By Laura Armstrong Monica
We were driving through a little west Cobb neighborhood recently, destination Walmart, when a scarred, lumbering old box truck turned in front of us down the narrow residential street. Eventually it stopped at a decrepit home that’s been empty since at least last Spring. But this night the lawn was covered in vehicles. We waited, curious, a few yards behind the stopped truck, hoping the back would roll up so we could see what it was delivering. Yes, you can call me Karen.
Full, white trash bags were piled on the porch as a sneering young man walked out to the street. Yes, he was sneering at us. We sat in the twilight a dozen yards behind the truck’s flashing lights a few seconds longer, suspicious of the unfolding scene, then cautiously passed, peering into the cab. The driver glared.
Sneering and glaring… not exactly what people do when they’re delivering or receiving a piano or a new piece of furniture. I don’t want to admit my first theory was “human trafficking,” but it was.
A couple days later when I drove by, the place seemed quiet, only two cars and nothing amiss, though the trash was still piling up. I’ll likely never know what was in that old truck.
Isn’t there always one house in a neighborhood people wonder about?
Meanwhile, in southwest Marietta this week, one of those mystery homes turned out to be a giant meth lab, dismantled by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Half a ton of new methamphetamine was discovered at the rental on Pair Street, over $1.5 million in street value to be precise. Dangerously cooked within walking distance of a dozen schools, parks and churches by at least two “expert chemists” with Guatamalan passports, this home was operating courtesy of America’s new best friends, the cartels.
The bust was a big one, according to DEA leadership. The meth came over the southern border in liquid form, “juice” they explained, which is hard to detect. Doubly hard, I’m certain, because the Biden/Harris border patrol is barely even looking these days.
Vice President Harris, who finally visited the border last week sporting a $62,000 Tiffany gold necklace, barely talked to the agents and was gone after just twenty minutes, faster than you can say to the migrants, “Get on THAT plane over there and it will take you to a hotel where you’ll get free phones and a few thou on your new SNAP card, courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (taxpayers).”
I digress. DEA arrested the Guatamalans while serving warrants at the Pair Street home. Every room, they said, was being used to process their product to make it street ready. Agents entering the chemical lab donned full hazmat suits and said they could smell the noxious fumes from the street, where two little girls played on bikes just moments before.
The 1100 pounds of meth “is what we normally find in the jungles of Mexico,” the agent in charge told local media, “not in a neighborhood in Marietta….” In case none of us had seen Breaking Bad, he made sure to emphasize the danger to the neighbors – explosions, toxic fumes, associated criminal activity.
I took a look at the home and street on Google maps. Ironically, the first thing noticeable besides the decrepit meth lab of a house was the exact opposite just across the street. A nice, white picket fence and American flag displayed on the tidy home of maybe a veteran or a Lockheed retiree… probably trying to be good neighbors to the newcomers and unaware of the dangerous chemical bomb operating across the way.
After being sad for my country and my community and mad at my politicians for allowing these cartel contractors to get here, all I could think was how many teens at Smitha Middle School up the street might’ve come in contact with that life-destroying drug had law enforcement not stopped these guys cold.
We often politicize things like this, and we should not. We should all be outraged. My sincere hope is that prosecutors will throw the book at these guys who come here mocking our laws and endangering our neighborhoods. Everything is at risk if they don’t. Absolutely everything.
Laura Monica is a 36-year resident of Cobb County and holds an ABJ from the Grady School of Journalism at UGA. She loves freedom and her family. Contact her here
