Border Checkpoint

In response to “Border Patrol’s Role in Drug War Is Under Fire,” Feb. 10:

I grew up in Oceanside during the ‘50s and ‘60s when I-5 was named “Slaughter Alley,” due to the number of deaths that occurred on that stretch of freeway between Oceanside and San Clemente.

I never paid much attention to the border checkpoint until my fifth-grade classmate’s father (who was a border patrolman) was killed by a drunken driver while standing in the middle of the freeway directing traffic. Since that time I’ve always questioned the purpose and value of the stop.

Although I no longer live in Oceanside, I still have occasion to use I-5 and pass through the current checkpoint. Unlike Kurt Disser, I have never been pulled over, but I get incensed just the same. The current checkpoint, and all others, should be shut down and looked back on as the enigmas they truly are.

As a footnote, although I was never personally pulled over by the border patrol, the Greyhound bus I was traveling on was. The agent boarded the bus, came up to me and asked me to produce identification, which showed who I was. I guess my full-blooded Irish looks weren’t convincing enough. I often wonder if my response to his question that Sept. 3, 1968, had been anything other than what it was, would I have been detained longer? Fortunately I wasn’t.

Oh, his question “Where are you going?” Answer: “I’ve been drafted, I’m on my way to downtown Los Angeles to be inducted.”

Is this truly the land of the free?

ROY KEE, Temecula