At my day job I walked by a soccer mom van that had its back innards taken out. I asked the mechanic what was going on. He told me he had to rip everything out to replace the rails that allowed the back seat to move back and forth.
“Looks like what they do to your car at the border if they think you have something to hide,” I said.
“Did that ever happen to you?” asked the mechanic, wiping his hands as he gave me a smile and a wiggle of the eyebrows.
“Naw,” I said. “I just heard about it. Like if you were a smart-ass to the Border Patrol dudes or if you were suspicious looking they’d usher you over to the side and take your car apart. When they were done they tip their hats, say ‘Have a nice day’ and leave you to put it all back together.”
Nothing really weird ever happened to me when I drove into Mexico.
That’s one of the things I miss about The Great American Southwest, moseying on in to Mexican border towns.
Each Mexican border town I’ve been in has its own character. The bigger ones, including Nuevo Laredo, Cuidad Juarez and Nogales, are like large cities north of the border. Check out any huge city in the USA, see if there aren’t shopkeepers who try to drag you into their stores just like the merchants of large Mexican cities.
To me, it’s the small towns that stand out.
New Mexico’s only neighboring border town is Las Palomas, Chihuahua, just south of the town of Columbus.
The day I decided to drive my Ford F-150 Pickemup truck into The Republic of Mexico Las Palomas seemed to be a haven for drunk American women. They were all well-dressed, singing songs as they walked down the street, laughing, shopping. They seemed to be in their 30’s. Where were they from? El Paso? Las Cruces? Silver City? Albuquerque? Maybe it was a convention for drunk middle-class American babes that day, I don’t know.
Then there was the dust. None of Las Palomas’ streets were paved. I thought about the border town of Naco, Sonora…small and funky but their streets were paved. Most of them anyway.
I moseyed around the streets of Las Palomas, a drifting gringo. I heard music coming from a cantina. I went in. There was a guy playing an accordion and another playing guitar, both singing. It was a good moment in time.
I stepped outside where I encountered what must have been one of the town’s “sportin’ men.” He was probably approaching 50, he’d grown his hair long on either side of the bald spot in the middle of his head then piled and arranged his hair in the center with pomade. His boots were pointed, his jeans looked uncomfortably tight and his beer gut looked like it was fixin’ to burst out. I stepped out of the way so he could get into the cantina or in case his stomach burst out of his shirt to knock me down.
The time had come to leave Las Palomas. I headed north and was soon chatting with a Border Patrol agent as I stopped just inside the U.S. border.
“Sir, where were you born?” he asked.
“West Virginia,” I said.
“What was the nature of your business in Mexico?”
“I’d just never been to Las Palomas, I just wanted to check it out.”
The Border Patrol agent looked at me for a moment.
He stepped back and waved me through.
“Have a nice day sir,” he said.
Later I told my friends about my trip into Mexico.
“And they didn’t even tear my truck apart,” I told them.
“Well,” said one of my pals, “A guy wearing rainbow suspenders driving a hand-painted pickup truck probably doesn’t fit their profile as a drug runner.”
I’ve been to Ojinaga, Chihuahua, across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Texas, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, across from Douglas, Arizona. Both were non-descript towns in a sun-blasted landscape.
My favorite border town was Naco, Sonora. Things I remember about that town include the supermercado with its produce from the interior including unroasted coffee beans, the paved main boulevard of the town (the folks of Las Palomas might be envious), the relaxing town square (I think most Mexican towns have a good central square), and the friends I made.
One man I made the acquaintance of was Vicente, “El Locutor del Radiodifusora” of the Naco radio station…he was the DJ, the only DJ, he was the everything dude for the place.
Vicente had to take care of everything at the radio station. There even came a time when all of his tape machines failed. Back before everything was run by computers tape machines were used to run commercials. Vicente got to the point where he was doing all of his commercials “live,” not recorded.
At the time I was working at a place that went headlong into the digital age, putting a bunch of perfectly good but outmoded broadcasting equipment in the nearby dumpster, including some perfectly good tape machines. I discovered the treasure trove when I took out some trash and immediately thought of Vicente. I pulled the tossed equipment from the dumpster, loaded it in my car and headed into Mexico.
When I crossed the border I was immediately motioned over by a Federale. I pulled up to him and turned off my engine.
“Hello sir, welcome to Mexico,” he said in distinct English.
“Thank you,” I said.
“What is all of this you have in the back of your car?”
“I work over in Sierra Vista and my bosses were throwing out this perfectly good radio equipment ‘cos they’ve switched over to computers and I thought I’d bring it to Vicente.”
The Federale stood back from my car and smiled.
“You know Vicente?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “He’s doing all of his commercials ‘live.’ That’s no fun.”
“Yes, he’s having a tough time now,” then he furrowed his brow. “You’re not going to sell it to him are you?”
“No sir,” I said. “They were throwing away perfectly good stuff and I’m giving it to him.”
“That’s nice of you, sir,” said the Federale. “You know how to get there?”
“Yes sir.”
He waved me on into Mexico.
When I pulled up to the radio station and showed Vicente my haul he had a grin from ear to ear.
I remember Lupita the liquor store javelina in Naco, Sonora. She came when called and liked to eat out of your hand. All other javelinas I’d encountered were wild things, one even chased me while I was jogging along the border. One time I asked the store owner if Lupita liked Fritos corn chips. I spoke my best Spanish, at least I thought I did. The store owner gave me a worried look and said, “No, no.”
A fellow in the shop laughed, “You just asked her if she was going to fry Lupita.”
I liked to go to fiestas in Naco. One time, sitting at a table with friends the mariachis came by. I was hoping they’d sing that old Mexican favourite “Cielito Lindo.” I asked how much. Now my Spanish has always been a little rough so the proper phrase “Cuanto cuesta” came out as “Canto queso.”
The lead mariachi gave me a quizzical look.
“Canto queso?”
The only other guy who knew some Spanish down at the other end of the table started laughing. “Dude, you just asked him to ‘sing cheese.’”
We got it straightened out and the mariachis gave us a rousing rendition of “Cielito Lindo.”
Weeks after the September 11th attacks I was walking back into the U.S. from Naco. I was asked to empty my pockets and patted down. In all my times in crossing the border I’d never been patted down. Curious, when I got home I called the customs office to ask about it.
“Sir,” came the terse reply, “at the United States border we have the authority to do a body cavity search if we choose. Have a nice day.”
I had dental work done in Naco. I had serious pain, hot burning pain in the back of my jaw some years ago. It was like a branding iron was being rammed in my jaw. A friend who was a dental assistant had a gander at my teeth and saw the source. A wisdom tooth had gone bad under the gum line.
I called dentist after dentist. No one would see me right away. To top it off, the lowest price quoted for the visit would be $250, which I didn’t have. And they wouldn’t bill me.
“Go to a Mexican dentist,” was the advice from a friend. She gave me a number to call across the border in Naco. Sixty bucks was all they wanted to yank the bad tooth. And they’d see me the next day.
I parked my car on the American side and walked over. I left the town’s paved main drag and wandered down a dusty street. The office looked rough from the outside but when I opened the door it was nice and clean. No sooner had I sat in the waiting room than they whisked me into a dentist’s chair. In the hallway Spanish was being spoken, but when they talked to me the dentist and his assistant spoke impeccable English.
Painkiller was administered. Then they left. I felt the left side of my jaw go numb. Minutes later the dentist re-appeared with a pliers-like dental tool (hmm, maybe it was simply a pliers). He wrestled and tugged and wrestled and tugged. There was no pain, just the pressure.
“Ha ya ga da too ya?” I gargled out.
Amazingly, he understood me. He smiled and held my wisdom tooth before my eyes.
I was amazed. The tooth was cratered. Fully one-third of it was lost. The pain was from the cavity eating through to the nerve of the tooth. I was sort of embarrassed such a thing had been a part of me.
Walking across the border I met the obligatory Border Patrolman.
“SIR,” he barked, “WHAT WAS THE NATURE OF YOUR BUSINESS IN MEXICO?”
“I had a tooth pulled,” I said. “You wanna see it?”
The Border Patrolman, a young fellow, totally dropped his bulldog demeanor.
“Yeah,” he said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a piece of medical gauze and unwrapped the tooth for him to see. There it was in all of its cavity-cratered glory with bits of gum still stuck to the root.
“Gross,” said the Border Patrol dude, scrunching up his face.
He smiled and waved me through.
Some years later I returned to the border country. I had a chat with someone who had connections with people in Naco. I asked him about Vicente. It turns out the radio station’s transmitter died and the owner wouldn’t fix it so Vicente ended up moving further south.
And Lupita the liquor store javelina? She died of old age.
Will I ever make it back to Mexico? Probably not. I wanted to go to places in the interior, like the deep canyon country of La Barranca del Cobre in Chihuahua or the cities of Aguascalientes or Oaxaca.
I remember what a friend said about the Mexican interior. She had gone deep into The Republic for a Spanish immersion class.
“Deep in Mexico you experience the absence of the terror of time,” she said.
-30-
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