Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!

by Jesse Ventura; Dick Russell

  I was forced to back off on it, because all the controversy was taking away from other things. The media just destroyed me over expressing such a heresy, I guess like going against mom, apple pie, and patriotism. When I’d announced that my official car wouldn’t be the customary luxury sedan, but an SUV with extra-strong shocks “for running over reporters,” I didn’t realize at the time how much that statement would come to mean to me.

  We pull off to the side of the road so that Dexter can take a leak and we can stretch our legs. The landscape stretches endlessly in all directions. Millennia ago, this whole part of the Baja was covered by a northern extension of the Sea of Cortez. Mexicali, in fact, lies a foot below sea level. Today Baja is the longest, and narrowest, peninsula on earth. But it used to be connected to mainland Mexico, back when mammoths, bisons, and twenty-three-ton dinosaurs roamed the plains. Over millions of years, the North Pacific plate that Baja is part of kept shifting along the San Andreas Fault. That’s what allowed the Sea of Cortez—also known as the Gulf of California—to form in between, and at one point it extended all the way up to Palm Springs, California. It would have kept on slowly moving northward, except it met up with the Colorado River.

  Silt flowing down the Colorado—much of it being rocks and earth once held in the Grand Canyon—created a very nutrient-rich soil over the centuries, despite the fact that the Valle de Mexicali and the San Felipe Desert only get about two inches of rain a year. With irrigation, originally established by American land companies building a canal system and later aided by a Mexican dam, the desert valley today produces an abundance of fruits and vegetables. These are grown on collectively owned agricultural lands known as ejidos.

  Over the next hour, we begin passing the nopal farms, where the prickly pear cactus they grow is sold at roadside stands, fresh or pickled. They call the ripe fruits tuna. We stop briefly again to sample a bit of fresh tuna, which is juicy and sweet.

  Pretty soon pasture land turns strictly into desert, as we hit the southern limit of the delta’s irrigation system. Quail and dove hunters come to the marshlands around Rio Hardy, and in the river the local Indians fish for carp, largemouth bass, and catfish. Terry and I love to fish the Minnesota lakes, and I am tempted to stop.

  “But I’ll bet there’s no muskie down here,” she says, wistfully. There is an old saying among fishermen in Minnesota that it takes ten thousand casts to land a trophy muskie. Terry proved that wrong on our lake, soon after we moved into our new house. She bought a book on how to catch muskies. It was late enough in the fall that we’d already pulled in the docks, getting ready for winter. Well, that’s when the muskies are notorious for cruising the shorelines for food. In the summer, they’re always out in deeper water.

  “I remember it was a Sunday afternoon and I was watching football,” I recall, “when you said, ‘I’m going outside to practice my casting.’ Probably an hour and a half went by, and all of a sudden you came running in, your hair all in disarray, and announced: ‘I’ve got a muskie.’ I said, ‘You mean you’ve got him on?’”

  “And I said, ‘No! He’s on the front lawn!’”

  “So I came running outside and sure enough, there’s a forty-fiveinch muskie. That’s not a small freshwater fish, that’s a lunker! And you caught him all by yourself—on ten-pound test line—from reading that book!”

  We took some photographs and released the fish back into the lake. Now, of course, I was under pressure. She’d caught one and I hadn’t. That bothered me for a long time. After I was no longer governor, every day when I finished golfing, I’d come home, go down to the dock, and do maybe fifty casts before dinner. One day, almost a year later, I was using a floating silver-and-black Rappala lure as bait. I threw it over by a weed bed, and let it sit until I saw all the rings of the splash disappear. Then I slowly started reeling. It would wiggle a little on the surface and had just started to go underwater when—wham!! Out of the water with it came this huge muskie!

  “Now I was in the same predicament you were. I’m by myself, using the same ten-pound test line. Yet with the muskie, you can’t let them have any slack, because if they leap out of the water, they’ll spit the bait.”

  “And I wasn’t even home!” Terry recalls.

  “So I battled this fish in and out three times. In the interim I went over and got my landing net, dropped it into the lake, and pinned it against my waist, so that I’m leaning against it in the water. I finally tired him out to a point—I don’t know how much time had gone by—and he was right underneath the net. I took a chance, dropped the pole, grabbed the net, and scooped him.”

  “And how big was he?” Terry can’t stifle a grin, I can see.

  “He was forty-two inches—only three inches smaller than yours—but actually mine was thicker. Yours was more long and thin.”

  I pause a moment, then go on: “The amazing thing about both fish was, I never took the hook out of either one. The minute they were in the net, they spit it out. About this time you’d arrived home, and come down there with Dexter. I remember we slid the muskie back into the lake, holding him by the back tail, rocking him slowly back and forth to get the water going through his gills again. He stayed upright, and literally sat there for five minutes right at our feet.”

  “Then you pushed him out towards the dock, and he went under that, and stayed there.”

  Terry had gotten her camera, and taken some amazing photographs of him breathing under the water. It was getting dark. He finally outlasted us, and we went in. Next morning I got up early, went out to check the shoreline, looked under the dock. And he was gone.

  “So do you want to stop and fish here?” Terry asks now. I say no, I’m still determined to make time toward Guerrero Negro. Why, given what we are soon to face, I don’t honestly know.

  Except for probably a half dozen forays across into Tijuana when I was in the Navy training near San Diego, I’ve only been to Mexico one other time alone. That was in 1986, not long after I quit wrestling and the day after I finished broadcasting for WrestleMania 2 at the L.A. Sports Arena. I’d been cast as a professional killer named Blain, playing alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the sci-fi movie Predator. It was to be filmed on location in Jalisco, Palenque, and the jungles around Puerto Vallarta.

  Kill the alien. That was the basic premise of the film, which ended up making about $60 million in box office after it hit the theaters in the summer of ’87. I was part of the commando team in pursuit, chewing tobacco and carrying a machine gun into the bush. I insisted on doing my own rappelling, and got along real well with the stuntmen. Even though the alien bumped me off halfway through the movie, it wasn’t long before I uttered a famous line that Fox Studios even made T-shirts of: “I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed.” That also became the title of my first book.

  The best thing about doing Predator was becoming good friends with Arnold. Who would have imagined then that we’d both end up as governors? We hit it off right from the start. We’d get up and work out together at 5:00 a.m. One day, I decided to oneup Arnold. I started at 4:45 after soaking myself with mineral water, so it looked like I was drenched in sweat by the time Arnold showed up. I heard him tell his bodyguard and double, a fellow named Sven: “Look at this! Who knows how long Jesse’s been training! We must get up earlier. We can’t let him out-train me.” So we both started rising earlier and earlier, until our workouts started at 4:00 a.m.!

  While we were shooting, Arnold was scheduled to leave the set for a few days to fly to Hyannisport, Massachusetts, and get married to Maria Shriver. I thought he might need a little “coaching.” Remember to speak from the diaphragm, I told him, and say distinctly, “I do! I DO!” I’d then sit off in a corner when he was getting ready to do a take and, just as the cameras were ready to roll, I’d let out an “I DO!” And Arnold would crack up laughing. Then the director would get a little pissed off, and I’d have to keep my mouth shut.

  We did talk some politics. I was very curious why he was such an ultra-Republi
can. He gave me what I thought was a great reason. In Austria, where he came from, the government was so socialistic that you couldn’t get rewarded for your perseverance. You’re trapped within a layered system where, no matter how hard you work, you’re only going to make so much money. It was before Reagan when he came to America, and Arnold said he always had felt strongly that the Republican philosophy of business—of being responsible for yourself in a free society—was the way to go.

  I learned a lot from Arnold about the business of filmmaking. One day on the set, he said to me, “Jesse, always remember, never read a script until the money’s right.” I replied that that was pretty easy for a big star like him to say, with a dozen scripts sitting on his desk. But Arnold explained that, if you read first and like the script, you’re liable to do the movie for less. “And if you can’t get the money right, you’ve wasted your time reading the script,” he went on. Then he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Jesse, in our business, we don’t have time to waste.”

  We enjoyed each other’s company so much that Arnold made sure I got a part in his next project, The Running Man. I asked for considerably more money than I had made doing Predator, and the negotiations were bogged down when Arnold called me. I told him yes, I wanted to do The Running Man with him. “But Arnold . . . I can’t read the script until the money’s right!” He burst out laughing and said, “Jesse, trust me. The script is fantastic. Just get the money right.” That same afternoon, the film company phoned back and said they’d meet my price. It could be that Arnold interceded on my behalf. This time, I played Captain Freedom, an egomaniac ex-wrestler who’s doing color commentary for a sadistic game show in an American police state in 2017. Some of that hit a little close to home.

  The evening of the 1998 election, his wife, Maria, asked her producers at Dateline NBC if she could interview me before the returns came in. “We’re not spending our time on losers,” they told her. She went ahead and called me anyway, asking for an exclusive if I happened to become governor. I told her: “Sure, Maria. If I win, you can have the first interview.” But when it became a reality, NBC wanted to hand the assignment to Tom Brokaw instead. I told the network I had an agreement with Maria; I’d go on the air with her, or not at all. So they ended up splitting the time. Maria did the first interview, then they tossed me over to Brokaw. He asked, “Should we call you Governor Ventura, or Governor ‘The Body?’” Seemed like a pretty lame joke to me. So I told Brokaw the times had changed: “I’m no longer Jesse ‘The Body,’ I’m Jesse ‘The Mind’ Ventura.”

  Arnold was in the middle of making a film, but he still showed up in Minnesota for my inauguration. He gave me a present that I still cherish—two massive bronze eagles from the National Historical Society. On the back is a plaque that says: “Jesse, you are a true leader. Your friend, Arnold.”

  Then, when he was running for governor in the California recall election in the summer of 2003, it was my turn to offer Arnold some free advice. Time magazine asked me to do a column addressed to him, and I began by saying: “Arnold, what the heck are you doing? You’re getting out of Hollywood to go into politics? Well, then forget agents and studio bosses—now you’re dealing with real predators.”

  Headline: SOME ADVICE FROM VENTURA

  Jesse Ventura, the professional wrestling bully boy who parlayed his celebrity into one term as Minnesota’s governor, has some advice for a fellow entertainer-turned-politician. . . .

  “Don’t be spin doctored and stay away from the Republican Party, who will try to make you something you’re not.”

  —The New York Times, August 17, 2003

  My strongest recommendation was that Arnold simply be himself. An honest man who doesn’t necessarily have all the answers. I told him to “keep your distance from special-interest groups, powerful lobbyists and their dirty money. The fact is, Arnold, you don’t need them. You can win this race by going straight to the people.”

  Talk from your heart, be willing to take some chances and “expose the status quo politicians of both parties.”

  I didn’t receive an invitation to Arnold’s inaugural. I understand why. He’s a Republican, and imagine what hoo-rah it would have caused if the so-called “high priest” of the independent movement had shown up. I did send him a bottle of champagne with a congratulatory note. But we haven’t talked or seen each other since he became governor.

  Then, in 2004, I appeared on TV ads in California opposing his idea that the Native American gambling casinos pay 25 percent of their revenues in taxes. That’s at a time when corporate taxes in California were, I believe, at 6 or 7 percent. To me, the politicians had granted Native American tribes the rights to exclusive gambling and then, when they realized how much money it generated, they wanted to dip their hands into the till and change the game. The Native Americans had agreed they would pay what any other corporation did in taxes—but Arnold wanted them to foot the bill in order to close his budget gap. That way, like all good Republicans, he could tell the people it wasn’t coming out of their taxes.

  His argument was that the Indian tribes can be taxed as much as we desire because we give them a monopoly. At first glance, that seems pretty valid. The other corporations are taxed at a lower rate, because they face competition. There’s only one problem with this logic, which I brought up at the time. If we’re going to do that to Native American gambling, then why isn’t it being done to baseball? Baseball is given a monopoly, yet you don’t see California’s government upping the taxes on the California Angels or the Oakland A’s or the San Diego Padres. I mean, the ballplayers and the owners are making millions every year, and they’re granted an antitrust exemption. But, of course, baseball is the great American pastime, and untouchable.

  So, I sided with the Native Americans. Here you had the Caucasians ticked off at the Indians, because the Indians are making all this money—through an agreement that the Caucasians made with them! There we go again, breaking our deals, just like we’ve done to Indians for the last two hundred years.

  When the press asked Arnold about my reaction, he said, “Well, what do you think friends are for?” And he laughed, which I loved. He still had his sense of humor, and I think understood that he and I simply stood on different sides of this issue. In fact, that summer Arnold ended up signing revised gaming agreements with five of California’s most prosperous tribes, guaranteeing the state roughly 10 to 15 percent of their profits. Then he came out against a ballot initiative calling for all tribes to fork over 25 percent, which went down to defeat that November.

  On most every issue today, I see Arnold’s political views as being very close to my own. I highly commend what he’s doing for stem cell research, and he’s out in front of every other state in combating global warming—both of these directly in contrast with the hard-core Republicans. On all the social issues, in fact, Arnold has turned into a liberal Democrat.

  So I’m wondering, why is he still a member of the Republican Party? He could have won the election as an independent. I’m privately hoping that he might go that way yet, as the Republicans continue to shun his forward-thinking policies. Stranger things have happened. After all, we’ve fought in the jungle together before.

  Coming out of the northern Baja desert, our first sight of the Sea of Cortez comes at San Felipe. The little beach town was first named by a Jesuit Padre who came ashore with four canoes in 1746, and stayed long enough to call the gently curving bay San Felipe de Jesus. Hardly anybody came here before a paved road to a radar station got built after World War Two, and then American fishermen started flocking down to catch totuava, a croaker that gets as big as 250 pounds. The smaller ones were a little too tasty, and the fish ended up an endangered species.

  There’s a headland that juts out at the northern end of San Felipe, and below it an estuary and a boatyard. The commercial shrimp boats tie up in an artificial harbor at the southern end. And you see plenty of retired gringos camped along the beaches in their RVs, along with dune-buggies a
nd ATVs racing up and down the sloping sands. We pull over to have some mariscos for lunch—steamed clams and oysters on the half shell.

  For about twenty miles beyond San Felipe, we breeze. Past the new condo developments just south of the town, an ugly trash dump right off the highway, and then heading further inland, coming upon the strange, stunning landscape of the desert: the cholla cactus and mesquite and elephant trees.

  We were about to be “stunned” by something else. I are in Southeast Asia for seventeen months, and I’ve been a lot of other places—but this is about to become the roughest road I’ve ever traveled.

  An excerpt from Terry’s journal: The shortcut the husband tried did not work out so well. The road that was paved ended shortly after San Felipe in a little town. We hit a pretty good stretch of gravel and then it was horrible. The dust was thick and heavy, and the road was washboard with big rocks. There were washouts here and there that we tried to get through.

  Oh, the washboarding! That’s where the ground ends up like the hard little waves you look at in the ocean. As your tires go over those waves, it bounces your shocks and shakes you so bad inside your vehicle that at times you think the fillings will come out of your teeth. In some places, big chunks of the road simply aren’t there. I mean, these are huge holes on a dirt track covered with flat rocks. The vados, places where the road gets intersected by dry culverts, come upon you treacherously fast. By the time we’ve inched along for probably another twenty miles, my trailer carrying the wave runners virtually starts to disintegrate.

  An excerpt from Terry’s journal: The first thing to go wrong was the trailer. We noticed the red wave runner was crooked and, when we stopped to look at it, we saw the board it sat on was cracking and one of the bolts that held it into a clamp on the side was gone. Earlier, I had watched the wave runner popping up and down on the trailer. I asked to stop and try to find some bungee and rope but husband said, “Nah, we’ll be fine.” That was a mistake!