. Welcome to the desert. It is 102 degrees Now from his tin shack. Here is Blade.

Speaker 2 Blade: 0:19

One hour photo, just driving around, and just keep in mind all the photos that I take. I take them, I don't just get them from the internet. I used to do that all the time back in. You know, 20, 30 years ago on radio that I'd have the undoctored photo on my website and I wouldn't touch them. You know real photographs and I just take these with my little camera, you know. So you can see this one one hour photo. I aren't they more like nine second photos?

Speaker 2 Blade: 0:45

Now, why is that still there on the drugstores on every street corner down here? Because you know I live in the Sonoran desert and there's either a drugstore on every corner or a Mexican restaurant Could be car wash depends on the corner. You know, when you walk in and there's nobody behind the counter, cobwebs on the copy machines. Seriously, nine seconds, take a picture, you can enhance it, crop it, send it off and they've got it in their hands in nine seconds. Nine-second photo, not one-hour photo. You know sometimes I'd walk in there and there'd be some old folks in there. You know they need the help. Understandable, come on, woman. You're giving them 20 feet Drives me insane.

Speaker 2 Blade: 1:24

I hate to keep flogging a dead horse, but it drives me insane to go into a line on a hot day where it's 102 degrees and be right behind someone who has to wait 20 feet behind the person in front of them. You know, the COVID day is a different thing. Six feet, okay. We all got down. We all stood six feet apart because we didn't want to get COVID if we went out. Got down, we all stood six feet apart because we didn't want to get COVID if we went out.

Speaker 2 Blade: 1:52

But if you look closely you can see the guy at the counter with his brown shoes on ordering something at Starbucks. 20 feet behind him is his chick. I mean, what's the deal? And then one other person, and then I'm the third guy behind her, just about this far from the door, to have to stand outside on the 185 degree sidewalk and 104 degree day, 20 feet away from the sky. That's a restraining order. That's what that is. Come on, man, you got to move the fuck up. My new National Geographic has a list of people with their photos in it and it's not, you know, the editors or the camera photographers, any of that. It's special people, people that want to make the world a better place. In one of my latest National Geographics their photos, and they've got it down to four categories right Visionaries, creators, icons, adventurers. Now you got to ask yourself are you any one of these? Because I'm sure not.

Speaker 2 Blade: 2:50

Never have been never will be.

Speaker 2 Blade: 2:53

My motto is this anytime I go to bed and I haven't made the world a worse place to live, I've made it a better place to live. I've done my job that day. That's my motto. Just don't make it a worse place to live. I've done my job that day. That's my motto. Just don't make it a worse place to live. Congratulations to all of our visionaries and creators and icons and adventurers. I don't think I have any friends that want to make the world a better place, because they may have a better touch with reality.

Speaker 2 Blade: 3:27

I think it's cool living in a town that has Pert Road. I have to call it Pert Road. I know it's Neil Peart because I've heard him say that before he's called himself Neil Peart. I know how to pronounce it and I said it one time here and I was corrected. So I say Pert Road just to go along with the locals. Pert Road, probably one of the you know one of the construction magnets that kind of put the town together. And we also have McCartney McCartney Road or Street or Boulevard or whatever it is. I like that. And there's an intersection Pert and McCartney which I love, and I smile when I see them. I really do. But when I see Biznaga Street I just laugh out loud. Biznaga, as you can see here, it's the bottom one, you know, right in the middle of town. And here's why I laugh, because back in the day, adam 12, 96 Rock Days, back in the day, when he was mad at the ladies, he wouldn't call them biatches like they did back then, he'd call them biznatches. So when I say biznaga, I just laugh out loud.

Speaker 2 Blade: 4:30

Adam Twill to you, drive around every now and then you see a Mexican crew like this working their ass off. Man, I mean, look at these guys. You know, some days I drive by there and they're putting up an intersection, you know, with stoplights and stop signs and all that kind of stuff which is great, asphalt and the roads and all that different lanes and painting them, you know, and they're boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom with their hammers. You know they've got their jackets on. It's 102 degrees in there. Just work their ass off.

Speaker 2 Blade: 5:02

You know, I saw one of those crime shows one time. There's a couple of hoods in Denver, mexican illegal imports and they got arrested and went to jail in Denver and escaped no less Hell. We're going down to Mexico, back to Mexico, where we came from. So they go down to Mexico and after three days they're back in the United States calling the police, trying to get arrested again. Why'd you do that? They say because every place I went to down in Mexico with my buddies, none of them had running water, none of them had toilets, you know, none of them had any food. So it's the old saying, isn't it? Prison may not be so bad because you get three hots and a cot. Look at these guys. Is it worth leaving mexico for that kind of work? And 100 degree, is it worth it? Is it okay?

Speaker 2 Blade: 5:52

I was putting my cart back and actually I was taking my cart out of fries, the grocery store that we have around here, and, um, you know, it's rolling down the asphalt parking lot going to my car. And I take a look to my left and I take another look, and I take another look and now there's a term called head turner and I'm like whoa, yeah, whoa, you know, and out loud. I accidentally went wow, like an idiot. Whoops Didn't mean to do that, but it was a wower, no question about it. Local girl, mexican. I know she's local because she's Mexican. That's how it is in the town and so I'm trying to get to my car as soon as possible and she's walking over to me slowly, very slowly, and it's like she's got a plan somehow and she's looking at me the whole time and she said thank you for doing that, you made my day. And I said, well, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry, didn't want to come off as rude Whole time thinking, listen, I got to get to the car. Man, I've got frozen chocolate pie in here and some frozen peaches and I don't want chocolate syrup rug carpeting in my car. And frozen pizzas and I don't want chocolate syrup rug carpeting in my car and I don't want my pizza pizza boiling in the car, you know, and and and so then she starts to tell me the story of why this made her day her ex-husband and the kids spend more time with the ex-husband and they love him. And then the ex-wife and then the whole story. And I know, while I'm sitting there trying to be polite, I've got Hershey syrup forming in one of my bags and my pizza's mozzarella is boiling over in my other bag as I'm trying to get to the car and I wait for the breath, the breath that comes when the sentence is finally over and I say, okay, have a nice day. And I just hustle over to the car as fast as I can. I look back on the way back just to take a look back and I'm telling you I took this shot. Now she's got this little swagger so I did make her day.

Speaker 2 Blade: 7:56

You know, on accident, then I run into this guy who's smoking and he seems like he's 85, which means he's probably 55. I'm like, dude, how long have you been smoking? I'm just curious because I want to smoke so bad. You know, he said I've been smoking my whole life. He said did they cut your chest open, man? Did you get one of those teeth cuts in there? And you know, did you bypass it? Yeah, they did. You know, he started to show me. He said you don't have to do that. You know five, what do they call it? Quintuple bypass for smoking.

Speaker 2 Blade: 8:31

I said I feel like a new man. I just I got to behave on this earth. Man, I can't smoke. I had a heart attack in 22. I'll have another one. I haven't had one since then.

Speaker 2 Blade: 8:41

I can't smoke and every day I have the cravings. They never go away. Never go away. If I ever have to go to a rest home. I've sworn to myself. I've got friends that are going along with me on this man. I am going to take a smuggle liquor in there. I'm smuggling cigarettes, drugs, you name it. I'm bringing it with me. I'm going to misbehave and raise hell in there. If that's the way I have to live last remaining days of my life, I mean it, hell. I may even start smoking if I make it to 75 just to enjoy the last, maybe 10 years of my life. Maybe, I don't know. Cravings every day. They never go away. Okay, Last story here the town has boycotted Kia's, which is a little grocery store right down the road from me.

Speaker 2 Blade: 9:23

It's a convenience store, but they have everything kind of Kia's, K-I-A-S and it's run by this Vietnamese family and they live on top of the, you know, top of the grocery store, right, and you can see them like once a week at one of the two grocery stores stocking up seven different carts of stuff and they buy it from the two grocery stores and go put it in their store, sell them in their stores, triple the price. And what's cool about it? It just reminded me. In the grocery stores and any store here, you can buy liquor, you don't have to go to a liquor store. It's not managed by the government or the state. You can buy it anywhere, any store. You know mini bottles, you can buy anything at any store at any time of day. Just different right, but at any rate. So everybody boycotts them and goes to the grocery stores.

Speaker 2 Blade: 10:11

Key is see picture here, nice people. But I was just thinking about this. That woman's pack, that Vietnamese woman's cart, reminded me of the Mexicans that move a lot around here. You've seen it, the Mexicans that move from place to place with the whole family. Right, I mean, somehow they do it and they're really good at it. They'll take a 92 Ford Ranger and they'll stack it up with everything. They've got Beds and chairs and end tables and stoves and dryers and tires. You know the whole family in the front seat, abuela, abuelo, you know muchacho, primo, all of them are in the front seat and they're moving. They're going down the highway with their flashers on 50 miles an hour and they're not moving a bit. They're going straight and running perfectly and there's no tilting. How do you guys do that, man, they're really good at it. I'm telling you, son, next time I move I'm hiring one of those guys, you know, for 150 bucks instead of spending $9,000 on some moving two guys in a truck company that are really, like you know, 1,500 guys now Just thinking about the federales around town.

Speaker 2 Blade: 11:17

It's such a quiet town. Nothing ever happens here, except for sometimes they stop someone for speeding. You know, I heard a gunshot last week and the miracle of all that is that I am two hours from Mexico and I haven't seen any cartel stuff around here. I haven't seen any drug activity around this part of the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, again, that I know of. You know, it's just such a quiet town and if I were the federale sitting on the side of the road waiting for a speeder and I see the Mexican families, you know, with this nine-foot-high, 12-foot foot high packed trucks moving down the road to some other hacienda down the road, I think to myself what do they got underneath all of that stuff? I think that what do they got? What kind of la coca is packed underneath all that stuff? And they're taking it down to Mexico or down to you, down to some other town, phoenix, tucson, something, and I'm figuring this.

Speaker 2 Blade: 12:22

The Federales are sitting. It's so hot here, man, no one wants to do anything. They're sitting on the side of the road and they're thinking you know, I'll bet you they've got, you know, 15 kilos underneath all that junk out there. Do I feel like unpacking that truck, packing it back up and sending these guys to jail and doing all the paperwork? No, have a nice day Different down here. No, seriously, wait till you hear the story of next episode. Wow, six months, six months. I couldn't do anything but sit on the couch and stare. I'll leave it at that.

Outro: 13:04

Well, there you go. Find all Bob the Blade content at BobTheBladecom. I'm Mercy Regent. See you next time.