Smuggling With Jesus
This is an outrageous memoir, full of humor and fascinating anecdotes. The author, Hank Cooper, is a nice Jewish boy from Canada. His father won a home on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in a poker game. Dad sold the property in 1986. The smuggling took place in that house before 1986.
The author’s uncle Johnny was a food chemist credited with inventing the recipe to Lipton’s Instant Cup-a-Soup. Uncle Johnny quit his job at Lipton's when he fed their ingredients to mice and they quickly developed tumors. He went to work for a United Nations food program instead. Hank was a 16-year-old chemistry whiz.
He got married when he was 18 but his marriage only lasted 18 months - he has trouble saying NO to anyone. When Hank was 23 his is ex-wife Brenda took him to a party, where he met Bernie, also Jewish and 23. They bonded instantly. Bernie was a drug smuggler. Hank and Bernie smuggled cocaine out of Bolivia during the midst of a political coup by politely asking a taxi driver to drive them from La Paz Bolivia to Lima, Peru. The 650-mile trip cost them $125 American dollars. They stopped for a coke break at Tiahuanaco, an ancient site made famous by ‘Ancient Aliens.’
Next they tried something only the brave and foolhardy attempt: Smuggling drugs out of Thailand. In Thailand the punishment for foreigners caught smuggling is 35 years in prison. (The punishment for Thais is death.) They partied with Pablo Escobar’s cousin in Cali, Colombia. In the ‘70s, he even got to personally deliver some cocaine to David Bowie before a show in Boston. At the time, Bowie said he spent “a small fortune” on cocaine to fuel his creativity. This book is full of fascinating details that Cooper delivers with dry humor. It’s funny, and some of the humor is gallows humor about moments of grave peril. Bernie came to a terrible end, although not as a result of smuggling.
Picture yourself with your buddy standing in a mountain top bazaar at the Bolivian/Peruvian border crossing. There is a tall cop from Argentina and the border guy from the control booth we just talked to as we crossed into the country. Strung over the shoulder of the border guard is an Air Canada cabin bag with 3 kilos of cocaine in it. What would you do, they are heading right for you and about 10 seconds away now with smiles on their faces? I'm freaking out and ready to bolt but my partner is calm as a cucumber and whispers to me out of the corner of his mouth. "Keep calm and don't move an inch"!
https://www.amazon.com/Smuggling-Jesus-Hank-Cooper/dp/0993871828