Mike Hillin

Joe was a crazy guy, I think that is why we hung out together. Joe, Bill Kincaid, and I decided to go to New Mexico up somewhere in the mountains. We were just 18 and we bought a case of beer. When we arrived at the foothills of the mountains we were informed that the Bears were really bad that year. There were two lakes that we wanted to hike up to.

We figured we would hike to the first one that was 8 miles up and then the next day hike to the second one which was another two miles up. Bill carried the beer, you should have seen him with a backpack on and a case of beer in the cooler on top. We started hiking at 9am and it was almost 10 hours by the time we made it too the first lake. The trail was skinny and we had to manuver through brush constantly.

We made camp and decided to drink the beer and set the empty cans around the camp and if a bear attacked we would here the beer cans and have a chance to run. We each had decided to run three different directions down the mountain to try and confuse the bear. I had caught a few trout that night in a stream so we ate and buried the rest so the big bad bear wouldn't smell the fish.

No bear appeared that night and we made it to the other lake. We had a 6-pack of beer left and were letting it stay cool in the lake. It was getting dark the 2nd night when we heard this strange sound. I wasn't sure if it was a mountain lion or a elk. No one was up this high except us and what ever wild life was around. all of a sudden the bushes started shaking and what ever it was had our full attention.

A ranger comes out of the bushes with a mule heading right toward us and he is holding that 6-pack of beer we put in the lake. He asks us if it was ours and we denied ever knowing it was there. There were not any other people around so it was pretty obvious it was ours. The ranger said he would have given it to us, but we didn't know what the drinking age was other than 21 so he left with the beer.

The next day, we hiked down the mountain. What had taken us 10 hours to get to only took 2 hours to come down. After we arrived at the car. Joe realized he had locked the keys in the trunk. We are 500 miles from home and stuck. We managed to slide one window down enough to get into the car, but the keys were still in the trunk. Then Bill asked Joe if maybe his father had an extra set of keys stored somewhere.

Joe popped the hood and sure enough there was a magnetic key box with the keys in them under the hood. Joe's dad had to be a brilliant man, who would of thought. We were so happy to be going home. Joe was doing atleast 80 in the car and I told him to slow down alittle, but he kept going and then we hear this whinning, slapping, and then boom, we are going in the ditch. Weeds and bugs are flying every where and we are right outside of Vega, almost home. Bill and I pitched in what money we had left for a spare tire and then we finally made it back to Amarillo.

Joe, you will be missed, your friend Mike Hillin  

Marvin Bruce Johnson

Joe & I were office aides in '75.  It was pretty funny to see Mr. Martin wearing his Florshiems, white shirt & tie bolt out of the office in order to catch streakers.  We became friends with some of the police.  One of them Bert Bytheway - yes that his real name - I still see occasionally to this day.  When I was w/o car - Joe picked me up in the a.m. in that Jeep- Hillin talks about to get to school.  I believe that passenger door was about as resolute as my grand dad's 58 Apache which could swing open on a Joey Chitwood curve that Cameron Moore perfected i. e. where the car runs on 2 wheels instead of 4.  Taylor never did that.  After Cameron took me home and showed me how to do the Joey Chitwood - I decided his chauffuer abilities were quite limited.