The Mexico Story - part 3

Note:  I should never have started telling this story.  I don’t want to finish it, but it seems I can’t do anything else until it’s done.  Here on in it’s going to be very rough, and probably poorly edited.  I just don’t care anymore.

After lunch we drove to the border, parked, and walked to the pedestrian bridge.  We paid a small toll and across we went.  There was no security to speak of.  The security is encountered when crossing into the US.  The Rio Grande looked like an empty cement moat as we walked over it.  At the apex of the bridge is a seal, some kind of marker.  A history buff like myself wanted to take a closer look, however the dozens of begging children surrounding us with puppy dog eyes and empty palms made that impossible.

The streets of Juarez we crowded.  people walking, vendors selling, even crazy ladies shouting from doorways.  “CHEAPER THAN K-MART CHEAPER THAN K-MART!”

Our first order of business was to buy liquor.  My adolescent excitement about legally entering an adult beverage establishment and purchasing whatever I wanted was giving me chills.  It’s not that I was that big on liquor.  And liquor was never that big on me if you know what I mean.  My excitement came from the simple idea that I would be able to calmly browse isles of alcohol for my ideal bottle as opposed to sneaking drinks of my parents swill or bumming whatever happened to be at a party.  Honestly I can’t even remember what it was I bought or what it cost.  If I had to guess, it was probably Crown Royal, or perhaps Chivas.  There was a limit to the number of bottles we could buy, because each ‘adult’ was only allowed to carry 2 bottles of liquor into the US.

There is only one thing you have to remember when crossing from Mexico into the United States.  Tell the border guards - the American ones - that you are American.  It’s like saying hello.  Just look at the guy and say “American” as you calmly walk past.  No one told me this.  It was probably meant to be a joke, but border guards have no sense of humor.  It also doesn’t help when you look like a pot head, in your gold Doc Martins, and you are walking all alone through the checkpoint.  You see, I split up from the guys, because they were carrying all the booze.  I couldn’t help but be nervous.  I’ve always been that way.  I got pulled over once for having a headlight out, and the cop asked me why I was so nervous.  I told her “I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like cops.”  She wasn’t to happy about that, but she let me go without searching me or my vehicle.

What actually happened was this.  As I got through the rope line, and approached the guard I was simply going to walk past.  The people if front of me however, were each showing the guy something, only I couldn’t tell what.  So it was my turn.  The guard looked at me as if he expected something, so I showed him the receipt I got when I payed the toll to cross the bridge.  Yes, I showed him a receipt for a dollar toll.  The guard took it from my hand, and very forcefully said “What’s this?” as he threw the receipt to the ground.  Without a word, but probably with some unseen gesture, I was immediately surrounded by half a dozen border guards.  I was asked for my ID.  One of the guards took it and said, “You’re from Odessa huh . . . what’s going on in, um” I could see him thinking “Andrews?”  Puzzled I replied ” How should I know?”  Before I could explain that Andrews was an hour away from Odessa, I was joined by my cohorts.  I could sense a scowl coming from Jerome’s direction.  Apparently  it wasn’t all that hard to link us together.  We were all lined up like a gang of usual suspects.  It must have been good for a laugh for all the Mexicans who were passing by.  And then there was the drug dog.  These guys wanted  scare us or something, and it worked on me.  They literally brought a drug sniffing dog out to sniff at our crotches.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  Fortunately none of us was holding, so we were set free, without any explanation or apology.  I guess I just don’t like cops.

yes, there’s more.  Part 4 will be the last.

The Mexico Story - part 2

While I drank Mountain Dew and ate beef jerky everyone else slept. At some point in the night I started thinking. These guys are crazy! I’m driving 95 in the pitch black and they’re sleeping. They don’t know me or anything about me. I could have narcolepsy. I could fall asleep, cross the median into an oncoming semi and explode us all in a fireball. I could be doing blow off the steering wheel and careen off a guardrail into a support pillar. I wouldn’t trust me. Lucky for them I just want to go to Mexico.

At sometime around 4 am I saw the lights of the fabled old western town of El Paso. The city is amazing at night. From the mountains to the north that encroach on the city like a monolith, to the Rio Grande that separates but doesn’t, across which lies the much bigger Cuidad Juarez, it all seemed surreal.

We checked into a Motel 6 and got some sleep. Jerome got his own room, the rest of us split a room with two queen beds.  Me and the quiet guy got to sleep on cots.  This was less than ideal, but we were only staying two nights and I just wanted to go to Mexico.

The next morning it was up and out on our way to downtown.  Jerome said he knew a good Mexican food place so we could eat before we crossed.  Downtown El Paso is basically on the border with Mexico.  We drove up and down in a maze of one way narrow streets between warehouses and office buildings.  Once I was sufficiently lost, we pulled into a generic parking lot filled with old work trucks and tiny imports.  All with Chihuahua plates.  This was a big moment for me.  I’m a huge Mexican food fan.  It borders on food snobbery.  This was going to be the closest to authentic Mexican food as I was ever going to get.  I was not disappointed.  My Spanish was good enough that I could read the menu fine, but there were some items that weren’t familiar, which was what I was hoping for.  I didn’t come all the way from Odessa to eat burritos or tacos.  I was going to try something NEW.  One entree caught my eye - Chile Rellenos.  Battered Anaheim Chiles stuffed with cheese.  I couldn’t have imagined a better start to my Mexican adventure.

The Mexico Story

It was already well past sundown when we finally left town on the 4 or 5 hour drive to El Paso.  No one else wanted to drive, so Jerome gave me keys to the rented Chevy Tahoe.  Jerome was a 40 year old heavyset black man who was widely rumored to be gay.  I didn’t know him all that well, but when he said he was going to El Paso and Juarez with some of his friends I couldn’t help tagging along.  I just wanted to go to Mexico.

I was 19 years old and full of an eagerness to see new places and do new things.  As I drove we talked about what it was we were getting ourselves into.  Jerome had grown up in El Paso and had been to Juarez many times.  He assured us (mostly me) that there was nothing to worry about.  He said it was simple “Don’t do anything stupid, or break the law, and we won’t have any problems.  Besides, we can always bribe the police in Mexico.”  That last line always brought up something of  a chuckle.  I don’t think any of us believed we would ever have to pay a police officer to let us go free.  It’s just not something that happens in the U.S.  You don’t even think about it.

For the most part it seemed I was the only one with any real apprehension.  Besides Jerome and myself, there was:  Mike, who was Jerome’s closest friend that I knew,  and there was the blonde quiet guy Matt, I never did figure out why the hell he was around, and then there was Rob.  Rob was the greasiest, sleaziest, grossest looking guy I’d ever seen.  If you’ve ever met someone and knew immediately you couldn’t trust them, that was Rob.

So it was that the 5 of us were driving in the middle of an October night to El Paso and adventures unkonwn.  The chatting died down slowly over the hours until there was nothing but me, the road, and the occasional chirp of the radar detector as I slid the Tahoe through the bug filled desert darkness.

to be continued . . .

The Den of Pestilence

The pools of muck mock the road,

Shopping bags haunt the tree,

Sulfur pierces the air,

Industry everywhere.

Violence wins the losers,

Vulgarity speaks all languages,

There will always be places like this.

There will always be sirens, stenches, and sharp fences,

in my den of pestilence.