Moving Along

The house is empty again, just Rocio and Anna and me. It’s nice. Rocio’s brother, one she had never before met, flew into town on Friday with his wife and two children. Monday was the departure day. It was perfect. Most days are perfect days in Baja, but Monday was more perfect than most. I realize this implies that perfection is measured rather than achieved. South of the border, perhaps this is true.

"So, how do you like our weather here in Baja?" I asked Julio right before he climbed into a ride to the airport back to Mexico City.

He looked up, looked around. It was eighty degrees. The wind was warm and nice and it caressed his skin as he looked back at me. "Amazing," he said, in Spanish of course. They took him to the airport and they are back in Mexico City, in the Distrito Federal, Mexico’s version of the District of Columbia. Julio is a bodyguard there. He is the most unlikely bodyguard I have ever met.

Julio’s wife, Alma, is reserved and somewhat demure, unlike her husband who is sometimes brash and provocative. Their children, a girl of eleven and a boy of thirteen were very well behaved but incredibly curious kids. Twice I had to shoo them from my office. Several times they would wander into the kitchen while I cooked, watching me perform the simplest of tasks and prepping food, asking me what I was doing at every step until I poked my head into the living room and shot Rocio a glance that was meant for her to come and fetch them away.

Their visit went well but was not without several glitches.

* * * *

When you marry a Mexican, you marry their entire family, lock, stock and barrel. This was no allusion to me when I married Rocio, I knew what I was getting into and I embraced it – and I’m not at all sorry for making that decision. American families are often splintered, in that other than the immediate brother or sister and parents and grandparents, one can go decades between meeting cousins and aunts and uncles and so on. In Mexico, this is normally not the case. Some of Rocio’s family is the exception rather than the rule, I seem to find out very new connections every few years or so.

With Rocio, it was initially her two kids, her parents, and her sister who was nine when we met. That sister is now a psychologist. Juan, my son because I raised him and I’m proud to call him my son, is now a veteran of the United States Army. Sharon, my daughter for the same reason, is set to marry and living with her boyfriend Jose. Rocio’s parents are retired now. Rocio and me have a sixteen-year-old named Anna. This is what time does - it moves things along.

Rocio has a brother named Ricardo, considered a bit of a black sheep, and I have known him for many years. I gave him money for a house, which he still lives in, because otherwise who knows where he would be now. He comes over sometimes, now that his kids are grown and gone. He sells ice cream and seems much happier than before, when he worked in factories and as a plumber and did whatever else he did for coinage years ago. Rocio has had many issues with Ricardo over the years.

While it might seem out of the question that Rocio would have issues with her brother Julio, since they had never met, there was one conversation that would take place between them – in private – that would open a family wound almost forty years old. This is what happens.

* * * *

On Friday, Rocio had come home from work early as I stood in the kitchen prepping hamburgers, which was what Rocio wanted me to cook on the first night. Juan was off attending his next-to-last Army Reserve weekend assignment and would return on Sunday. Rocio’s sister and mother, and Sharon and her boyfriend had taken separate cars to the airport to pick up the guests and their luggage. Rocio was nervous, picking at Anna, annoying me, while trying to sit still on the couch.

The first car rolled up containing the children, and ten minutes later in walked Julio and Alma. He wasn’t what I expected in size and stature, I thought that it was odd for a bodyguard to be seemingly physically inferior to my own frame and found myself thinking that even approaching fifty years old I could probably take him on. After the obligatory hugs, handshakes, and introductions, Julio broke out a bottle of tequila. I will confess that it is the smoothest tequila I’ve ever had.

There were over a dozen in the living room, ostensibly catching up, but Julio was insisting on being the center of attention. When he wasn’t, he would wander into the kitchen and annoy me, insisting that I raise my tequila in a toast. Rocio would then rescue me, but it slowed dinner. Julio had a difficult time wrapping his head around the fact that I was cooking dinner while Rocio relaxed and chatted. It would get worse before it got better.

After the hamburgers and fries, we killed the tequila and continued with beer until everyone finally got tired. Rocio’s parents and Sharon and Jose left, Julio and Alma and the kids went to sleep, and so did everyone else. It was after midnight. Except that I then awoke before three in the morning and stared at the ceiling. I got up and dressed and came downstairs. I came into my office and fired up the computer, learning through my mother’s email that my father was in the hospital.

* * * *

At five in the morning I looked at the kitchen. It was a mess. I knew that our guests were running on an internal clock that was two hours ahead of us. I washed the dishes. Julio came downstairs at a quarter after six and I made him some coffee while he scolded me for doing dishes. Who else was going to do them? They would want breakfast soon.

I excused myself and went to the store, and when I returned, Julio and Alma were dressed.

"We’re going for a walk," Julio said, and they left.

Meanwhile Rocio came down and I shrugged. "They don’t even know Tijuana," I told her. "They’ll get lost." Rocio laughed a little bit. Apparently, she wasn’t getting along with Julio as well as she expected.

The second time they passed by our house, I noticed them and had Rocio go track them down while I diced potatoes. They entered, having found our local panadería and the wonderful breads and rolls therein, and having purchased some chocolate tablets at another store to make atóle. My kitchen would be hijacked for almost an hour. I went back into my office and answered my mother’s email.

Apparently, my father was admitted for a case of pneumonia. He tested negative for flu, so they had him on antibiotics. In the course of the treatment, they discovered his heart rate racing to above one hundred and fifty beats per minute, and rushed in cardio equipment. They didn’t find the cause of the accelerated heart beat, but brought it down to near normal levels with drugs.

Back in the kitchen at last, I fried up some bacon in one pan and the diced potatoes in oil in another pan. I kept them warm in the oven while poaching twenty eggs and steaming a couple pounds of small, peeled and de-veined shrimp. At the end I made a Mornay sauce with cheddar and Monterey jack cheese, and finely diced some cilantro while Anna made toast with butter. The presentation was simple; two poached eggs and a few shrimp on the toast with a ladle of Mornay sauce on top, sprinkled with a touch of the chopped cilantro, bacon and potatoes to one side.

By this time, the house was full again, and when Julio finished his breakfast he came into the kitchen and asked if I was a chef. I laughed. I admitted that I was self-taught. I’m not sure that Julio believed that.

Now full and quite appreciative, everyone went up the hill to Rocio’s parents’ house for a few hours, which allowed Rocio and me to nap. When I woke up, Rocio was doing dishes so I grabbed Anna and we went to the store. Saturday night would be what I consider my signature dish, stuffed chicken breasts with chipótle glaze. Very little rest for the weary.

* * * *

Back at home, I wrapped potatoes in foil and stuck them into the oven and Rocio was there.

"So, what’s your first impressions?"

"Not very good," Rocio growled. "He’s always the center of attention. He’s loud and sometimes insulting. While you’re in the kitchen cooking, he’s scolding me in front of everyone for not cooking, accusing our house of being upside down."

"He’s a chilango, what did you expect? He isn’t any different than any other chilango I’ve ever met," I said.

By the time they came back, I had already cooked the chorizo and ground beef mixture with finely diced onions and minced garlic and had drained the grease. Anna was finished grating the cheeses. I was making butterfly-cut pockets in the raw chicken breasts. Julio was too curious to remain in the living room with what had now become about twenty people, including Rocio’s other brother, Ricardo and his wife. Julio watched me stuff a chicken breast with two tablespoons of the chorizo mixture. Next came two slices of cream cheese. Then came a teaspoon each of grated Monterey Jack and sharp cheddar.

It took between three and four thin slices of raw smoked bacon to completely wrap each breast. Liquefying in a blender, a small can of chipótle chiles in adobo with a small can of red chile sauce, and adding a little garlic and onion and salt made the chipótle glaze. With the stuffed chicken breasts in a foil-lined pan, the glaze is spread over the top using a brush or a pastry spatula. Everything is baked for one hour at three hundred and seventy five degrees. It gave me plenty of time to prepare the second batch.

"Cut this batch in half, most people can’t eat a whole one anyway, they’re too rich," I told Rocio.

"I know," she agreed.

"If anyone wants seconds, they’ll have to wait a while, there wasn’t any room in the over for two batches at once, I didn’t expect quite this many people until tomorrow."

They ate the stuffed chicken breasts and baked potatoes and corn, except that Julio demanded warmed tortillas from Rocio. Rocio offered buttered bread, which is more typical, but Julio would have none of it. I could see Rocio coming undone. She served him tortillas, mumbling under her breath. The second batch finally came out, but mostly everyone was stuffed by then.

After dinner, Rocio and Julio stepped outside to have a lengthy conversation. I wouldn’t find out about it until Monday. When they came back in, everyone drank beer and wine and seemed to try and get along the best they could. I had promised Julio to take him with me in the morning when I went downtown to the Tijuana fish markets, that we would stop by and grab a good coffee and then open the Perico at ten in the morning. Then we would visit the Dandy del Sur, and he could take those memories with him back to Mexico City.

I told him that nine in the morning was a good time to leave, and he insisted on seven o’clock. Rocio’s father had enough. He didn’t say anything, he simply asked Sharon’s boyfriend Jose to take him and his wife home. I looked at Rocio and shrugged. They would be back tomorrow and everyone else was spending the night. I went to sleep at midnight and awoke at six thirty on Sunday morning.

* * * *

I paced the floor that morning, drank two cups of coffee and waited. Julio did not come downstairs. Finally, at a quarter ‘till nine, I went upstairs and woke up Rocio.

"Your brother isn’t up yet, and it’s almost nine o’clock. I’m ready to leave without him."

Rocio struggled to open her eyes. "You want me to wake him up?"

"That’s up to you. I’m leaving at nine-fifteen, regardless," I said.

I came back downstairs and opened a beer, thinking about two hours that I could’ve been sleeping. Rocio came down in her robe.

"He’s showering now," she said.

"Nine fifteen, I’m leaving, regardless."

The plan was that I would come back with Julio and the fish and shrimp at around twelve thirty, and then Rocio would take them to Playas so they could see the Pacific Ocean this far north, and they would visit Elizabeth and her husband. I read my email while I waited, my father’s pneumonia seemed to be getting better but the drugs were making him hallucinate at times. There would be more time in the hospital. If I inherited two things from my father it was some sort of ability to cook and an extreme dislike of hospitals.

When Julio and me left and found a route cab, he was quiet. I pointed out all kinds of landmarks and changes in all of my years in Tijuana. Where Rocio worked when we met, roads and bridges that didn’t exist, anything and everything that occurred to me. It was a change in Julio that I never predicted.

We got a coffee in Centro a quarter before ten and walked around, I pointed out different places and went on about how there was virtually no tourism anymore, in a town that was built on it. Most of the closed shops wouldn’t open. We walked over to the Perico and waited. It was ten o’clock, and as another older gringo had approached, waiting with us, I peered in through the locked screen door.

"Todavia no está la cantinera," came the voice, sweeping up last night’s festivities.

The older gringo asked me what she said and I told her that apparently, the bartender hadn’t shown up for work yet. We both laughed at the idea that it would require some otherwise unknown skill to pour a draught beer. I tried to include Julio in the conversation by translating, but he was quiet. The cantinera then showed up and we all went inside with a couple of louder types and drank a beer.

After the Perico, where Julio probably didn’t say any more than five words, I took him down to the Dandy del Sur where it is usually more quiet. But apparently the Dandy had remained open all night and about a dozen remained from the night before. This didn’t faze Julio. We watched some American football and drank two beers and a scotch each. I couldn’t believe how quiet he was.

At noon, I paid the tab and we went down to the fresh fish market and I bought four kilos of angelfish and a kilo each of jumbo and large shrimp. We took the route along Boulevard Diaz Órdaz and again I pointed out landmarks, the missing bullring, the bridge over cinco y diez, and so on. By the time we came home, Rocio and Alma were finishing up with the dishes. Julio went upstairs to change clothing and Alma followed him, and Rocio then asked me how it went.

"You wouldn’t believe it," I said. "Julio was so quiet, I don’t even think he uttered a dozen words. He was like a completely different person."

* * * *

The great thing about Baja fish tacos is that nine pounds of fish will serve a lot of people. The cream sauce should be made first, with a two-to-one ration of mayonnaise to sour cream, a splash of white vinegar, and stir well. Add milk in order to thin it to the point where it drips off of the spoon and refrigerate it. Your favorite red sauce can either be purchased or made by cooking dry chiles de arbol and California, combined with some cooked red jalapeños, a little salt and some garlic.

Batter is simple. Three cups of flour and two tablespoons of baking powder are combined with a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of crushed oregano, and a teaspoon each of black pepper and cayenne pepper. Add a good hard squirt of mustard and a beer and beat it into a batter adding two more cans of beer until smooth and drippy. The fish should be cut into pieces about one and a half inches by four inches and battered and deep-fried until golden brown.

Complimented by finely sliced cabbage and chopped cilantro and perhaps some avocado slices, the cream sauce and the red sauce go on last. By the time they came back from Playas, everything was prepped, including the jumbo shrimp which I would cook in a style called mojo de ajo, which is simply in olive oil and unsalted butter with garlic. I was warned that Julio and his family did not particularly like fish (but they enjoyed shrimp, go figure), but I assured them that there was nothing fishy about fish tacos done this way. Twenty-four people showed up that evening, including Juan and his girlfriend and several of their friends.

By the time everything was over, I was exhausted. The shrimp was gone quickly, and even though there was a lot of fish left over, we went through almost two kilos, four and a half pounds of tortillas. A huge bowl of cream sauce was devoured, along with almost two heads of cabbage and a dozen avocados. Apparently, not liking fish doesn’t apply to Baja fish tacos. I stepped outside to have a beer or two with the men, and then I went to bed and slept better than I’ve slept in years.

When I awoke in the morning I nudged Rocio awake.

"Time for you to take care of them. Have Juan take everyone out to get tacos de birria."

They went while I drank coffee and got further news about my father. The pneumonia was better, the heartbeat still baffled the hospital staff. The drugs still affected his sense of reality sometimes, he was in and out of it. My father does not do well in hospitals.

When they returned, they took off again for one last excursion with Rocio, to go shopping. The flight left at five o’clock, which meant they had to be there at four, and had to leave at three. Everyone gathered right before three on Monday afternoon. There were hugs for those of us staying behind, and most loaded into two cars and took off to the airport. I had survived it nicely, but waited for Rocio to get home to find out what had happened.

* * * *

Apparently, Julio had tried to convince Rocio that the aunt that had raised him was right about everything. Rocio pointed out to Julio that he was only four years old at the time that everything had happened. They argued. Rocio finally told him that she wasn’t about to forgive and forget. She told Julio that they were brother and sister, no matter what, but that the side of the family that raised him was his alone. Apparently, they found some common ground in that they agreed to disagree and keep that one branch of the family tree intact, regardless.

Also apparently, when Julio was a very young man, his mother – Rocio’s mother – had made a trip to Mexico City and asked to see him. He was rude, finally meeting with her and then excusing himself, saying that he didn’t have time. This is his own mother, I can’t imagine. When he had gone up the hill on Saturday, he took his mother aside and apologized. He made it right with her.

Last night, everyone was finally gone, and I turned to Rocio and asked her about all of it. She told me all about what happened.

"Did you bury it, did you finally bury Rio Balsas?"

She thought for a few moments. "I am learning. Little by little," she said.

Rocio took off her glasses and looked at me. She didn’t know what else to say.

"Good night, baby," I told her.

"Good night," she said. "I know it’s over. I’ll get through it."

This is what happens. This is what time does – it moves things along. Like a river, like what happened at Rio Balsas. These things are always moving along.

Ghost Story

It’s becoming funny sometimes, as if I really live in Los Angeles or New York or some other city in the United States of America, that people – internet friends that often forget where I live - will invariably ask me what I’m doing for Halloween. Here in Mexico, Halloween is not a relevant holiday. Obviously, what with being so close to the border, there are some children who get taken out in costume and go door to door and beg for candy, but not many. And they are, these children, mostly very young, toddlers sometimes, and their parents often take them to some of the local businesses more than knocking on the doors of neighbors. But here, all of it is the exception rather than the rule.

Yesterday I heard some whacko radio talk show host going on and on about how some Tijuana children are brought over to the United States of America by their parents on Halloween night to do some trick-or-treating, and how awful that is. “They know that here in the U.S. we give out candy bars and good stuff, and down there they only get little things,” he said at one point. I laughed. I wanted to call him up and offer that, perhaps, Mexican families also go up there during Thanksgiving because the turkeys up there are much larger and taste better than the small and scrawny ones from Mexico.

Of course, there is no Thanksgiving holiday in Mexico, and Mexico does not have a Halloween.

Halloween has its roots, obviously, in pagan festivals, perhaps dating to Roman times and certainly celebrated by the ancient Celtics. It is widely considered to have its meaning tied to some sort of an end-of-summer celebration, in that the time of the year where lightness turns to darkness, those on the other side of life have an opportunity to pass through onto the living plane of existence. People were able to welcome their past relatives during that time, while bad spirits were warded off by the wearing of masks. In a nutshell, that and bonfires and cattle slaughtered for winter storage and other activities made up the festival now celebrated as Halloween.

Sometime in the ninth century, the Catholic Church attempted to hijack it, moving All Saints’ Day from May 13th to November 1st, but it didn’t catch on enough to change much of anything. It changed of its own accord. Bonfires became a nuisance, someone invented refrigeration, and when Houdini died on Halloween in 1926 and never managed to come back as promised, everyone pretty much gave up on the notion that our dead relatives could possibly manage a visit. At least, that’s the way it has changed in Europe and in the United States of America and so on.

* * * *

In Mexico, beginning the evening at midnight, Día de los Inocentes or Day of the Innocents begins, followed by Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead on Monday. These celebrations and festivals date back to perhaps 3,000 years ago, observed by the Aztecs and other indigenous civilizations in Mexico. During the Aztec reign, it was celebrated for an entire month! In modern times, these two days are celebrated somewhat differently, depending on region here, but the core elements include candles, breads, fruits, candies, flowers, and skulls. Many people visit the gravesites of their ancestors and leave flowers and decorate the sites in various ways.

Get this: The Aztecs believed that, during the month of August, it’s less complicated for the souls of their ancestors to visit them in life! Where have we heard that before? Oh, and wait, it gets better: Why use masks for the celebration when you can use skulls?! Skulls were often symbolized in Aztec lore to represent birth and rebirth. Having a few skulls around the house was not at all uncommon back then. Fascinating stuff.

Day of the Innocents generally celebrates the spirits of dead children, which has obvious significance for those who have lost a child or a sibling. Day of the Dead is all about those who passed in adulthood. The rituals are the same. My first Day of the Dead was confusing to me, I had never heard of it. While looking oddly at a shrine constructed on Rocio’s mother’s kitchen table, Rocio patiently explained it to me. I ignorantly considered it nice of the Mexicans to borrow from my traditional culture and put their own spin on it. I was like the guy on the radio yesterday who offered the point about Mexicans from the border cities taking their kids across because the candy is better over there.

* * * *

Earlier today, I read an article from a Christian web site that claimed Halloween to be the Devil’s holiday. The author recommended that Christians shouldn’t celebrate it. I felt pretty bad about that at first, but when I thought about it later, I then saw it as some sort of a testament to the fact that some people are truly frightened by that which they do not understand. I reckon that some people are quite horrified at the very idea of speaking with the soul of an ancestor. Not me. For example, I would love to speak with my grandmother again some day.

Sometimes people ask me if I believe in a God and maybe a Jesus, or an afterlife, or whatever. Many of my friends are devout atheists, while others are devout Christians or Mormons or Muslims or Jews. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with any of it, actually. But they ask me, nevertheless, because they want me to align myself perhaps, or maybe they are just curious. My answer is this: I have absolutely no idea. Sometimes, they might express displeasure at that answer. The atheists think it ridiculous to even consider the notion of a creator, and the others seem to pity me for not having any faith.

And then my response to them is even more inflammatory: Not only do I not know, neither do you.

The amazing thing, though, the thing that transcends atheism or religion, is obvious to me. It should be quite obvious to the radio talk show host and to the author of the article advising Christians against Halloween. The very notion that two completely different civilizations happened upon the very same idea and celebrated with almost the same ceremonies is enough to convince me that something is going on. I mean, that’s the real ghost story, isn’t it? You’re telling me that three thousand years ago, the Celts and the Aztecs simultaneously arrived at the same basic ceremony never having heard of one other?

Scary stuff, indeed.

Ballad Of Rio Balsas

This is the time of the year where Baja shadows begin to crawl noticeably northward, and there are some days that people wear jackets. The dogs in the street aren’t panting anymore, and the ice cream vendors aren’t doing so well as they were a week ago. Yesterday was Columbus Day, and my mother’s birthday. Sunday was my wife’s birthday. We had a large party with pozole and chocolate cake.

Pozole is a soup-like dish made differently in all parts of Mexico. The main ingredient is hominy, or nixtamalized corn kernels. Other ingredients include some sort of meat like pork or chicken, and chiles and onions and other spices. The ancient Mexicans believed that the Gods created humans using cornmeal dough. I have read far more preposterous religious postulates over the years than the simple idea that perhaps our creator made us out of masa. Why not corn flour and water?

Rocio is twenty-nine. She has been twenty-nine for several years now, and I expect her to remain twenty-nine for many more years to come. My mother did not raise a fool. All women are twenty-nine until they tell you they aren’t. If you don’t believe this, then you are on your own where women are concerned, and don’t complain when it doesn’t go well. You did it to yourself.

* * * *

Rio Balsas, a small puebla in the Mexican State of Guerrero near Coyuca de Catalán, and about five miles from the border with Michoacán State, is still there, but approximately half of what once was is now under water. Rocio grew up in that place, with her grandmother, on a small ranchito with no electricity. They had a well, and some chickens, and some goats. There were uncles and aunts and cousins living nearby, and cornfields they all harvested year-round that were reachable by horseback or on foot using a mule to pack the corn. So far as the water from that well, Rocio swears it is the best water she ever tasted.

Rocio was born in Mexico City and quickly taken to Rio Balsas to live with her grandmother. The taker was an aunt, who wound up taking almost all of Rocio’s mother’s children and placing them with various relatives. The aunt then encouraged Rocio’s mother to seek out her fortune in the United States of America. This is how life used to be back then. A lot of good Mexicans were encouraged by their families to go north and make money harvesting crops or cleaning houses or cooking.

Meanwhile Rocio, who never knew her real father, grew up and went to school and came home and tended the ranchito in Rio Balsas with her grandmother. She was never permitted to go to the river, which was a mere hundred yards away. Her grandmother never let her accompany other relatives to go and bring back the corn. There were two times as a young child she was permitted to join relatives for trips to another town in order to attend a carnival that came every year. She never made it either time.

Listen to this: Scorpions prevented Rocio from going on the trip to the carnival both times! What are the odds of that happening? The first time, Rocio’s grandmother told her the night before that she could go if she rose early and did her chores. While reaching into the feed bag to feed the chickens, a scorpion stung her hand. She recovered. The next year, with the same deal in place, Rocio awoke and got out of bed and promptly stepped on another scorpion! I’ve never known anyone who was ever stung by a scorpion once, much less twice.

"There had to be a reason that it happened," Rocio once told me. "There are no accidents. There was a reason that I wasn’t supposed to go to that carnival. I think that my real father would have been there, and that would have brought trouble."

* * * *

The inland of Guerrero State is a lush, green, beautiful region of Mexico where crops can be grown year-round, rivers are abundant, and there is a rainy season. Baja is not so lush, not so green, and not wet by anyone’s standards. Mexico City is another thing entirely, a flat swampland built a mile high, it is practically a country unto itself. Rocio has a brother she has never met, a light-skinned chilango, raised in much more affluent circumstances than was Rocio. Rocio has blamed her aunt, for all of these years, in all such matters while I have pointed out to her on several occasions that her mother is probably more culpable. Rocio does not really listen, and I don’t blame her for ignoring me. I didn’t grow up in Rio Balsas, after all.

This brother of Rocio has recently contacted her, and now they are communicating by email and by telephone. He is coming up here next month. Mexicans never travel alone, so he is bringing three with him. We have one extra room and a sofa bed in the living room. I will make it a point to cook some gringo food for them while they are here. Perhaps Rocio’s mother will whip up another pot of pozole. Pozole is another good Mexican soul food, even in Mexico City, even in Tijuana, and even in Rio Balsas.

I’m not sure what will come of this meeting up; it can’t be a reunion since they’ve never met. Rocio’s pent-up anger directed at her aunt will have to stay in check since her brother holds his aunt in high esteem. I hope they find some common ground. I hope that both of them have great childhood memories to share. Most of all, I hope that this experience for Rocio is a way to release all of that anger. That anger was best left in Rio Balsas.

* * * *

It wasn’t until Rocio was twelve years of age, back in Rio Balsas, that her grandmother – staying at Rocio’s uncle’s house and in very poor medical condition – finally permitted Rocio to accompany her cousins to the cornfields to bring back the corn. Rocio set out, on foot with them, a donkey in tow. It was quite a walk simply to arrive in and pass through town to get to the fields, and as they passed the church, the bells rang. Rocio stopped.

“When the church bells rang, there were different meanings, and we all knew what they were. When the bells ring for morning mass, they ring a certain way. When the bells ring for a Catholic festival, they ring another way. For a wedding, there was a distinct way that the bells sounded. And when I heard the church bells passing through town, I knew that my grandmother had passed. I walked back to my uncle’s house in tears,” she said.

After the funeral, she stayed with her aunt, and apparently was not well treated. To this day, Rocio’s inability to eat onions comes from having them forced on her when she stayed with that aunt. When word finally reached Rocio’s mother, Rocio was eventually brought to Tijuana. Rocio’s mother had never crossed into the United States, and to this day has never stepped foot outside of Mexico. She met a man who, like herself, was sent north in order to cross over but instead found a way to make a living in Baja.

Rocio grew up in Tijuana from age thirteen, avoiding its pitfalls and gimmicks, with a different notion of another part of Mexico. I talked to her about Rio Balsas on her birthday. I talked to her about her grandmother, the scorpions, her aunt, and the brother she had never met. I asked her if she misses her life in Guerrero.

"Rio Balsas is my past," she said. "I’ll never forget it. But once I arrived in Tijuana, I knew that this was my future. Everything that has happened, has happened for a reason."

I reckon that in a few weeks, we’ll see if that brother of hers - the brother she’s never met - has taken that same philosophy from Mexico City that Rocio took from Rio Balsas. It wouldn’t be as rare as someone twice-stung by scorpions, but it would make for one hell of a ballad.

Chickenhead

The room, devoid of anything except for a laptop computer, a very nice throw rug, and some paintings of still life in mild and soothing pastels, was otherwise ordinary in every way. My assistant, a Chinese gentleman who struggled slightly with a chicken, was otherwise much more enlightened than I was - that much was obvious. There was tea, and the chicken did not disturb our small cups, the chicken had other issues.

“You must do this,” my assistant told me. “This is the only way that what you write will be complete and your intentions understood.”

At first, he had attempted to convince the chicken to simply sit right on top of my head, but the chicken’s sense of balance and my tendency toward leaning in to view the monitor on the computer produced unsuccessful results. My nameless assistant then crafted a large hat, one that Dr. Seuss would have been proud of. He gently stuffed the chicken into a black sack with a drawstring, and then stuffed the sacked chicken into the hat and placed it upon my head.

“Now, write,” he urged.

And I did.

The hat, top-heavy and oddly centered was surprisingly comfortable, and the chicken seemed to be equally as interested in staying on my head as I was in completing whatever I was writing. My assistant sat at the ready, poised to catch and hold the chicken-in-the-hat, should it have fallen off due to my jerking around and looking in unexpectedly to squint at the monitor. I typed away. It worked. I have no idea what I wrote, but apparently it was well received.

* * * *

When I awoke, after getting through a short period of an understandably panicked inability to comprehend any of what that dream was all about, I came downstairs. Coffee, email, and the awareness that while Juan’s car was parked outside it balanced perfectly with the fact that, other than myself, the house was empty. Juan had taken the day off and rented a moving van, one day after his birthday. Anna was in school. I contemplated going over the border, but decided against it, I try and limit my travels in order to promote a greener earth and more importantly, in order to enjoy and bask in my own laziness.

It also occurred to me that I could, at any time, walk a block down the street and purchase a chicken.

I’m going to guess that many countries, or at least many parts of many countries sell live chickens. Baja sells live chickens. And, perhaps if I were a tad more ambitious, I could wander here until I found a Chinese man, willing to assist me, someone wise and capable and with some universal understanding of live chickens that I lack. Maybe he would have access to a black sack with a drawstring and could easily fashion a ridiculous looking hat. Perhaps this is the key to everything.

Juan came home, Anna behind him, and they packed another load and all went off to check out the new digs. I have been nudged to go at some point, and I will, but for now I am left to ponder this house with only the three of us. It is suddenly too big. We are now overpaying, relatively speaking, for space we no longer need. Yet, I’m not ready to move again.

We don’t need the extra room, nor the second telephone line, nor many other things. I am the one that stops the progress of Anna and Rocio, who try as hard as they can to dumb things down for me. Hell, I didn’t even cook dinner, what with all of the leftovers in the fridge. What else would one expect from a man that dreams of having chickens on top of his head?

* * * *

Rocio came home, and after a brief conversation I took off to the store. “Why did he have to take all of his stuff?” she asked me. It echoed with every step I took. The moon, currently sawed in half, followed me mindlessly overhead. It gets dark earlier now. I passed a guy with a guitar talking to a guy without one. They both moved kindly to one side so I could pass.

“Buenos noches.”

“Buenos noches.”

We are polite to each other here.

I returned, a twelve-pack richer, along with some hamburger buns, two packages of cigarettes, and a fifth of tequila. Twenty-four dollars and change. Juan and Anna have returned. For now. I know that Anna will leave this place at some point. It scares me.

Soon, Rocio and me will be alone. With each other. It will mark a timely event, one in which we have finished our obligations, in that the rug rats have graduated life and hopefully many of its lessons. It won’t prove anything at all. I will mark it, observe it with whatever dignity I have left. But, I promise to keep some sort of humility when that day comes.

“Good bye, dad,” Anna will say.

“It’s okay, darling,” I will tell her. “And from now on, you can just call me chickenhead.”

Independence Day

Last Tuesday was to be an excursion with a purpose, although I immediately began to question my own good judgement before I arrived at my first stop, and I considered the years and years of avoidance that conceived this particular expedition. Last Monday was all business at first, to cross the border and bank and complete postal errands and so on, followed up by unsuccessful attempts at locating friends in and around Centro de Tijuana, and it was generally not rewarding. At every cantina I sipped at a beer only to have the cantinera remark, in Spanish of course, that this person or that were in the other day inquiring about me. None showed up on Monday. This is what happens.

When I came home Monday evening, I found an email from Daniel that he would join my pilgrimage the next day and that we should meet up in that sacred temple called Dandy del Sur, and then came Tuesday. I rode in the back of the route cab, a van devoid of proper shock absorbers, so that anytime we traveled the least bit rapidly I found myself putting the book I was reading in my lap and continuing the book at stoplights. Meanwhile, no matter how rough the terrain, the woman next to me successfully applied make-up to her face as though she were standing in her own restroom. Some people are more talented at travel than others.

By the time I exited the cab and began my walk to the Dandy, I was cranky for no apparent reason. The sun, very warm but not hot, cast slight shadows on Calle Madero, and the breeze seemed to fan an almost electric buzz that could be felt as one wandered down the busy street. Once inside of the cantina, I found my favorite barstool and Alex, the only English speaking cantinera I currently know in Tijuana, served me an amber.

“Jody was here yesterday, he asked about you.”

“So I’m told. He’s never around when I’m here,” I said.

“And last week, what’s his name, the other one…”

“Scott,” I offered.

“Yeah, Scott. He was here asking about you,” she said.

“Figures.” I wasn’t looking for Scott because he owed me some cash; it was general curiosity. Not that I couldn’t use the money, it was that that he could use it more - and mostly that I worried about him. I didn’t want to email him, make him uncomfortable, and I figured he wouldn’t get a paycheck until October. But now I knew he was in good shape, good enough to still be around. With Jody it was always hit and miss, he could be anywhere on any given day. My proclivities, conversely, are aimed toward remaining in one place for a while.

I remained in the Dandy del Sur and drank for a while.

* * * *

When one of your children leaves the nest, the impact is felt differently by each member of the remaining family. The middle girl, Sharon, decided one day that living with her boyfriend was in her best interest. Sharon is twenty-one years old, so obviously, it’s her call. She didn’t announce it. She was very afraid of what her grandparents would think about such a scandalous maneuver.

“Dad, I’m going to see Jose,” Sharon said a few weeks ago, and it was normal for her to yell this to me through my office door in the afternoon. It was only after Anna came home from school and went upstairs to change that I was informed Sharon had packed half of her belongings and taken them with her. Anna’s reaction was mixed. Of course, this meant that Anna would be getting her own room again, not having to share, but she seemed to be inwardly concerned about what scandal the sudden move of her sister might bring. After all, her sister had just moved out and then in with the boyfriend.

By the time Rocio arrived home from work, picked up and delivered here by Juan, she already knew. I was curious about their reactions. Juan, predictably, had very little to say about it. Home from getting shot at and bombed and watching people with which he served die or get injured in a country he had never before dreamt of stepping foot in, his response was vacant, without concern or contempt.

“Yeah, yeah,” was all he had to say.

Rocio yawned. “She’d better behave better there than over here or he’ll throw her out on her ass.”

I continued to prepare dinner. I knew that Rocio’s parents were coming down the hill, but I mostly never have any notion of precisely how many are coming for dinner. This is the occupational hazard, so to speak, of cooking in Mexico. People show up. Répondez s'il vous plaît? It never happens. I came out and confronted the four already present and accounted for, Juan, Juan’s very silent girlfriend Bibi, Anna, and Rocio.

“How many are coming tonight?”

All looked at each other until Juan started counting.

“Twelve,” he told me.

I arched an eyebrow at him.

“The five of us, my grandparents, and three of my friends,” he said.

“That’s ten,” I reminded him.

Rocio chimed in, “Sharon and her boyfriend are coming over. She called Juan and wanted to talk to me at ten o’clock.”

“You’ll be asleep by then,” I reminded her. “Besides, she doesn’t dictate when she talks to you now, you dictate it.”

“I had Juan tell her,” Rocio said. “She’ll be here between eight and nine.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out forty dollars and handed it to Juan. “Tomorrow, I want you to run to the hardware store and buy a new set of front locks,” I said. Everyone looked at me, as though I needed to explain.

“If you live here, you live by my rules. That’s your passport and your visa. If you decide to declare independence and leave, then I revoke your visa. Your new visa is the telephone, you call and ask to come over like anyone else.”

There was silence and no reaction, nothing but a slight edginess hung almost ornamentally, anticipating some closure.

“Hey, look. This house is my country, my country and my rules,” I concluded. I went back into the kitchen and continued cooking.

* * * *

In 1810, Mexico was still referred to as New Spain, even though the French had, by then, managed to occupy Spain and subsequently decided that by default it should also govern what is now Mexico and what was then a Spanish possession - albeit sacked of its gold and silver. Napoleon, that short genius-bastard of military maneuvers, unrequited love, and unwise political leanings, installed his brother Joseph as the new king of Spain, deposing Spain’s Ferdinand VII. While Napoleon was busy deposing and installing in Europe, a priest named Miguel Hidalgo and a few close friends were conspiring to bring Ferdinand over to New Spain and install him as emperor. The idea was to have him cut ties with Spain and implement a system that did not exploit the indigenous people of Mexico. They targeted December as a good time to execute the plan.

Unfortunately, they were ratted out, and most considered going underground to avoid being captured and tried for treason. Hidalgo had other ideas. After having six or seven dozen inmates sprung from the local jail, on the morning of September the sixteenth he rang the church bells and the people gathered in the small town of Dolores in Guanajuato. This is part of what he told them: “Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!”

The gachupines were the Spaniards, born in Spain, who arrived in New Spain and claimed land away from the indigenous. Within a couple of years, they caught and tried Hidalgo for treason and executed him and his friends. Others took over the cause, also tried and executed, until almost eleven years after the initial grito de Delores, Mexico had finally won its independence. It took another hundred years to arrive at a revolution, and finally, to the point that Mexico enjoys currently. The gritos have evolved over the years to include paying respects to not only Hidalgo, but to Zapata and Villa and Carranza and Juarez and Madero and so on.

Sometimes, I reckon, independence isn’t achieved as planned, but rather happens as a consequence of launching a tirade that culminates in getting the job done in spite of auspicious beginnings. None of the celebrations proceeding such events tend to dwell on the facts; they tend to accentuate the results. Independence is independence, in any case. Our circumstance exceeds its history. Stellar!

Mexico wanted to install a Spanish King, but instead settled for democracy!

* * * *

So, Sharon did stop by that night, after dinner but before Rocio went to bed. I was called out of the kitchen and I talked to Sharon, wisdom or advice that went unheard. I told her that she should marry rather than simply move in with Jose. I told her that such a contract was emotional insurance more than anything. She didn’t want to hear it. I left her and Rocio to battle it out.

Sharon left abruptly, I was outside with Juan and his friends drinking a beer and enjoying the evening breeze. I went back inside to find Rocio packing it in for the night.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She blames me,” Rocio laughed. “Apparently, she’s leaving because of me.”

“It’s an excuse,” I said. “She didn’t have the balls to simply leave, it has to be someone’s fault. She’s twenty-one now, she’s responsible for her own actions. Even when she thinks that she isn’t.”

“I know. I’m going to bed,” Rocio said.

And so, this was Independence Day for Sharon. She has been back one time since, sitting aloof in the stairway, observing what she was once a part of. When she left that evening, Rocio smiled at me. Sharon was certainly the problem child. The problem now lives somewhere else.

“I can leave my purse downstairs now,” Rocio said.

“And I don’t have to cram my money in my robe when I get up,” I added.

We would have danced in the living room, except that there was a somber note over the heads of the rest of the family. Sharon had stolen hundreds of dollars from my pants pockets, even some from Juan when he was on leave here. Anna has certainly had her issues with her sister. But we were required to keep our heads hung low, at least for a while. And so we have.

We behave as expected, after all.

* * * *

Daniel never showed that night, the fifteenth of September, so I left the Dandy and wandered down Sixth street and ate very bad Chinese food. This was, I reckoned, my way of bearing a cross, in that stale egg rolls and sub-par chow mein (without a hint of fried noodles) is my way of flogging myself. After that, I wandered back down the street and fired up my camera. I caught a taxi. “Por el Palacio,” I told the driver.

He looked back at me. “¿Sabes cuanto gente va estár allá?”

Yes, I know how many people are there. Thousands. Just take me and drop me as close as you can. I can walk. I like to walk. We’ll get through this. Fifty pesos.

And he dropped me smack in the middle of everything, it was easy. I wandered, camera ready, a sack of beer in tow, watched closely by law enforcement, but never approached. The six pack was for later, at home, but they could have kicked me out for carrying it in there. No one approached me. Music blared through giant speakers.

I tried to get a perch up on the bridge, but they kept kicking us off of it. I stumbled around in the designated area, waiting for something to happen. I wandered out onto the grass, watching a young mother play with her kid. The bridge was filling up again, so I went back up there, and they stopped trying to remove us. The place below filled up quickly. It was packed.

I thought about Sharon, watching the gritos from such a distance that I couldn’t hear them. People around me made up their own gritos, and other people joined in. That is how independence is, then. You make it up as you go. Nothing ever goes as planned, after all. You improvise.

I got home and Rocio actually awoke and came downstairs.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“I didn’t enjoy it, too many people,” I said.

She nodded. “That’s why I don’t go anymore. It’s different when it’s small, but it gets out of hand in a place like this.”

She went back to bed and Juan came home and told me that he was moving out.

“With some friends. We found a nice place in Aguas Calientes, seven hundred per month. I pay two hundred, but I have a big room.”

So now, Juan is declaring independence, too.

“You’re going to break your mother’s heart, you know,” I told him.

“Dad, I’ll be over here every Sunday for dinner,” he said.

Rocio asked me this evening if we should rent a smaller place now.

“Not yet,” I said. “These kids could be right back here in a few weeks. I don’t think that independence becomes permanent for a good while. It took eleven years in Mexico. It might take longer for these kids.”

After a while, I wandered up to bed and smiled as Rocio started snoring. Independence is a funny thing. As a kid, you crave it, as a teenager and a young adult, you practice it, and then once you hit thirty or so, you realize that it’s either overrated or misrepresented. Maybe that’s why Hidalgo’s original plan involved Ferdinand VII. Maybe that’s why I have a funny feeling that my kids will be back home again sometime soon.

Maybe independence is more a state of mind than a state of being.

Hurricane El

When the heat finally stays, with no air at all but just a hot nothing that resembles breath as though millions of blown-up balloons have been undone all at once and you are seemingly forced to inhale the staleness of it, you often reach the conclusion that Baja is broken. It happens in August or September, every year, when the breeze refuses to break the heat, and it can last a week. You wonder if maybe there is a meteorological wrench of some type in a weatherman’s toolbox, that somehow someone forgot to tighten a bolt here or there. You stand at the door and stare out at Baja and the sense of helplessness sinks in.

The sky, once blue or maybe cloudy, is a gray and brown on cyan as watercolors poorly mixed and muddied. A man pushes an ice cream cart, bell ringing with every bump, and he is quick and the cart is light or maybe even dry. Dogs don’t bark and children don’t play, people aren’t walking and even cars are only occasional. No one can change it. We wait and we pace and wonder about it. We wonder why it is so hot we can’t even sweat.

Then the sun finally sets, but the heat stays inside of these cinderblock walls. People begin to wander outside. The dogs awaken and frolic, but it is still hot. The relief is perceived, not real. Tomorrow will be the same, and so will the day after that. At least the Santa Ana winds bring movement, but this still and dry purgatory – however temporary – brings more of the same. And then things happen, unexplained, as though the good weather had to settle down for anything else extraordinary.

* * * *

It comes from nowhere - from a history I barely remember and passed through a time in my life that took far too long to finally forget, my past and the journey from there to here, like the cosmos, is filled with black holes and supernovas and everything in-between. I killed many brain cells along the way, spent many drunken nights erasing my first marriage from memory and other memories took some friendly fire from those battles with the demons inside. I have been at peace for quite some time now. I have tried not to look too far back because it is a lot like looking into the sun.

"You need to get a facebook," El wrote.

I don’t know how El found me. I woke up the other morning and checked my email and there she was. In High School she was a saucy little tease with a big chest and deep brown eyes. She was fun. I remember her at my house one afternoon, I think it was my birthday. We were going to have a party, perhaps. I was seventeen. My father threw a bible at her. It missed. The details aren’t there, apparently hit by flak several years ago. I think it had something to do with her inability to make onion dip, but I can’t be sure.

"El," I wrote back, "I won’t be getting a facebook any time soon. It’s nice that you found me, but there are others that I would just as soon not hear from. Yes, you may pass along my email address to Doug and Jeff, but no one else. Not Freddy, I would rather not discuss why I prefer no contact with him. Thank you in advance for respecting my privacy."

She wrote back again, something about people caring about me. I laughed. After thirty years or so, I question it. I think that people are curious about me. I would be curious about someone like me. I generally wish people well, but after thirty years it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around caring. It would lead me to wonder that where, twenty or twenty-five years ago, someone was at if they cared. And, that simply isn’t fair to anyone.

* * * *

There are dominoes being slapped around on the kitchen table at the moment, apparently the Wii isn’t so interesting anymore. Guitar Hero can only be so entertaining. Besides, Anna ruined it for me when she invented the perfect band name: Facebook Jesus. I resigned. I’ll never do better than that.

Guitar Hero is a game where you use plastic instruments wired (or, rather, wirelessly wired) to the game console and you play along with the songs. Juan had to have it, he bought it within a week of being here. Anna took to the drums and Juan likes the guitar while I played the bass. Facebook Jesus cleared the board. Now the drum set and the plastic guitars and microphone (oh, yes, there’s even a microphone) clutter the living room and gather dust.

Now they are playing dominoes which costs hundreds of dollars less (we’re talking peanuts versus caviar) and, apparently, has the same appeal. I spend my spare change on books and computer equipment and alcohol and cigarettes. I reckon there are dangers in all such expenditures. I haven’t played dominoes in a long time. I played with my grandmother when she was alive. I would give anything to spend the afternoon playing dominoes with my grandmother again.

* * * *

El sent me her facebook link and gave me her password and invited me to log in so I could see everyone. She’s such a trusting soul. Lucky for El, I’m trustworthy. I logged in to her account. Apparently my high school friends have all found Jesus. I mentioned this to Anna and she laughed. And, obviously, became instantly inspired. I exchanged emails with Doug, who is apparently awaiting a liver transplant. He found his faith again. That, and Alcoholics Anonymous. Good for him. I hope he finds a liver soon.

And Jeff. Jeff was the last person I would have guessed would have found religion to be something he needed or wanted. But he did. And he has it, some sort of faith. So do I. I believe in good scotch. So far as God goes, I have no idea what She’s up to, but I wish Her good luck. I’m certain She’ll let me know if She needs my help.

Apparently, even Freddy found Jesus. Freddy broke one of only a handful of rules that you don’t break in a friendship. But it was a doozy. I won’t mention it. I wish him the best of luck in spite of the fact I really don’t want to communicate with him. As I say, I’ve spent years beating my own memories out of my head, I don’t want some of them anymore.

And now, Todd. Todd and me went to school together, played on the same Little League team together, and then I get an email from him. He married his high school sweetheart, and they are still married. He took over his father’s business, making machines that package things. It’s funny to think that I could work at his factory. I bet he makes machines that apply closures to bottles, among other types of machines. I never mentioned that I would possibly know that. I only brought up that I have a bracelet that was his as a child and that I can’t even remember how I wound up with it.

An aside: Such a small wrist!

I’ll mail it to him, next time I go over to the United States of America. My last memory of Todd was his attempt to cram a 351 Cleveland engine into a Ford Maverick in high school. It didn’t fit. He made it fit. Sometimes we make things fit.

* * * *

There is a hurricane in the Pacific making its way slowly up toward Baja, and I am willing it to arrive faster. They have named the hurricane Jimena, because all storms must be named and personalized, because history demands some sort of a personal attachment to such events. I think of Jimena in two respects; both as what could be relief (deadly, perhaps, but relief none-the-less) and remembrance (storms blow in as does our past, over and over again). Jimena defines my life, right here and right now, and this heat stops her influence at the moment.

The dominoes have stopped, the sound of ivory-like tiles are no longer slapped onto the kitchen table. Everyone has gone for some midnight tacos. I want a hurricane, and I want it now. This can never be said enough: Sometimes we make things fit. This is what happens.

Destiny's Rainbow

Mexicans are nomadic, regardless of what some books on the subject might point out, and they travel often and mostly whimsically as if there were spirits or muses that guided them to go somewhere else. A few weeks ago Rocio’s mother decided that she needed or wanted to go to Guerrero, a State in southern Mexico. A week ago she left on a bus, on a three-day trip to whatever pot of gold lies at the end of destiny’s rainbow. What she took with her: A small suitcase, a thousand pesos, and a return ticket. Apparently, she travels light.

There is no itinerary regarding her return, it is estimated to be a month but I reckon that she’ll return when she gets tired of Guerrero. Two weeks ago she had no money for this journey but I was told after she left that she had saved for the excursion. I know better than that. Rocio and her other daughter Elizabeth paid for it. That bus pulled up in Iguala three days later. She called because the nearest phone to where she is staying is apparently very far away. She hasn’t called since.

We’ll be seeing more of Rocio’s father in the next few weeks. He was here the night after his wife left on her journey south, watching soccer and whatever else came on television. I cooked five pounds of fresh fish and a pound of shrimp in a garlic and butter and olive oil base, along with broccoli and cheese and a layered baked potato casserole and some fried rice. He took a lot of it home with him, it all microwaves quite well. I’m glad to be of service.

Apparently, the other end of destiny’s rainbow is right here, in my kitchen.

* * * *

Racism seems to be on everyone’s menu lately, the dish of the moment. On Sunday morning, I came out of my office and Rocio was on the telephone with some aunt, a distant and bitter memory for her, from Guerrero. Rocio has very beautiful brown skin, which is sometimes frowned upon in certain circles here. All you have to do is to look at the Mexican soap operas or even the music videos here – nearly everyone is light-skinned. It’s a surprising and frightening reality, even in Mexico.

But really, I don’t imagine that it’s any different here than in the United States of America. Many people would love to deny it, but unfortunately it’s true. My son, Juan, has very dark skin. Several years ago he was handcuffed and taken back by an officer of the Homeland Security Department of the United States of America while attempting to cross the border. He presented his military identification, which was a requirement at the time, and was forced to present his orders. I went nuts! I was with him that morning and they had to restrain me before escorting me outside to wait.

As many years ago that it occurred, I’m still not over it.

Juan came home last night. After two tours in Iraq, he brought some of the medals and ribbons home with him. They are shiny and wonderful. The least that the armed forces of the United States of America could do for my Mexican son, after serving two tours in Iraq and watching people die, is to give him some shiny and wonderful memories.

“How many medals did they award you over there?” I asked him last night.

"Honestly, dad, I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up at some point," he said.

I can tell you that he received three commendation medals, four overseas service medals, and two medals for combating terrorism. There are lots more. Whenever he wears his dress uniform, he’ll probably need five racks at least for the ribbons alone. And, he refused promotions.

"I told them to give it to someone else, someone that was staying in," he said.

And so, Juan’s grandmother has meanwhile gone to Guerrero to visit some relatives that tend to judge people based on the color of their skin. They don’t know I’m a gringo – at least they didn’t, but they certainly do now. I’m sure that Rocio’s mother told them all about me. This lady’s dark-skinned niece, who was treated unfairly when she was made to stay with her aunt after her grandmother passed away, married a gringo. Imagine that.

* * * *

Chiles rellenos are probably my favorite Mexican dish, especially when served with rice and beans. Incredibly enough, with all of the authentic Mexican food I have learned how to cook here, I’ve never tried to tackle chiles rellenos. Today is the day. Traditionally, when Juan has come home on leave he gets to call the first large meal. Rocio has been arguing with me all day about how I’m going to cook them. This is what happens.

About Rocio’s mother, Juan’s grandmother, I can only hope that Descartes was right when he said, "Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries." I am hoping that the attitudes of that portion of the extended family are as outdated as an entire century. Last night, we opened up old family albums and wondered what we were like so long ago. Maybe we thought the color of our skin or the color of anyone else’s skin mattered somehow. I believe that we have lost that archaic and irrelevant attitude, even if we never felt that way at all.

I hope it is true, because all of Juan’s medals depend on it.

In those old photographs is a damaged black and white of Rocio and me on our first date. It was a nightclub, open-air and terraced smartly with a Latin jazz band serenading us while we sipped margaritas. The breeze was so good that night, and the band laced a perfect evening, my first night in Tijuana. We barely spoke to each other. We didn’t have to. We held hands that evening, and the next time we dated, and on the third date we finally kissed.

It never occurred to me then to look up, to search for destiny’s rainbow. Maybe we don’t really see it, perhaps it only presents itself when we’ve found the end of it, whichever end. If Descartes were here right now, he would probably point out that anywhere one starts or stops isn’t nearly as important as the path taken. I will point this out similarly to Rocio tonight, assuming that the chiles rellenos turn out good, in that it isn’t how I cook them, it’s how they taste when they’re served.

Life probably has much less to do with destination than with flavor. Mine tastes pretty damned good today.

The Wizard Of Popotla

The lights in the city shine at night. Who knows how they get turned on? Switches are clicked, that’s all that matters. It has to be some sort of magic. There is a lot behind the flipping of the switches, but we ignore it. We would rather just see the lights. We want fireworks because we are selfish. We should all be selfish; otherwise there would be no fireworks. Otherwise, there would be no lights in the city.

Behind all of this, people dream. I dream. I remember one evening in Las Vegas when I tried on Liberace’s jacket. He was dead by then. He died of a disease that is largely attributed to homosexual activity. I think this is unfair. He was one hell of a piano player. So was I. The difference between us was this: His dreams came true. The similarities were this: We dreamed.

"We hear that you play the piano," he said, someone who was once a dry-cleaner to the stars. I nodded.

"Try this on."

It probably weighed fifty pounds. It was armor. I can’t imagine how Wladziu Valentino Liberace ever lifted those arms and played with such a heavy coat. I lifted my arms and pretended, and it would never have happened. I didn’t know how to flip the switch, especially with that heavy jacket. Liberace was one strong son of a bitch.

* * * *

They came home in the afternoon, sunburned, tired, the men just in time for a soccer game on television and the women and girls just in time for a nap. Having traveled in a wide circle, almost to Tecate and then around to past Rosarito, stopping off in Popotla, they were gone for quite a few hours. People are starting to slowly build there, on that mesa right over the Pacific Ocean south of Rosarito Beach. We own three lots, when put together, that form an ample amount of land on which a large house can be built, along with another smaller one or maybe a couple of apartments. Sometimes Rocio likes to visit there and I reckon she dreams that I should be building something.

"Has the electricity arrived there yet?"

"No," she says.

My reluctance is her frustration. The land has been paid off for years now, but without electricity it’s pointless to start any project. I can make do without running water because gravity is such a wonderful thing – a cistern strategically placed high up on the roof could feed everything just fine. Adding a pump would enable me to use one of those newfangled tank-less water heaters. I can build before running water is installed, but without electricity I would be lost.

What could I do without my power-tools?

The heat here, inland, many miles east of downtown Tijuana, is suffocating in parts of this dwelling. Upstairs is an oven, mostly, except for Anna’s room with the window open if there’s a breeze. Even downstairs gets hot, except for my office. The kitchen, when I cook, is unbearable for most. Anna and me are mostly immune while everyone else seems to suffer in it.

Rocio wants Popotla because it is cooler. The ocean breeze is constant. The view is amazing. And whatever I build would be hers, free and clear, irrevocably and entirely. But I need electricity, darling – please be patient. I certainly don’t blame her for being selfish. She wants lights; she wants me to light up the city.

* * * *

Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison have nothing on me. It isn’t that I want to understand very much about electricity. I don’t. I want it to be some magical power, and I want it to be controlled by wizards with wands. Something has to remain sacred, after all, now that humanity and the universe have pretty much been explained by science. At the very least, television reception and electricity should remain magical. For the love of all of humanity, please give us that.

When I do build in Popotla, I’ll wire my own house. I’ll pretend that I’m wearing Liberace’s jacket, and deal with it. All of those sequins and all of that weight, and all of that flair I’ll need to finish the task are somehow connected. It’s just wires, after all, and switches that someone else throws on or off. That and flair.

No. It’s magic. I’ll get a wand. I’ll get a title. The wizard of Popotla. And then it will happen.

Palin's Parlay

In Mexico, that while there is many more common aspects of politics shared with their northern neighbors than anything else, there are some differences. My favorite difference is the term limits set on elected officials. The President of Mexico serves a term of six years and cannot be reelected. The same goes for State Governors, they serve for six years and they’re out. Congress, including the Senate, serve for three years – they may be reelected but not to consecutive terms.

Another difference I admire about Mexican politics versus the United States of America is that anyone who holds office and wishes to run for another office, must resign the office they hold before doing so. They may appoint one of their deputies to serve in their stead, so that ostensibly the people that voted them into office will still be represented by someone who will continue to represent their interests similarly. This happened in the last election for Governor of Baja California, in that Jorge "Hank" Rhon was Mayor of Tijuana when he decided to run for Governor. Rhon had to resign his and appointed Kurt Honold to serve out the term.

Running for another office in Mexico becomes a gamble in cases where the candidate already holds an office. Maybe that’s how it should be. Maybe there should be something more to lose than an election for anyone running for a higher office. Hank Rhon, at least for a while, will have to be content to enjoy his gambling establishments and his wealth. He has since focused his efforts on building a soccer stadium in Tijuana and attempting to get enough talent on the local second-division team in order to join the premier division in Mexican soccer.

I imagine that keeps him busy enough.

* * * *

An aside about Honold: He worked for Rhon, effectively managing Rhon’s Caliente Race and Sports Books. I spoke with Mr. Honold once over the telephone. My late friend Charlie had some sort of dispute concerning a wager. Charlie was fond of betting baseball parlays – selecting several teams to win on any given day, and if all of the teams won, then there would be quite a payoff. A ten-dollar wager on six teams could bring in between three hundred and six hundred dollars. There was one catch – all of the teams wagered on had to win.

On one particular morning, Charlie went into the sports book and bet his daily parlay. That evening, in his Tijuana apartment with his radio pressed to his ear, Charlie fell asleep believing that he had won. In the morning, he went to cash his ticket only to be told that one of the teams he bet had lost. It seems that Charlie had bet the wrong half of a double-header. Charlie insisted that he had told the clerk at the time of the bet that he wanted the early game. I wasn’t there during the argument, but suffice it to say that Charlie was probably the most stubborn man I ever knew.

On weekdays after work, I would come back to Tijuana and drink away a day’s worth of stress before going home. Charlie would join me at exactly five-thirty. He told me his story about the parlay, visibly upset. I felt bad for him, what with his poor eyesight he couldn’t have noticed the difference on the small print on the ticket. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a business card, and handed it to me.

"I need you to do me a favor," he said.

"If I can."

"The guy at the sports book gave this card to me and told me to call him. My Spanish isn’t so good, and you speak it. Tell him what happened. I know what I told the guy when I bought the ticket, and he gave me the wrong game."

I had another beer with Charlie and put the card away, went home, and the next morning at work I chose a slow time to pick up the telephone and dial the number.

* * * *

I read that the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is going to resign in a couple of weeks. The insatiable pundits are pounding out weblog entries, this is their food, their bread of existence. Many seem to believe that she’ll be running for president in a few years. Others think that it’s because her popularity is dropping. She claims that it’s for the good of the State of Alaska.

She says that she is spending far too much time defending herself to effectively run the government.

Of course, if she had lived in Mexico under similar circumstances, she would have had to resign when she ran on the ticket with McCain last year. Because of this – because she spent so much more time campaigning than running the State of Alaska last year, I am inclined to believe that her reasons for resigning are, perhaps, not primary in nature. Some pundits claim that resigning with only two and a half years of her term completed is political suicide. I wouldn’t know. I will point out that the current President of the United States of America didn’t have a lot of experience either, but that he didn’t resign his office while campaigning.

I reckon it’s a crapshoot either way. I also reckon that if Palin has loftier political ambitions, then she is gambling. She is doing what Charlie used to do, trying to get a huge payoff by making an improbable wager. Whether or not it will work out is anyone’s guess.

* * * *

"Kurt Honold, por favor," I said in my best Spanish. Much to my surprise, I was put right through.

"Kurt Honold," the voice said.

"Señor Honold, me llamo Davíd, soy hablando de…"

"Excuse me, do you speak English?" he asked.

"Yes, I do."

"Feel free to continue in English if you like, although your Spanish is very good," he said. His English was haltingly immaculate, with just a hint of an accent. It was certainly better than my Spanish.

"Thank you. I live in Tijuana, so does my friend Charlie. The other day, Charlie bet a parlay…"

I told him the story as he listened very attentively.

"I see. Well, we can’t pay him because the ticket isn’t a winner. I understand that his eyesight is bad, but we can’t cash a ticket if it doesn’t win," he said.

"I understand. But he feels that he’s been wronged. He bets at least ten dollars every day in the sports book. And he’s a good man, an honest man. Church every Sunday and attends mass on all obligatory Catholic celebrations. Perhaps there’s a compromise?"

"We normally don’t do this, but I would be willing to give him his wager back with an apology from the clerk. But just this once."

"I think that would be acceptable to Charlie. And, trust me, you won’t miss the ten dollars, he knows as much about baseball as I do about jai alai. You’ll be keeping a good customer happy," I said.

We thanked each other, and that afternoon I broke the news to Charlie. He frowned a little, but he understood. It was a chance at getting his dignity back. Not that he lost it, but that the perception of having been wronged can sometimes be simply righted by a conciliatory gesture.

The next day, Charlie was happy again. He had his ten dollars back, an apology in his hip pocket, and a brand new parlay. He pulled out a letter-sized piece of paper, eight and a half inches by eleven, and showed it to me. It was his new parlay, a photocopy of it, blown up so that even Mr. Magoo could read it. From that day forward, Charlie never had another issue at the sports book.

Should Mr. Honold ever have future aspirations for public office, should he use this same wisdom and willingness to compromise, he might make a good Senator or Governor someday.

* * * *

All I know about politicians is that they are good liars. Being a good gambler is something entirely different. Say what you will about Palin, irrespective of her political ideologies, but she did manage to get herself elected as Governor of Alaska and was chosen to run on a losing ticket for the presidency. How good of a gambler she is has yet to be determined.

Me, I’d give her the wager back. Maybe she would make a good Senator.

The Fix

I confess that I do not understand politics, nor do I want to understand politics. I only know that candidates are lying liars that lie and that all of them are dirty in some way or they would never have pursued a career of lying. I subscribe to Plato’s ideal society where the leader is reluctantly chosen and serves out of duty as if it were a jail sentence, a penance to honor one’s society by becoming society’s slave. This will never happen. Human nature is not nearly as noble a thing as we wish it to be, and greed and power will continue to corrupt the human race for a long time.

Within two years of my arrival in Baja, Luis Donaldo Colosio was shot and killed in Tijuana. He would have been the next President of Mexico, as back then there really wasn’t a question of who would win the next election, rather than who the outgoing President would choose to win the next election. It was a much scarier time for Mexico back then than is anything happening now; I remember driving into Tijuana after work that evening and wondering why no one was out. Then I found out. Colosio was assassinated and people were truly frightened.

Ernesto Zedillo was then picked to replace Colosio, and the rest is history, so to speak. It turned out to be the best thing ever. Zedillo, among other great achievements, permitted the ruling party to lose the next election and change politics in Mexico, to make it fair, and to make it respectable. Obviously, there are always going to be problems with politicians anywhere in the world. They lie, and they steal. They are corrupt and easily corrupted. But at least Zedillo refused to handpick his successor, leaving the process of nomination to Mexico’s version of an Electoral College.

Often times, from tragedy comes triumph.

* * * *

Iran held an election recently, where the incumbent was declared the winner. Some people in Iran began to demonstrate and to even riot, claiming that the election was rigged. This happens all over the world. It happened in Mexico during the last presidential election, and it happened to a smaller extent in the United States of America when George W. Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore. One can come to expect such public displays of outrage when their candidate loses. Mostly, it turns out to be sour grapes, but every once in a while evidence of fraud proves to be indisputable.



When I saw this graph I practically choked.

I don’t understand much about politics, but I do understand statistics and probability. In engineering, there is always a variable in any process, a normal randomness. Without such randomness, the process (in manufacturing, mostly, but really in all aspects of natural occurrence) is considered to be unreliable. Any engineer or economist or mathematician will look at the above graph and gasp. It isn’t to say the incumbent didn’t, or wouldn’t have won, but it is practical proof that the election results in Iran are false.

There is no probable way save for unbelievable luck, such as throwing two dice twenty times in a row and rolling snake-eyes with each roll, that this result-over-time graph could plot such a straight line. Unless, of course, the results were intentionally manipulated. Grab your dice and draw your own conclusions.

(Graph courtesy of Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic)

Social Network

"A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency."

- Miguel de Cervantes

* * * *
The taxi, a comfortable van painted distinctively green and white to identify the route it would take, rolled slowly westward toward downtown. As has always been the case with taxis colectivo, people are picked up randomly along the route until the taxi is full, dropped off at the nearest safe point requested, and refilled and dropped off this way until the end of the route. Unlike metered taxis, the route cabs charge a flat rate. The twelve miles I would be traveling would cost me ten pesos, under a dollar. This is a very economical way to get around, and much faster than taking a bus.

I would enjoy this convenience much more was it not for the invention and popularity of the cellular telephone.

Change is inevitable, even in Tijuana. The vans are a recent development, replacing the hundreds of station wagon taxis taken out of service a few years ago because apparently they were an eyesore for the mayor in office at the time. Metered private taxis came into being a few years before; previously one obtained the services of a private taxi by haggling a deal with the driver beforehand. The convenience store chains where the majority of cell phone owners purchase their minutes are also recent in their volume and as unavoidable in Tijuana as fast food franchises from the other side of the big metal fence.

These differences have changed the way that Tijuana feels and has had some small impact, at least, on the culture. There are still small neighborhood markets everywhere, still small independently owned diners and restaurants, still sedans working as route cabs, and one can still haggle with the driver of a route cab to get a direct trip to somewhere. The cellular telephone, however, has had the most effect; it has sharply changed some aspects of the culture of Tijuana.

* * * *
Rocio's mother gets around. This I mean at face value and in not implying any significance other than that when someone calls my house looking for her because they can't find her at her own house, I remind them that the lady loves to wander her neighborhood. She is friends with everyone, Doña Mago, where Mago is short for Margarita, her given name; nicknames are much more common in Mexico than on the other side of the big metal fence. Her husband is a hard-working man named Elias, but the immediate family calls him El Borracho, meaning "the drunk", and in shorting it to Acho, it remains his nickname to this day.

Elias no longer drinks, but when he did, it was a spectacle – I've never seen anyone who could get so drunk and not pass out.

Mexicans are incredibly social - much more so than are Americans, and Mago is a part of an amazing social network; most Mexicans are a part of an amazing social network. Twenty years ago, it was rare that anyone had a telephone. Telephone ownership was expensive and waiting lists were clogged with people who had enough money and were lucky enough to live near a telephone line; these people were content to wait six months or more for installation. In those days, as now, Mago would go calling on friends throughout the day and they would gossip in hushed tones. Wonderful rumors were born from those whispers, passed on from person to person in the course of a week or a month.

One time Mago told me in Spanish, "Have you heard? The world is going to end next Thursday."

I laughed. I asked her where she got such a notion, and she informed me proudly that everyone was saying that it would happen. That was many hundreds of Thursdays ago. Obviously, there was no truth to that particular rumor. These rumors were passed on privately, person-to-person. To do so publicly and to be overheard would brand one as being scandalous.

One time, when my Spanish was getting good enough to have the ability to construct and speak an intelligible sentence, Elias took me down to a poorer section, within walking distance, and introduced me to some of his work-mates. This was an extraordinary honor for me, a gringo invited into the social network. The men do not gossip. They drink beer outside of the house, talking about work or sports, or else each other. I remember the wife of Elias' friend sweeping the dirt floor inside of their home – which amounted to nothing more than a shack with no apparent front door – and his two beautiful young daughters helping their mother. Poverty is only relative. They had each other. They had their social networks. They had chickens and eggs and made tortillas by hand.

There is no doubt in my mind that fifteen years later, those girls are now proud owners of cellular telephones, even if they still live in that same shack.

* * * *
From the back of the green and white taxi on my way downtown, I tried not to overhear when the cell phones rang. Everyone had one, from the obviously poor to the apparently affluent; except for myself, I find a cell phone to be an inconvenient leash. In line crossing the border, I was surrounded by one-sided conversations right up to the point where cell phones must be turned off. All of these conversations of one-sided scandal!

After crossing, which included an incident where the border security people took one young man out of line and interviewed him and then made him wear a surgical mask and sit quietly at a revision table, I quickly finished my business and re-entered Mexico. I decided to stop at the Nuevo Perico and have a beer or two and get in touch with my own social network, waiting for Scott or maybe Jody or someone else I knew to come along. Even in the bar, cell phones were going off regularly, the only time the conversation was taken outside was when the jukebox blared. Javier came in, and we watched the spectacle together.

"I don't have any use for one of those things," he said after another one went off.

"I couldn't agree more. It's like wearing a leash. An electronic leash where anyone can reach you at any time."

We drank and got caught up; my almost daily trips to downtown Tijuana are now reduced to once or twice a week. Javier and me talked about how culture is sometimes marginalized by technology. Then we discussed more important matters, like sports and the climate and his years in the army and the insanity of crossing the border. All of the while, cell phones went off irregularly but frequently. We bought each other a beer and then I got out of there and headed over to the Dandy del Sur for one last drink; cell signals don't seem to easily penetrate the walls in the Dandy.

I wasn't in there any more than ten minutes when Javier appeared.

"I thought you would be here," he said.

"No cell phones," I said, laughing.

I made my trip home uneventful. After getting some tacos at the corner to go, I flagged down a taxi with a meter and got in the back seat. The meter was broken. I told him where I wanted to go and we negotiated a price of one hundred pesos. The extra ninety pesos were certainly a value since I didn't have to listen to the one-sided conversations of other passengers. Except for taking the freeway, which didn't exist when I first came to Tijuana, everything was just like it was twenty years ago, which is okay by me.

Of Masks, Fences, And Efficient City Government

As if an imaginary barrier could stop one thing from going somewhere else, or even a real barrier like the big metal fence could stop anything and anyone, people here are wearing masks in order not to contract some mysterious virus. It somehow escapes the psyche of Tijuanenses that, regardless of the boundaries they encounter and still manage to get over, some things in life can't be stopped. Masks, fences, inhospitable terrain, reasonable precautions, it doesn't matter. Obviously, this is irony at its best.

Build a big giant fence and they'll get over, under, or through it; let a flu strain mutate, and surgical masks dominate the pedestrian population.

There are no cases of the current flu, the swine flu, reported in Tijuana. Apparently, this doesn't matter. Some people here have decided that surgical masks will somehow save them. I think that they would be better off covering their ears, because nothing spreads faster than panic. Relax my friends. We're going to be fine.

Thursday, I defied the Mexican government's suggestion that I remain at home and instead crossed the border. I sort of had to. I had an appointment to get my passport, I need one in a month or else the United States of America will not let me enter their country anymore. I tried to go to bed early on Wednesday evening, but my nocturnal habits betrayed me. Even tequila didn't help much. I crawled into bed after two in the morning. This is what happens.

Rocio woke me up at five-thirty as she left for work, but my body decided that I had more time. A ten-thirty appointment begged me for just another fifteen or twenty minutes. I was out of the house at about a quarter after seven, hung over, bleary-eyed and wishing that I had the night before to do all over again. I took a taxi libre to the border, ten dollars. It was crowded, I sipped on a coffee and it took forty-five minutes to cross.

My familiarity with San Diego is mostly specific. I was born there but not raised there, so I can only rely on where I've been. All of those years working in Chula Vista and I never really explored the East Side of the city. On the trolley I felt like a tourist. I got out at the Palomar Street station, as if programmed by five years of habit. I went to the first bus I saw. "How do I get to F Street and Fourth?"

"You want the seven-oh-one," the driver said.

I found the right bus climbed aboard and told the driver where I needed to go, generally, and he nodded. "City Hall, near the library," he said. I sat and grabbed a schedule. As we rolled on, I told him that I would have been better off riding the trolley to H Street and getting there backwards. He laughed. But time was on my side, I told him that it didn't matter either way.

When I had called last week to make this appointment, the lady on the other end of the line was extraordinarily helpful. My notes, however, written hastily on the back of an envelope that would have been otherwise discarded, were poor and not very handy when it came to where she told me that I would have to get a certified copy of my birth certificate. I went to Chula Vista City Hall, I figured I would start there. It was eight-forty in the morning. They were closed.

* * * *
Government in Baja, and in all of Mexico, is largely inefficient in many ways. People wait in line for hours for the most simple of transactions. Sometimes the United States of America is the same way. Visit the local department of motor vehicles and the proof is usually there. Or else, the social security office is a good place to experience the inefficiency of government. It isn't usually limited to one country or one state. It is everywhere.

I remember the first time I applied for a passport. It was complicated. It took many days, several hours for each transaction. I held that passport for nine years until it was stolen here in Mexico, not more than a couple of months before it was set to expire. I laughed when it happened. Not one time was I ever asked for that passport, neither in crossing the border nor in my dealings with Baja officials. I didn't need it, and I didn't care.

I remember reporting it at the border afterward. They shrugged. "It doesn't matter," they told me.

Back then, it didn't matter.

Seventeen years ago, when I crossed the border, I was asked my citizenship. When I told them that I was a citizen of the United States of America, they simply waved me through. There were no x-ray machines, no computers at the stations, and only occasionally I was asked for identification. Undocumented migrants passed freely through the traffic lanes, running in packs of one hundred or more; rarely was even a single one apprehended. The climate of border travel was completely different back then.

When I hear someone remark about or else read some statement concerning illegal border crossings being a current problem, I laugh and think about seventeen years ago. I remember when it was a problem, when the signs and flashing lights all over interstate five warned motorists to be cautious of people crossing the freeway. Back then, border officials were more concerned with the relative safety of both the motorist and the illegal immigrant than they were of actually capturing the illegal immigrant. Times change.

Governments change.

* * * *
Chula Vista City Hall was closed, but there was a maintenance worker there. "We open at ten," he told me.

"Forgive my ignorance, but I need to get a certified copy of my birth certificate," I told him. "Where would I do that?"

"Ah, then you need to go to the clerk's office. That's on Third and H Street."

I got there at ten minutes until nine o'clock. Seventeen dollars and fifteen minutes later, I had it, a certified copy of my certificate of live birth. I walked down Third Street, knowing that I would get there early, back to city hall. Some lady was pushing a cart as I passed her on the sidewalk. She was agitated.

"The police should just leave me alone," she said, imagining that someone was listening.

There were no police anywhere. I smiled. She was safe. It was nice to see that some of the people who seem to live in their own imaginary world were not confined to the streets of downtown Tijuana.

I arrived almost an hour early for my appointment. I filled out an application and the very wonderful lady - the same one who helped me on the phone a week earlier - she took my picture and very carefully checked my application. She then took my money orders, stamped everything, and even made me a photocopy of my birth certificate. She was wonderful.

By ten-thirty that morning, the time of my initial appointment to obtain my passport, I was already on the trolley headed south toward San Ysidro.

I had thanked every employee of the City of Chula Vista that helped me, I let them know that it was the most efficient local government I had ever run across. When I set up the appointment to apply for the passport, I was given every piece of information I needed, including exact amounts in order to get money orders. Getting my birth certificate was easy and fast, and applying for my passport was painless.

* * * *
At noon, Jody rolled in to the Nuevo Perico and I shared the details of my wonderful morning in the United States of America.

"How much did it cost you?"

"Over two hundred dollars, I had to get it expedited both ways so it will arrive in two-to-three weeks. And I also got the crossing card so I don't have to carry my passport around," I said.

Jody shook his head. "That's a lot of money."

"It's my own stupidity. I should have done it six months ago. But the speed and efficiency of the City of Chula Vista pretty much takes the sting away. Besides, all of the times that the United States government kept threatening to require passports to cross, only to extend the deadline. How am I supposed to know when to take them seriously?"

"I'll be having to renew mine in a couple of years," Jody said.

"Do it in Chula Vista," I recommended.

We parted ways, and I wandered up the street, people in surgical masks passing me, the race books closed, the schools shut down, only the bars and the pharmacies could be counted on to remain open in Tijuana. During the long cab ride home, I thought about how it was probably the first day in many years that the time I had spent in the United States of America was more pleasant than the remainder of the day in Mexico. I think it has to do with the fact that dealing with an efficient city government is a better experience than the fences and masks that awaited me back home.

At least, the bars weren't as crowded.

The Working Girls

Today was cooler, it might have hit ninety degrees but tonight will dip into the fifties. Yesterday was a lot hotter. I was again reminded while crossing the border that I needed a passport. Today I called the closest place in San Ysidro to make an appointment. August. This will not work, I need one before the end of May.

Chula Vista, seven miles north of San Ysidro, was easier. Next Thursday, I have an appointment. The lady was awesome, helpful, and wonderful. It will cost me over two hundred dollars. Check or money order. No cash accepted.

I’ll also have to get a new birth certificate. Luckily, I was born in San Diego. Otherwise, I would be in deep trouble, unable to enter the United States of America in order to buy the necessary documents to enter the United States of America. This is what happens.

* * * *
The heat was wonderful yesterday. In the early morning, I took a cab to Centro and found Scott sitting in the Cafe Francais sipping Colombian coffee and joined him after purchasing some of my own. At home I drink instant coffee, so the freshly brewed Colombian is a treat. Scott has fallen into a sudden and prolonged bout of sobriety. It frustrates me.

It took a while to catch up, we were finally waterlogged with the coffee and headed down to the race and sports book on fourth street, where they still list race results on chalkboards. Scott bets baseball, and he's been doing rather well lately, cashing for a couple hundred dollars. When I inquired about the Kentucky Derby future betting I was incorrectly informed that I Want Revenge was fifty-to-one. When I purchased the ticket, it was five to one. They asked if I wanted to return it. I couldn't. I never return tickets unless a horse scratches out.

I watched Scott eat breakfast at a small cafe in the breezeway outside of the race book. I have never known a human being that can eat as fast as Scott eats, he inhaled his breakfast in five minutes.

We crossed the border, Scott to buy more time on his cell phone and myself for some banking. I was reminded once again that I have thirty-nine days in order to procure a passport. I bought my first passport almost seventeen years ago. Two months before it was set to expire it was stolen. I never needed it here. Mexico couldn't care less. On the first of June, the United States of America has decided that I'm not worthy of entering the country unless I have one.

We headed back into Mexico, the heat building, and into Scott's world, Zona Norte. The prostitutes are so beautiful. I wanted to take their picture but it's frowned upon. One day I am going to pay a couple of them for their time and just interview them and then I can get some pictures. So gorgeous. I'll write a story about them, a good story, dozens and dozens of beautiful girls, working the streets, making an otherwise bizarre area worthy of adulation. Judge the profession as you see fit, but don't judge the working girls.

There is a race book inside of Zona Norte, sort of an oasis inside of a sandstorm, you can't walk the streets of Zona Norte without someone asking for something. Money, food, a shoeshine, a wristwatch for sale, drugs, everything is for sale there. The prostitutes make nice with passers-by and everyone else works their gimmicks. Inside of the race book is air-conditioned heaven. Outside it was over one hundred degrees and in the race book it was sixty-eight. Scott pondered wagering on baseball games while I had a beer.

* * * *
A couch arrived tonight. Juan, from Iraq, ordered it here in Mexico for his mother as a Mother’s Day gift. Tomorrow, I have to find room for it. I’m going to slap the hell out of that kid when he comes home. We needed a couch like a fish needs a bicycle. Maybe even less than that.

I made cream of ham and potato soup with some very elaborate sandwiches tonight. Three types of meat, two types of cheese, bacon and avocado, toasted. Odds are good that we are the only family in the entire city that ate this tonight. I’m a gringo, I can’t not cook what I love. Lucky for me, the family loves it too.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll make chili beans.

It wouldn’t bother me in the least if I never crossed the border again. I don’t hate the United States of America, I was born and raised there, I am proud of my upbringing and admire the history so much. My blood is red, like Mexican blood, but my blood is gringo blood, I can’t deny my heritage. It’s a very coveted heritage to own.

Forgive me if I find it sort of stupid that the land where I was born is now demanding that I pay upwards of two hundred dollars in order to prove it so that I can enter the country.

* * * *
Scott and me decided to try and find Jody. We checked bar after bar, no Jody. We ran into him accidentally. Scott excused himself, fell into his temporary sobriety, and Jody and me went to have a few beers.

"The hookers are a lot prettier than I remember," I said.

"Yes. And this is the day shift, you should see them at night," Jody said.

That isn’t going to happen any time soon, I’ll take his word for it. I hope that Scott falls off of the wagon soon. Then we can drink together and they can trade stories about the working girls. By then, I should have a shiny new passport. Like it matters. Like it should matter.

Friday Night In Tijuana

I went to Centro de Tijuana on Friday, enjoyed a few beers, chatted with Jody, sometimes I need to get out of the house. Armed with my trusty Fujifilm S700, I decided to use the video feature for the first time. I recorded the Nuevo Perico during the six-thirty shift change, and then typically how my evenings usually go after that. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then you'll have to figure out on your own what a three-part video is worth, word-wise. Enjoy.

Ostensibly Nebulous

I am pretty sure that I could construct a fully functional nuclear bomb. In other words, if I had the means to procure some enriched uranium (I'm not enriching it myself, I don't have the room here), along with other necessary materials (you know, shiny reflective metal like beryllium, suitable trigger devices, and so on), and enough time, I could do it. Assuming that I would survive any setbacks during the assembly process, I have a lot of confidence in my ability to accomplish this. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention on actually doing it, but I bet that I could.

View this as a positive revelation, because if I had any doubts then I would almost certainly have to try it.

I remember the first time that I had sopes, the lovely and wonderful soul food of Mexico. The next time that Rocio's mother cooked them, I watched. I asked her questions concerning every step. It looked so impossible. Obviously, within a month, I had to try to make sopes.

* * * *
Last night, I walked with Anna to the convenience store after dinner, after we ate sopes. These walks really are some of the most wonderful moments of my life. For one thing, never did I ever imagine that my sixteen-year-old daughter would ever really understand me in any relevant way. And she does. Also, she's delightful company most of the time.

The night before last, I got a bit upset with her. She was on the phone for over an hour when I finally came out of my office, it was too much. It was also the second time that I had to tell her. All of my kids know, there is no such thing as a third time.

"Get off the phone, now," I ordered.

She hung up, she wasn't happy.

"Look, I give you a lot more latitude in these things that I gave the other two," I told her.

"I'm not the other two," she said angrily and began heading up the stairs to bed.

"No, you're not," was the only thing I could manage to say.

Anna stomped off to bed. She was right, even though the other two are fine children, she really isn't like them at all. Juan is an amazing kid - well, young man I suppose, and Sharon, even though she inherited her mother's resolute stubbornness, seems to have straightened up. But Anna is different.

Last night, I asked her how she liked the sopes.

"I didn't like the chorizo very much. I mean, it's okay I guess, but it was different," she said.

"The fruiteria was out of the stuff I normally buy. I went to Calimax and bought what was ostensibly pork chorizo. When I got home I discovered that it was made from soy," I confessed.

"What does ostensibly mean?" Anna asked.

"It's what something seems like in appearance or perception, but not necessarily true. I get words stuck in my head and use them too much. Like ostensibly, and nebulous. I was just confessing that to someone the other day."

She pointed at me and said, "I know what nebulous means."

"And don't forget my favorite phrase these days, it applies to any situation, even something like accidentaly buying the wrong chorizo," I said.

And then we said it together, "This is what happens."

* * * *
It's funny how cooking sopes to me now is so simple. The first few times that I tried it, it scared the crap out of me, but I had to do it. Anna is like that. She decides that she wants to do something and she does it. If it is less than successful, it doesn't detour her, she does it again. She loves to bake, and she's getting good at it. If she wants to do something she just does it.

Good for her.

She attempted to make sopes a couple of times while I was making them, she wanted to try it. Her first couple of attempts, less than perfect, reminded me of what my first attempts were like. I told her that practice would enable her to get it right. I think that the next time I make sopes, I'm going to have her do most of it. And she will. And I'm sure that she'll do fine.

"How many gringos do you think know how to make sopes?" I asked Anna.

"Probably not many," she said. "None that I know of, except for you."

And then, as we came back to the house last night, I only thought it, I didn't have to say it, because perhaps Anna was thinking the same thing. Ostensibly, there are more Mexicans that know how to prepare grits than there are gringos who know how to make sopes. And that distinction, at best, is nebulous. This is what happens.

Water And Clay

Initially, I ignore knocking at the door anytime before noon, because it's going to be someone I don't know. Someone is going to want to sell me something, or else it will be someone in a police officer's uniform asking for donations, or maybe even some poor people with a story about not having enough money to bury their uncle. This morning, after the third persistent series of knocks, I walked out of my office to see. There was two young men, well-dressed, and I pegged them as Mormons and mentally prepared my best polite, "No, gracias."

One of them was holding a breaker fuse, and pointing at the electrical meters across the entry to the cul-de-sac, babbling something in Spanish.

"Those meters belong to the houses across from mine," I told him in Spanish.

His friend then spoke up, "Do you speak English?"

There was no accent at all in his voice.

"Yes."

"Do you know who sells these?"

"No. There is a hardware store two blocks up the street. They probably don't carry them but they'll know who would."

"Okay. Can we borrow a screwdriver?"

"No. Again, you can get a screwdriver from the hardware store. Good luck, gentlemen."

I have never seen these people before. I still think that they are Mormons. Maybe they went to one of the houses to talk about Jesus and learned that there was an electrical problem. I have no idea. I'll never know. That's okay with me, because I still have my screwdriver.

* * * *
I noticed that it is bright and sunny outside and again perhaps seventy degrees. It rained a lot on Monday, pools of water still sit awaiting evaporation. People in San Diego first complain about the rain but then proclaim that it's needed, no matter that it's annoying. This isn't true for Tijuana. We don't need the rain. The ground here is mostly clay, it doesn't hold rainwater, and the rainwater finds its way to the Pacific Ocean without stopping unless it finds a place to pool up. This process is only messy and never functionally works in a positive manner.

And then one observation leads to another.

Out on the boulevard, there are often times – among the taco stands and taxi queues and street vendors – Mormons are also there and standing static, arms outstretched with literature in hand. They are mostly harmless, like clay, as the people pass them by as so much water. They seem nice enough. They'll barely say a word to anyone unless eye contact is made. These people out on the sidewalks of Tijuana do not bother me in the least.

Here, the dynamic person – the human being in motion – can avoid the static people made of clay. Just keep moving, just be fluid. Let gravity, or else your own energy, carry you along. That's the key to avoiding such annoyances. At least, this is one way of getting through the day here.

There is another thing that happens here, it is unique in many aspects, to Baja. Once that you stop, you are potentially a target. Drinking with Scott and Jody is the greatest example of this phenomenon. Sitting in the Nuevo Perico, people come into the bar all day. They sell everything from compact discs to cigarette lighters. Jody's favorite was the guy that walked in one day selling a toilet seat. Because if you need to buy a toilet seat, then logically you just go to a bar.

This is what happens.

My personal favorite was the very old woman who would, daily, go into the Dandy Del Sur at about five in the afternoon. She would be toting around some vegetables that were obviously discarded by a store that couldn't sell them because they were too old. Radishes, onions, and other almost rotten food. Again, this is because when you want to purchase old and unusable produce, just go have a beer somewhere and it will come to you.

"Boy, am I glad that she showed up," I told Jody one afternoon. "I'm all out of old onions and radishes."

Jody laughed. "One time I felt bad for her, so I just gave her five dollars for everything. When she left, I threw it away."

Jody stopped giving her money after that. He realizes that acting as an enabler just brings them back in hopes of another five dollars. Jody is more like clay now. I am more like clay now. You let the water flow around you, over you, even if it means that you have to say no a lot more often than you want to. Sitting still means ignoring the annoying water when you don't want to absorb it.

* * * *
When I'm at home, I don't have to answer the door. The telephone, which rings far too often, is also annoying, and so rarely for me that I am usually disappointed with myself for answering it. Often, it is a recording, from someone who wants us to switch phone or cable services. If you hang up on the recording, it calls back. I usually throw the receiver onto the couch and grab a beer, and by the time I get back from the kitchen the recording has finished.

I then go back into my office and write or read or research. The radio is always on, in the background, keeping me company. Outside, I hear the propane trucks honking, someone selling tamales, even a guy who roams around in a truck pitching brooms and mops. Occasionally, there is a man on a bicycle that rides by, he sharpens knives by turning his bike over and attaching a sharpening stone to the back wheel. This is easily ignored.

Living in Baja, you turn to clay when standing still, and turn to water when moving about. When the Mormons come to your door, you don't have to answer it. When you go to the store, you don't have to acknowledge the Mormons on the street. Then, you just smile about it, even when the rains come down, because even the Mormons here need umbrellas sometimes.

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Twenty-one – Conclusion And Opinion

Between the pirate and the privateer, there is a gray area that defies black and white or any other binary distinction along with a vast ocean in which to settle the differences. Politics and economics have always worked this way. In times of economic surplus, the pirate becomes a privateer. In times of economic peril, the privateer becomes the pirate. When the economy is stable, then it becomes difficult to determine the difference. This is what happens.

I listened to the Shiny New President's press conference the other evening. As with all presidential press conferences, the questions are prescreened, to a point, so that the President isn't embarrassed or ambushed. This is understandable. And when one reporter asked about "earmarking" on the stimulus package, Obama denied it. This is almost true, as there is almost no earmarks in the bill. But Obama went on to admit that there was a lot of "pork" in the bill. I admired his acknowledgement of the obvious. Previous administrations wouldn't have been that honest. On the other hand, he had nothing to lose, because he knew that he'd already won.

And the only obvious earmarking on the stimulus bill came from a Republican Senator, in case you are wondering.

A little more than half of this bill was written long before Obama won the election. Those portions of the bill sat on someone's desk, drawing dust and sitting patiently until an opportunity presented itself. This is how politics works. Republicans pass their type of legislation this way, too. In fact, the last administration hijacked congress, in that the act of a congressman voting against legislation that supported and funded a war that was very unpopular within their own constituency could translate to anti-patriotism. The current administration did not need such tactics, only the ability to pick off a couple of senators from the other side of the aisle.

The appropriations provisions in the stimulus bill are ostensibly designed from the Keynesian macroeconomic model which contends that increasing the cash supply to government for investment in infrastructure, when combined with tax cuts or credits to the lower and middle class, stimulates economic growth. This is similar to what the Roosevelt administration did with the New Deal. There is plenty of debate amongst economists and historians concerning the effectiveness of the New Deal, and that perhaps the second World War had more to do with recovery from the Great Depression than did anything else. I am willing to seek a compromise that the combination of the two events helped to get the United States of America back on its feet.

And to be fair, and completely honest, I don't believe that Supply-side macroeconomics had as much to do with economic recovery from the recession in the Reagan administration as did other factors.

* * * *
Many years ago, I took my family up to Del Mar for a day at the racetrack. I remember that they had these booths set up, temporary kiosks, and that people were giving away free souvenirs, horse racing stuff. One item - and it escapes me now as to what that item was, appeared very attractive to add to my collection. I wanted to buy one, but they weren’t for sale. They were free! All I had to do was to fill out an application for a credit card. I explained to the young lady that I really didn't want a credit card, but she insisted that it was harmless, and that the most that they would do is to simply offer me the card and that I could refuse it if I chose to do so.

Perhaps a month later, I was sitting at my desk at work, and I received a telephone call. It was a credit card company.

"We'd like to ask you a few questions," she said.

"But I don't own any credit cards," I told her.

"No, this is concerning your application."

"But I didn't apply for..."

Then I remembered that I had, indeed, applied for their credit card. I acknowledged it.

"We were wondering, how old are you?" she asked.

"Thirty-eight, why?"

“Well, you have no credit rating at all. In fact, we can't find any reference to where you bank. We were just wondering if you were just starting out, you know, maybe that you just graduated high school or something."

"Nope. I have no credit cards and no bank account."

She was dumbfounded. I told her why I applied, that it wasn't for the card, it was for the horse racing memorabilia that I could add to my collection. I told her that she could rip up my application and that I was sorry for wasting her time. But it occurred to me that people are sometimes worth more by what they owe than what they don't owe. This is truer now than it was then, in that if you have a credit card with a high limit and you aren't using it and you don't owe on it, the card will likely be cancelled soon. In order to maintain a good credit rating, one needs to owe something against it. Ironic, just a little?

* * * *
The last company that I worked for began to feel it immediately and it wasn't pretty. The majority of their business came from companies that provided material used to sell houses, mostly new houses, because traditionally such advertising and attention-getting has paid off for the housing industry. Orders began to drop fast as the inventory of unsold houses began to climb. I rationalized that the housing industry still needed to advertise, and that perhaps they wanted it at a lower cost. I argued, unsuccessfully, that the company should go directly after the homebuilders, cutting out the middleman. Unfortunately, the owner had a lot of loyalty to these middlemen, and even though our sales staff had leads on builders that our clients weren't pursuing, they didn’t have the required experience to go after them.

Last that I heard, that company is still in business, but in very bad shape. There isn't anything that I found in this stimulus bill that is going to help them, except that one of their clients sells motivational material to schools. Unfortunately, their profit margin with this client is extremely low. There are a lot of businesses that will not benefit enough from this particular bill to keep them from going under. This was a problem in the Roosevelt administration, and it will be a problem for the Obama administration. This is what happens.

Under the Keynesian model of economic recovery, the limitation is that government spending dictates the area of recovery. Under the Supply-side model, the limitation is that wealth in the private sector dictates the area of economic recovery. Both are, at best, unproven theories with supporters and detractors, and at worst, irrelevant to thousands of people who have lost their jobs, and their homes, and their future.

* * * *
Dismiss, for a moment, the catalyst that started this particular recession. The Reagan administration loosened the reigns on tight controls of financial institutions by the Federal government, in order to provide wealthy investors that had benefited from Supply-side tax cuts the opportunity to secure financing for reinvestment into the private sector. This had the appearance of success when the economy recovered and, in fact, flourished in the mid-eighties, but this also reduced government income, thereby creating a dichotomy. The twenty years that followed Reagan, this dichotomy was not only ignored but exploited by politics, and while the reigns were completely let loose on financial regulation by the time that the last President began his second term, government at both the State and Federal levels continued to spend money that it didn't have.

Financial institutions and government irresponsibly ignored what any child already knows: You can't spend what you don't have, and you don't loan money to someone that you know can't pay you back. But that's over now. The Federal government has no choice but to print more money in order to make some attempt at staving off a complete collapse of the economy, which would ensure a depression, and then maybe even a war in order to reset everything. Nobody wants that.

Economic recovery occurs when the private business sector begins to invest in the production of goods and the provision of services, mandated and balanced by the demand of the market. These businesses secure capital for such investments through loans and lines of credit, which are secured through banks and other lending institutions. Lending institutions make money through one of two methods: by marginally high interest made on a moderate amount of loans, or from marginally low interest rates on a high volume of loans. Because of their irresponsibility, these lending institutions don't have a lot of money, which precludes the latter method. But interest rates are so low that loaning only a little bit of money can't make a substantial enough profit.

So, under this stimulus plan, interest rates should rise. This will enable financial institutions to get back on their feet while also staving off potential inflation from printing out almost 800 billions dollars and pumping it into the public sector. Unfortunately, this isn't going to help the housing industry or the automobile industry, or any other industry that relies on consumer loans in order to sell their product. And small businesses will suffer, because their lines of credit will command higher payments. So, under this stimulus plan, you have to keep interest rates down, guard against rising inflation, while pumping billions into the public sector. They've tried to give the lending institutions more money in order to provide them with enough to loan at a reduced rate, but that didn't work out too well, because the banks decided to use their first bail-out to make money through other means, like buying up smaller banks.

This is an impossible task, because people seem to not want to cooperate.

* * * *
The spending of public funds in this bill is ridiculous. Most of it is not designed to get the economy back on its feet, and it is irresponsible and misleading to claim that it is. A National Health Care system is something that should be debated separately and that it's part of a stimulus package is deceitful. In fact, a good half of the items in the bill should all be legislated separately and so should funding for education and so should funding for the Army Corps of Engineers. The problem with such funding is that these funds are often misappropriated, especially when given in bulk. In the decade prior to hurricane Katrina, the State of Louisiana had been given nine billion dollars in order to repair and improve the levees that protect the city of New Orleans. Only ten percent of that money went toward its intended use.

What would I do differently? A lot. First of all, don't give any money to businesses that substantially manufacture goods outside of the United States of America. General Motors is going to take what they get and invest it at facilities in Brazil and Mexico because they profit more from the assembly plants there. Secondly, give smaller companies the bigger tax breaks, because those companies are going to close quickly without their lines of credit. Banks will not close the lines of credit on larger companies as fast because the volume, in spite of the low interest rate, makes them more profitable. And another thing I would think would work better, is to figure out a way to get money into the public sector a lot faster than the appropriated funds seem to allow. Billions of dollars in highway funding will certainly create a lot of jobs, but unless the planning has already been completed this is going to take a long time before constructions actually begins.

The thing that most disappoints me about this particular stimulus package is that it is a combination of money that is both thoughtlessly thrown into government spending and unilaterally tied to partisan projects. Trying to make up for a lack of revenue by the government for necessary projects that were overlooked by previous administrations in this way isn't fair to anyone. One alternative would be to give the tax breaks and other portions of the bill that would have an immediate impact on the economy, and then to set aside the other appropriations and subsequent items of the bill, debate them, and come up with better organized and more widely accepted and acceptably compromised ways to accomplish what needs to be done in order to revive the economy.

"This bill is not perfect," President Obama told reporters at his latest press conference.

I agree, Mr. President. Thank you, at least, for not lying to me.

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Twenty – Scotty, We Need More Power!

Fuck this is a grind, and I'm glad it's almost over (this is worse than following the Tour-De-France). The last section of the stimulus deals with energy. You can never have too much energy. Or apparently, pages in a bill. Anyway, this section amends the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It increases benefits already given to anyone who took advantage of that bill. In addition, it provides for "financial support to smart grid demonstration projects in urban, suburban, and rural areas, including areas where electric system assets are controlled by tax-exempt entities and areas where electric system assets are controlled by investor-owned utilities." Grants will be provided to cover half of the costs in some cases.

There is also a lot about biofuels in here, none of which are specified but they keep using the word, "support". And there is more about Weatherization. And more Grants. And on and on. Again, very little is specific in here so far as money to be spent, but at least there aren't many reports to fill out. Maybe by the time they wrote this, they were tired and forgot about that part. The point of this section is to promote Energy Independence.

The last seven chapters didn't give much of a clue about cost, other than combined it would be somewhere around 435 billion, because direct Appropriations are around 390 billion. And I know, there have been amendments, and will likely be even more amendments. Health Care and Education make up the majority of this bill. This is a lot to digest. I will write a conclusion, which will be simply my opinion of course. But I won't be home tomorrow, so the only decision I have is whether to try and digest this tonight and write about it, or to give it some thought and come back tomorrow night or Wednesday and do it.

Next: Chapter Twenty-one – Conclusion And Opinion

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Nineteen – Dial-Up No More!

Okay. So now we all have internet access. Well, most of us. The first part of this next-to-last section deals with broadband, which implies something better than dial-up. First they're going to make a map. This is so they know where broadband isn't available. Then they're going to give Grants to deploy broadband for areas that are still struggling with dial-up. Then they’re going to make a web site. Then they're going to write reports. No fewer than 80% of people will have broadband access in the U.S. (by State) by the time they are finished.

Just so that you know, this is how the Government defines it: For the purpose of this section - the term "advanced broadband service" means a service delivering data to the end user transmitted at a speed of at least 45 megabits per second downstream and at least 15 megabits per second upstream. Just so you know. There is a lot more stuff on Grants and even how to apply for a Grant and of course, more reports.

One more section to go.

Next: Chapter Twenty – Scotty, We Need More Power!

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Eighteen - Free Nationalized Health Care

The Federal Medicare Assistance Percentages (FMAP), which is the ratio that Federal assists State government for Medicare, will temporarily increase for a couple of years. The percentage depends on how much unemployment or general poverty exists in that specific State. It could be as high as twenty percent. There is also an increase in cap expenditures, depending. The State may not deposit this money and sit on it until they need it. This is because States always know when they'll need it, because poor people get sick very non-randomly. There are dozens or regulations and even moratoria on other existing regulations. Because sometimes you need regulations and sometimes you don't. Again, there are more reports. And some clauses. And then more reports. And Family Planning Services, which I hope and presume is free birth control. And Native Americans get it, too. Fucking casinos.

And there are DSH allotments. DSH stands for Disproportionate Share Hospital, which has to do with one hospital treating more poor people than other hospitals. I think it's like revenue sharing in baseball.

We're almost done now.

Next: Chapter Nineteen – Dial-up No More!

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Seventeen - The Beginning Of A National Health Care System

Let's take a moment to talk about the "Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act", but because that's so damned long, let's just call it HITECH. This is another example of your crafty government at work, masters of the acronym. HITECH creates a brand shiny new office and lodges itself into the Public Health Service Act. Deeply. Deep and hard. Just the way America likes it.

This begins with identifying terms. It amends the Public Health Service Act, and adds Health Information Technology and Quality, and then defines EHR Technology, Enterprise Integration, and on and on. Then they establish an Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HIT). It ensures stuff that Doctors use to ensure, because apparently Doctor's sucked at it. The duties of the National Coordinator are to Health Information Technology works. This is because the government has to have access to your health records by the year 2014 ("The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014"). This is so they can determine whether or not your doctor should treat you. There are penalties that your Doctor will have to pay for not complying with it.

If you think that I am kidding, you need to read Division B, Title IV of the bill. Now, let's pretend that you are all pro-National Health Care and a Democrat. Why is this a bad idea? Because sooner or later the other guys will get to run the government again for a while. This happens. And now you want an abortion. Guess what's going to happen?

This section is the blueprint for Nationalized Healthcare. There will be a HIT Czar, and that HIT Czar, within twelve months, will have a "Chief Privacy Officer". And a Policy Committee. Here's a slice of their responsibilities: "Technologies that as a part of a qualified electronic health record allow for an accounting of disclosures made by a covered entity (as defined for purposes of regulations promulgated under section 264(c) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) for purposes of treatment, payment, and health care operations (as such terms are defined for purposes of such regulations)". This will scare you, unless you are a Socialist. And if you are a socialist, you aren’t reading this anyway.

There are pages and pages of crap in here. It is, by far, the largest part of this bill.

There will also be a Standards Committee, because apparently there can never be too many committees. This is going to be a government regulated system, and they might even charge for it ("AUTHORIZATION TO CHARGE A NOMINAL FEE - The National Coordinator may impose a nominal fee for the adoption by a health care provider of the health information technology system developed or approved"). Then, they get Medicare and Medicaid involved, but those guys get it free. There are Grants and Appropriations to provide incentives to get Doctors and Hospitals on board. And other funding. Lots of other funding. Billions of dollars. It would take me a month to break this down.

Plus, I didn't get any tequila today because it's raining like hell here.

Anyway, welcome to the birth of Socialized Medicine in the United States of America. And don't argue with me unless you have read this provision, please, you would be wasting both your time and mine. If you want it, you've won. And if you don't want it, you're screwed, because it's here.

Next: Chapter Eighteen – Free Nationalized Health Care

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Sixteen - Healthy Bums Like Me

Once someone becomes dis-employed, they are eligible for COBRA, which is an extension of any Health Insurance that they had when they were employed. Once unemployed, in order to keep their Health Insurance, such people pay premiums. In this next section, the Federal government has decided that you only have to pay 35% of your premium. Again, there are rules and regulations. Also, there is some Emergency Medicaid provisions, but it would take me a week to get through it all. This all costs money. How much is anyone's guess.

Many pages of information, a lot of money spent, but no way to know the total and I'm not about to attempt a guess.

By the way, I'm listening to the President's Press Conference at the moment. The Shiny New Guy is certainly right about one thing: This entire mess got started by banks taking stupid risks while the Federal Government cheered it all on.

Next: Chapter Seventeen – The Beginning Of A National Health Care System

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Fifteen - Non-Working Class

Another provision for "Assistance for Unemployed Workers and Struggling Families" begins with an extension of Unemployment Compensation – plus a raise! Ostensibly, people on Unemployment will get $25 more, which will keep me in booze quite nicely. This shall be reimbursed to the states in full, and in effect through next year, from the general fund in the Treasury, according to pages and pages of rules and regulations. There is also stuff in there about dependant allowances, but I am guessing that this changes from State to State. There are a lot of areas where 7 billion dollars comes up (multiple amounts of 7 billion), but it's fuzzy and sketchy as to how much money will go toward this part of the bill. Also, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) gets a couple of years of emergency funding, including Grants for extra caseloads. There is no apparent limit to this funding. This includes emergency money for SSI recipients. Again, there are a buttload of rules and regulation, so your mileage may vary.

Again, nothing to add to the total, but it's all in there somewhere.

Next: Chapter Sixteen – Healthy Bums Like Me

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Fourteen - Give Me Some (Tax) Credit

Other Provisions must be items in the bill that aren't Appropriated, otherwise they wouldn't get their own special section, and the first series of items falls under Tax Provisions. All of this stuff is applied to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, in the form of revisions and additions. Don't think for a minute that I have the time or the talent to get into any detail. I don't. Plus, I'm out of tequila.

First in this section is an Earned Income Credit. I have no idea how to quantify it into one big number, but basically, for anyone making $75,000 or less ($150,000 if filing jointly), you get $500 ($1,000 if filing jointly), or 6.2% of your income, whichever is less. Once you hit over $75,000 of income, the amount starts to drop dramatically as income goes up. This is in effect for the next two years. We have no choice but to set this aside and see how it fits into the total at the end. There is going to be a lot of that from now on.

Next is another Tax Relief item, one for families with children. Basically, more than three qualifying kids will get you $5,000 per year over the next two years. I wonder what having 14 kids will get. Again, I have no idea how to quantify this. Sorry. Consult your own Tax Professional. And yet more Tax Credits! The Hope Scholarship Credit, for tuition and expenses (but not materials), can yield up to $2,500 if I'm reading this right. Of course, again, there's no way to quantify it. And it only applies for the first four years of college. Because, apparently, by the time you hit your fifth year of higher learning, you're already wealthy enough to afford college.

Now we get to Housing Incentives. First-time homebuyers no longer have to repay that tax credit, that is if you buy before July of this year. Oh, and they're reducing the ceiling for Low Income Housing Grants Received in 2009. Apparently, your government really wants you to buy a house.

And there are some Tax Incentives for Business, including a special allowance for certain property acquired during 2009, a temporary increase in limitations on expensing of certain depreciable business assets, an adjustment to 5-year carryback of operating losses (10%, ostensibly), except that none of this applies if you received a TARP payment, otherwise known as the old guy's bailout plan.

There are also incentives for hiring Veterans and "Disconnected Youth". Disconnected Youth must be between 16 and 25 years of age, and be unemployed, unskilled, and uneducated beyond high school. The best way to find a Disconnected Youth in order to hire him or her: Excessive facial piercing and/or tattoos, spends much time smoking dope behind convenience stores, is a member of a rock, punk, or emo band (irrespective of musical ability), has put to memory all lyrics of every song every published and/or performed by the band, "Greenday", and blames his or her parents for everything.

The next part of the bill gives the I.R.S. some sort of power concerning change of ownership of a company. Duh. They pretty much do whatever they want to anyway.

We now get to Fiscal Relief for State and Local Governments, starting with changes that make Tax-Exempt Bonds more marketable by modifying some of the obligations and limitations. There is a lot of modifying, and I'm sure this costs money, but I have no idea how much. There is a section on school bonds, but I have no idea what impact this has at the Federal level. It resets the limits on school construction bonds. Is it higher or lower? No idea. Where is a tax expert when I need one? Also, they address taxable bond options for government bonds. Apparently, if you own these bonds you get a 35% tax credit against the payable interest. Maybe. There are rules. Lots of them.

Speaking of Bonds, apparently there are Zone Recovery Bonds. This could be brand new, I have no idea. This is weighed by what zones have employment declines. There is something about limitations of 10 and 15 billion, depending. Oh, and they are repealing the withholding tax on Government contractors.

There are Energy Incentives, or at least there are changes to whatever existed prior to this bill. These include Renewable Energy Incentives, in the form of Tax Credits; Increased Allocation of Bonds for "New Clean Renewable Energy": 4 billion; Energy Conservation Incentives in the form of Tax Credits; Energy Research incentives in the form of Tax Credits. That's a lot of incentive.

Next in this section is stuff that didn't fit anywhere else. After a few paragraphs on Labor Standards, it seems that the Feds will match whatever the States will Grant for Low-income Housing Credit Allocations. There is also a provision that provides Grants in lieu of Tax Credits for certain Specified Energy property. You'll also be happy to know that after this year, there will be more reports made so that we can see where we're at. Every three Months. Because you can never have too many reports.

We have a little bit to add to our total, which is now 390.479 billion* but note the asterisk. There are billions being spent here that aren't quantifiable. At least for me. But we'll sort out all of that later.

* Plus Billions T.B.D.

Next: Chapter Fifteen – Non-Working Class

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Thirteen - Stop Shaking

Apparently, the States are so scared they're shaking. There is a section in here, the last section under Appropriations Provisions, that gives States some Federal money for, um, Stabilization. Schools get a whopping 79 billion to play with, half this year and the other half next year, above and beyond that already stated in earlier chapters. And since there must be oversight, 25 million, and since there must be more grants, 15 billion more for that. Then there are pages on how the Governor is responsible for all of it and if it isn't spent then it has to be returned (let's all take a guess on how much is really going to be returned). Then we get a 650 million innovation fund because you can never have too much innovation. Then there are pages on how many reports will be generated, and a clause prohibiting private schools from getting any of the money. This is because private schools suck and are renowned for their inferior performance to public schools.

This is the end of all of the Appropriations Provisions of the bill. All of the sections following this concern "Other Provisions". Most of these are not quantifiable, in terms of being able to add to the total spending. But since I am only on page 251 of 647 at this point, there are a lot of provisions in there, or at least a lot of words. We'll just have to do the best we can with it.

We're at 386.479 billion. And now this bill gets almost impossible to slog through, but go on we must.

Next: Chapter Fourteen – Give Me Some (Tax) Credit

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Twelve - The Road Home

We come to another interesting section of this bill, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Sexy. First up, the airports are going to get 3 billion dollars for discretionary projects. Most people would settle for improvements in luggage handling, but they're going to use discretion. Like when they take away your shampoo. You terrorist. You're probably better off driving, especially now with 30 billion dollars going into highway infrastructure. Oh, all of those new shiny roads! Except that it takes a long time to build roads. A really long time. But the old roads still are pretty damned good. People from the U.S. sometimes complain about their roads to me. I tell them to drive in Mexico for a few days. And the roads here are way better than they used to be. You have no idea.

If you can't wait for the new roads to be built, just take a train! The railroads are getting 300 million to maintenance their tracks and stuff, and Amtrak gets another 800 million for maintenance, but know that "none of the funds under this heading shall be used to subsidize the operating losses of Amtrak". Of course not. Now Amtrak can take the money they had set aside to repair the tracks and use them to offset their operating losses.

The Federal Transit Administration is slated to receive 6 billion, most of which has to go toward urban transit. That would be busses and subways and so on. Nothing specific. Then they get another 2 billion for use in "fixed guideway" systems, which are ostensibly certain subway systems, or other forms of fixed transit. And then they get another 1 billion for the same thing, except that it has to go into projects already under construction (that should narrow things down, so you'll know which lobbyist to thank for that one).

Public Housing gets a 5 billion dollar boost, providing cheap rent to poor people, while 2.5 billion is going into energy retrofit projects for people already in Section 8 housing. This is because the elderly and the disabled who aren't poor enough to qualify for the cheap electricity back in a previous chapter, but are still somehow able to qualify for section 8 housing, should get an energy retrofit. The bill stipulates "that the Secretary may set aside funds made available under this heading for an efficiency incentive payable upon satisfactory completion of energy retrofit investments, and may provide additional incentives if such investments resulted in extraordinary job creation for low-income and very low income persons". In other words, if you're a poor electrician, you're in luck. And you're hired.

Native American housing gets another 500 million because those damned casinos are so stingy, while the Community Development Fund receives 1 billion ostensibly as HUD money in order to force poor people to own homes. They get 4.19 billion more to get poor people into already abandoned and/or foreclosed homes, because nobody likes a vacant house. Then, because HUD is so damned good at it, 1.5 billion goes toward the Home Investment Partnership Program, which encourages poor people to rent. After 10 million for the "Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity Program" (please invent an acronym for this soon, it's long), we get to the Homeless Assistance Grants, which requires 1.5 billion. Usually the homeless are happy with a couple of dollars at a time, and now the bastards are getting greedy.

The "Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control" (Are you shitting me? This is a real office?) needs 100 million because apparently some people haven't figured out that lead is bad. BAD! The rest of this section is all about transparency. There will be reports issued. And there will be reports on the reports. And someone will have to report on the state of the report about the reports. It's the government, stupid.

Well, that was fun. And nice and pricey. We're up to 291.804 billion, but now the homeless are rich!

Next: Chapter Thirteen – Stop Shaking

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Eleven - Affairs With Foreigners

There are actually a couple of items concerning the State Department in here. Rather than to hide them somewhere else, they gave it its own section. Maybe they figured that no one would read this far.

For "Capitol Investment Fund": 276 million. This is for "the design and construction of a backup information management facility in the United States to support mission-critical operations and projects", and "to carry out the Department of State's responsibilities under the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative". This is a little bit scary. A country that can't manage to secure its own border is going to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to keep foreign hackers off of the internet. Mmmmkay.

And the International Boundary and Water Commission gets 224 million "for an additional amount for Construction for the water quantity program to meet immediate repair and rehabilitation requirements". Water quantity? Dude, the problem is quality, not quantity.

This section was short and easy, I wish that the rest of the bill was like this. Oh, and we're at 232.404 billion.

Next: Chapter Twelve – The Road Home

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Ten - Let's Build A Fort!

I thought that we were finished with the Armed Forces part of this, but apparently not. Military Construction and Veteran's Affairs begins with 920 million in funds for housing construction, troop training, and child development centers. The Army's involvement in child development is baffling to me, maybe it's another recruiting tool. The Navy and Marine Corps get a combined 350 million for the same purposes, while the Air Force receives 280 million. The combined Military gets 3.75 billion in order to construct hospitals and ambulatory centers in the United States. This is because they have guns and bombs and stuff. It won't be very effective if you're, say, deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, but if you stay home then pretty soon you'll have a shiny new ambulance to take you to a shiny new hospital if your weapon misfires. The combined National Guard and other Reserve units get a combined 400 million to build stuff with.

The Department of Defense Base Closure Account gets 300 million, because chains and padlocks cost money. The Veterans Health Administration receives 950 million for non-recurring maintenance (another confusing term and seemingly an oxymoron, non-recurring maintenance ), and the National Cemetery Administration will receive 50 million for monument and memorial repair.

Not a very active section, but we're totaling 231.904 billion now.

Next: Chapter Eleven – Affairs With Foreigners

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Nine - Get A Job

Okay, this must be where the jobs are, in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of this bill. Plus, there is a lot of money being distributed here. Starting with labor, Training and Employment Services gets 4 billion, to train unemployed people how to do those jobs that have all become available. You know, the government jobs. For the Community Service Employment for Older Americans: 120 million, because old people apparently don't matter as much. The Feds will give State Unemployment Insurance 500 million, with half go to pay claims and half go for reemployment programs. Reemployment is what happens when you lose a job that you like because the economy sucks and then start working for the government. The Labor Departmental Management people need 80 million because now they have to hire more unemployed people to train unemployed people to become reemployed, and the Office of Job Corps gets 300 million for no apparent reason.

In the area of Health, Health Resources and Services gets 2.188 billion half of which is for construction, and the other half for training and stuff. The Center for Disease Control: 462 million, I assume for controlling diseases, while The National Center for Research Resources wins 1.5 billion because you can never have too much research. Meanwhile, the Office of the Director of Health and Human Services gets 1.5 billion and can give it to Centers of the National Institutes of Health and to the Common Fund for whatever, except that it can't be used to build anything. On the other hand, Health buildings and facilities receive 500 million for that purpose. Healthcare research and quality nab 1.1 million. We need quality research.

Human Services must be where the jobs are, with Low-income home energy assistance getting 1 billion because poor people need electricity, too. Child care assistance for low-income families comes to 2 billion. and another child care service under the Children and Family Services programs gets 3.2 billion, shared about equally by the programs Head Start, Early Head Start, and Community Services Block Grant Act. The head start programs already gets around 7 billion a year in funding. The Community Services Block Grant Act gets around a billion. They need more, people already with six children are having octuplets now! Aging Services programs need only 200 million because apparently old people have a lot of trouble with the aging thing, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology gets 2 billion to do pretty much whatever they want to. Public Health Services receives 900 million, almost half for vaccinations and almost half for construction, and the Prevention and Wellness fund gets 3.15 billion because healthy people apparently need it. Also, "there is hereby established a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research". I have no idea what that is.

In the schooling stuff, we have Education For The Disadvantaged that gets 13 billion, although disadvantaged means poor not incapable. For Impact Aid: 100 million. This is the "No Child Left Behind" thing. For School Improvement, 1.066 billion, and for Innovation and Improvement 225 million, because innovations should be less costly than simple improvement. Special Education gets 13.6 billion, which makes little sense since Vocational Rehabilitation only gets 700 million. I mean, it's supposed to be about jobs. Student Aid receives 16.126 billion, because apparently all of you students out there have already paid off your loans and now they want to loan more. Student Aid Administration needs 50 million because someone has to administrate this. Higher Education gets 100 million because it isn't as important as lower education, apparently, while the Institute of Educated Sciences needs 250 million. Dude. It's an Institute. Students are tired of those trailers, so School Modernization, Renovation, and Repair receives 14 billion, while Higher Education, Modernization, and Repair gets 6 billion and a large and wordy number of pages instructing that construction should be green and that steel must be from the U.S. follow. Oh, and Increases in Mandatory Pell Grants: 1.474 billion Must. Have. More. Pell.

Other items that didn't seem to belong anywhere else include AmeriCorps Grants at 160 million, the National Service Trust with 40 million, and SSI Administrative expenses 900 million (because it takes a lot of administration to mail those checks).

We're making headway now, at 224.904 billion dollars, and our failing schools and health care systems will be made whole again. Not a lot of jobs, unless you're a government employee type of person, or a nurse, teacher, or student. But it sure looks shiny, whatever it is.

Next: Chapter Ten – Let's Build A Fort!

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Eight - The Good Earth

It's very important to protect our interior and our environment, and this portion of the bill addresses that issue. First, the Bureau of Land Management: 325 million for construction, "priority road, bridge, and trail repair". Priority, as in, shouldn't that have been taken care of with the funding already given? There must be a lot of trails in bad shape. And the Fish and Wildlife Service gets 300 million for construction, "priority road, bridge, and trail repair". Because fishes need bridges, damn it. And wildlife needs roads, in order to drive their battery-operated vehicles. And there we go with that priority thing again. Hurry up! The fish and wildlife, which now have high-speed internet access, need to get home and check their email.

The National Park Service gets 1.7 billion for construction, because all of that annoying wilderness needs some big buildings and shit. Oh, and National Mall in Washington receives 200 million for repair because it's a lot easier to use tax money than to charge a mere five dollar admission fee to attend the shiny new President's inauguration. The Centennial Challenge, which is already slated to haul in 3 billion over the next ten years, gets an additional 100 million, limited to matching donated funds, because its goal is to make America realize the potential of the National Park System. Got it. I now realize that the NPS needed 3.1 billion in order to have potential.

The Geological Survey gets 200 million for equipment, because rocks are important, too. The Bureau of Indian Affairs receives 500 million for construction of schools, jails, and houses, because the casinos, even though people work there for free, are far too poor to provide such an infrastructure. And the Hazardous Substance Superfund of 800 million is absolutely necessary, because how else are hazardous materials going to get funding? The "Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund Program" has to have 200 million because Mr. And Mrs. Underground Storage Tank lost their children's inheritance when the stock market tanked (pardon the pun). A trust fund for the young Tanks is just the thing needed.

State and Tribal Assistance Grants come to 8.4 billion where the majority of the money "shall be for capitalization grants for the Clean Water State Revolving Funds". Just so everyone knows, these are already funded at about 5 billion dollars annually. This is what water treatment costs in the U.S. But more is needed. And don't think for a minute that any of this funding goes anywhere else. Because it doesn't. That we know of. I think.

Forest Service: 650 million for construction, because it costs a lot to saw down those damned trees and build stuff that they can actually use. Like internet cafes for all of the wireless high speed computers, and roads for the battery operated cars. Related to that is Wildland Fire Management at 850 million, because sometimes we have to burn stuff. Again, because of the inability for the poor and struggling casinos to make a profit, Indian Health Facilities gets 550 million.

The Smithsonian gets 150 million for maintenance projects because charging a small entrance fee to offset such costs would be downright capitalistic. And last, and apparently least, the National Endowments for the Arts receives 50 million, and the tradition of funding only matching donated funds is not required.

According to my abacus the total so far is 132.412 billion. This bill had better hurry up and start spending some real money, and quick.

Next: Chapter Nine – Get A Job

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Seven - The Gestapo

If the other guy was still in charge, I bet that a lot more of this bill would be devoted to funding the Homeland Security people, but the new guy seems to want to run a leaner Gestapo. Starting with the Sea Ports of Entry, 100 million for "non-intrusive detection technology" (don't they still call those things x-ray machines?). To repair and construct inspection facilities at land ports of entry, 150 million, but it doesn't specify if this includes rubber gloves for those infrequent yet memorable body cavity searches. Aviation Security gets a cool 500 million for explosives detection systems, and the Coast guard gets 150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges. Of course, that last portion of funding could be eliminated by simply flying any aircraft found to have explosives from the new Aviation Security detection system into the bridge that's doing the obstructing. Problem solved.

Emergency Food and Shelter gets 200 million to feed and house the homeless and illegal immigrants. Speaking of illegal immigrants, there is section of this bill that buys section 401b (which directly affects sections 402 and 403) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 five more years of enforcing the rules on the books about verifying proper identification when employing people (and yes, I went to the trouble to research this because I am thorough). Because there is nothing worse than an irresponsible illegal immigrant. This must be why we need the shelters.

The remaining few pages of this portion of the bill reminds the Gestapo that it has to keep spending the money allotted from the other existing bills that are now law.

That was a lot of work for very little return, but we're at 117.437 billion dollars and we've solved the homeless crisis.

Next: Chapter Eight – The Good Earth

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Six - Show Me The Money

We come to a wordy section of the bill, all about Financial Services and General Government, that starts out simple enough by giving some love to the Federal Buildings Fund: 7.7 billion, of which one billion must go toward construction, repair, and alteration of border facilities. I can tell you first hand, that while I'm waiting an hour or two to be interrogated by the United States representative whenever I cross the border, my main concern is how much more beautiful the facilities should be. Same thing with the Internal Revenue Service, I mean, if I'm going to have to get a big stick rammed up my ass and lose lots of money to the government that I could have been using to stimulate the economy, the least that they can do is to remodel the building for me.

And it's about time that the government got some Electric Cars: 600 million. Especially now that they're subsidizing the battery-makers, because it would be a damned shame to have batteries for electric cars and no electric cars to put them in.

Then the bill starts to get boring, wordy, and downright confusing. The best that I can make out is that the government will continue to guarantee small business loans in existing legislation, but with some increases, percentage-wise. Unfortunately, it's impossible to calculate how much more money is going to be spent. I have no choice but to trust the Small Business Administration on this one. Oh, and if you're an illegal alien, you can’t have any money. Except for Welfare, of course.

There is one place that stipulates loans to small businesses can't exceed a total of: 3 billion, so it is entirely possible that I'm merely skeptical of that limit by all of the pages of SBA wordiness. Also know that you're limited to 10 million dollars. And we can't forget the administrative cost of loaning 3 billion dollars to small businesses, which is: 426 million.

We're only up to 116.337 billion so far. Probably. Hopefully. And we have electric cars!

Next: Chapter Seven – The Gestapo

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Five - Take The Power Back

In the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt, no debt created by government is complete without energy and water. This is because energy companies never seem to turn a good enough profit.

It starts with funding for construction by the Army Corps of Engineers: 2 billion. Well, construction, except "that funds provided in this paragraph may only be used for programs, projects or activities previously funded". In other words, remember that money you got in order to build something? Well here's some more. Keep building it. Just hurry up. And that Mississippi River project: 250 million, same goes for that.

And the Army Corps of Engineers also gets for Operation and Maintenance: 2.2 billion, as long as they don't build anything new. Just operate and maintain, and do it with a Regulatory Program: 25 million. It doesn't say what to regulate. Just regulate something. Operate, maintain, and regulate.

Water Reclamation: 500 million, but there's a catch – it has to be able to pay for itself within 25 years. This shouldn't be a problem, however, because by then, adjusting for the future value of the dollar, it's about what the average consumer will pay for water every month.

Renewable Energy: 18.5 billion. The money is divided up, most of it goes toward either batteries (I had no idea that batteries were renewable), or the Weatherization Assistance Program, which will make people in the insulation and caulking industries happy. I was hoping for windmills and solar panels. Maybe even some hydrogen. Luckily, I can press my investments in Home Depot and The Energizer Bunny. And for Electricity Delivery: 4.5 billion. Because there just aren't enough wires.

Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program: 1 billion. What's that you say? Batteries dead in your flashlight? Out of cash? Worry no more! I have no idea how this works, the bill certainly doesn't explain it, but if my electricity delivery person fails to show up it's nice to know that I can borrow some batteries.

Institutional Loan Guarantee Program: 500 million and Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program: 8 billion. This isn't explained in the bill. My guess is that someone who is innovative with their technology can step right up and get a loan. But only innovative people who would really need it. Someone like Bill Gates, for example.

Fossil Energy: 2.4 billion. Because we need to burn more carbon. And just when I thought that we already covered it, apparently there needs to be more Science: 2 billion. This is for the "America Competes Act", which sends money to the National Science Foundation, among other things. And for when the burning carbon or dropped test tubes make a mess, there is money for Environmental Cleanup: 500 million.

In case the Power Companies need money, they can have some. Western Area Power Administration: 3.2 billion, ostensibly a loan, forgivable, and Bonneville Power Administration: 3.2 billion, ostensibly a loan, can remain outstanding. All of the other Power Companies can go screw themselves. Or get better lobbyists.

The total so far comes to 104.611 billion, but the good news is that we're about one quarter way through the bill already.

Next: Chapter Six – Show Me The Money

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Four - Defense Wins Championships

It seems only fair that if the government is going to print up and spend 825 billion dollars, that some of it should go toward defense, single most important aspect of Federal government. Heck, some communist countries sink most of their GDP into it, and rely on aid from other countries to take care of everything else. You know what they say, defense wins championships.


Facility Infrastructure: 4.5 billion. According to the bill, most of the money goes to the Army and the Air Force. The idea is to "improve, repair, and modernize the Department of Defense", and to "restore and modernize Army barracks". Pentagon? Hah! What we need is an Octagon! With a bat-cave and a fleet of bat-mobiles. And those antiquated army barracks must go, they're behind the times. Replace the coffee makers with espresso machines, boom-boxes with iPods, and cots with futons. No remodel would be complete without bay windows and walk-in closets.

Also included is Energy Research: 350 million. This goes toward development, test, and evaluation. Blindly, boldly, and without direction. Just like most military projects.

We're at 55.611 billion, not including Bruce Wayne's consulting fee.

Next: Chapter Five – Take The Power Back

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Three - Traded, Jaded, And Sedated

Continuing on in our tour of the Stimulus Plan, the next section is Commerce, Justice, and Science. It's a baffling combination. Why they combined three seemingly unrelated areas is beyond me. But again, what do I know? I'm just some dumb-ass with a calculator.

It begins with administrative funding for Economic Development: 250 million dollars. Okay, so apparently the U.S. has an economy, and apparently, it is insufficiently developed. We need administration! The good news is that apparently it takes only half as much to administrate economic development as it does to administrate & distribute food and nutrition programs. Next comes Periodic Censuses and Programs: 1 billion. It's important to count people, and we need more statistics because statistics give the government reasons to create money and save the economy, as insufficiently developed as the economy apparently is. And this provides jobs! Clipboard, pencil, and go! I bet that clipboard and pencil manufacturers are loving this.

Administrative costs for National Telecommunications and Information: 350 million dollars. Apparently, broadband needs to be administrated. I guess I'm lucky. I have broadband here in Mexico, and my administrative costs are, um, nothing. Must be the exchange rate. Wireless and Broadband Deployment: 2.8 billion. I love the word deployment. I picture a massive number of geeky former cable-installers quickly marching throughout the countryside with wireless, high-speed modems, fighting the good fight in the war against dial-up. This is directly related to the Digital to Analog Converter Box Program: 650 million. Because nothing beats taking shiny new digital technology and converting it into good old analog. Well, except that giving partial credit toward purchasing televisions that receive a digital signal would create a lot of new jobs. Wait...

Moving along, we come to Scientific and Technical Research: 100 million (70 million for necessary expenses of the Technology Innovation Program and "$30,000,000 shall be available for the necessary expenses of the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership.") Now, before you get all bent out of shape over the 30 million going to the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, otherwise known as MEP, it's a non-profit organization. That doesn’t mean it's free, though. It's like church. You attend, and they pass the plate. Think of it as your government giving a little bit to the church, and you'll feel better. Wait...

Construction of Research facilities: 300 million. I have no idea what's going to be constructed, but for 300 million, I bet that it's awesome. And to NOAA Operations, Research, and Facilities: 1 billion. NOAA is already outstanding, I hit their web site daily. I can see storm cells approaching a full hour before they actually hit. With that extra billion, I reckon I'll be able to count the raindrops on my roof. I'll need that information if the census takers come around.

State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance: 3 billion. With State and local governments forced to spend money on lobbyists to get their fair share of funding in this bill, it's nice to see the Federal government reciprocate by providing funding in order to re-hire the cops that had to be laid off. And for Community Oriented Policing Services: 1 billion. Hell, the acronym alone is worth a billion. COPS! And I can't stress enough the accounts I've read where the police just weren't sufficiently community oriented. "Robber who shot store clerk is shot by police!" It's such a shame. If only the police would have been more community oriented.

NASA: 600 million. I'm happy to see government of the United States of America willing to fund a one-way trip back to the moon. Maybe those soon to be rich folk in the urban sector will pitch in and we can get the rocket ship back home. Also, for reasons beyond my simple mind's ability to contemplate, 50 million of NASA's money goes toward already guaranteed disaster relief from a previous disaster. Lastly, the National Science Foundation: 3 billion. This goes toward research and related activities. Related activities are, um, you know, related activities. It isn't important, I guess, to define related activities, it's only 3 billion dollars.

My calculator says 50.761 billion so far, but at least we won't be going back to the moon anytime soon, so we're in good shape.

Next: Chapter Four – Defense Wins Championships.

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter Two - The Care And Feeding Of Farmers And Ranchers

The second section in the Stimulus Package concerns Agriculture, Nutrition, and Rural Development. Agriculture concerns food, food is nutritious, and farms and ranches are rural. I am sort of confused on the concept of rural development though, as I always considered rural as undeveloped on purpose. I mean, once you develop rural you normally get something urban. But what do I know? I'm no Jedi Knight.

First on the list is buildings and facilities - rental payments, construction, repair, and maintenance: 251 million. I never knew that the Department of Agriculture even had many buildings, much less that they paid rent or were forced to, um, count seeds in substandard structures. This makes me feel uninformed. Also, I had no idea that rental payments created jobs. They probably taught that in Economics 101 in college, maybe I was out that day.

For the Farm Service Agency, additional salaries and expenses for maintaining and modernizing a technology system: 245 million. This makes sense, because the U.S. is so far behind the Russians in farming technology I was thinking that they'd never catch up. At least now they are trying. And watershed and flood prevention: 350 million (but not more than 50 million to one State). It's important to treat states equally, otherwise Rhode Island wouldn't get their fair share, and Louisiana might get too much. And watershed rehabilitation: 50 million. Because when watersheds become felons, they need to be locked up and rehabilitated. Once watersheds are rehabilitated and set free to become a part of rural society, studies prove that only in rare cases does such rehabilitation fail. Statistically, very few rehabilitated watersheds become repeat offenders.

The rural community advancement program: 5.8 billion, ostensibly as loans. Rural communities are so behind the times. Modernize those facilities, you farmers and ranchers! We need urbanization, dammit! And funding for administrative costs of ostensibly loaning 5.8 billion dollars: 1.8 billion. Because loaning money costs lots of money! And don't forget about the Rural Housing Insurance Fund: 22.1 billion, ostensibly as loans. Because rural housing can't be insured enough. And while the bill doesn't exactly say what rural housing insurance is, it's important. It must be, or it wouldn't require 22.1 billion dollars. The funding for administrative costs of ostensibly loaning 22.1 billion dollars: 501 million dollars. This is because, the reciprocal of the cost of loaning 5.8 billion dollars being 1.8 billion dollars is that the cost of loaning 22.1 billion dollars is 501 million dollars. You know, less is more, and more is less. It's the new math.

Rural Utilities Service Distance Learning, Telemedicine, and Broadband Program: 2.8 billion. This is so that farmers and ranchers have the same access and ability to download high-speed and wireless pornography as the city-slickers do. This is important because farmers and ranchers have spent less time working lately since dial-up is so slow. It isn't fair that someone in New York City can enjoy both corn from Nebraska and high-speed broadband pornography, when farmers in Superior, Nebraska have to settle for dial-up.

Finally, the administrative & distribution costs for Food and Nutrition Programs: 500 million. There are so many families that don't realize that they qualify for food stamps and free school lunches, it's about time that the government spent some money to get the word out.

Now we're up to 36.711 billion. But hey, Yoda's ability to update his MySpace page from the planet Dagobah sort of makes it worth it, don't you think?

Next: Chapter Three – Traded, Jaded, and Sedated.

The Stimulus Miracle: Chapter One - Birth Of A Jedi Knight

There is a bill, which has passed through Congress and seems destined to pass the Senate, referred to as "The Stimulus Package". Economies of any country, even the United States of America, rise and fall and rise and fall, and so on, regularly and unpredictably, because this is the nature of economy in a free market. Or, at least, it was. Apparently, government has the ability to fix this random behavior. I remain skeptical, but what do I know? I certainly don't enjoy seeing businesses fail and people out of work.

The expected number of jobs to be created by this bill is 3,675,000 new positions. For the heck of it, I pulled out a calculator. Holy crap! I'll never doubt the government again. Here I was thinking that these new jobs would amount to nothing but low-paying labor positions, but much to my surprise, each new job will pay out $224,489.80 dollars which is almost six years worth of salary for the average worker. This is assuming that all of the money actually goes towards its goal. But it will, I'm sure. At least, I'd like for that to happen.

I decided to take a closer look at this bill, because it isn't every day that a government creates 825 billion dollars out of thin air.

"A BILL - Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, this Act may be cited as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009".

Bills always start off sounding so promising. But the meat of the bill is what I am after, in other words, where is all of this 825 billion dollars going to go? Starting with General provisions:

Offices of Inspector General & Government Accountability Office for oversight and audit of programs, grants, and projects funded under this Act: 2.3 billion dollars.

Administrative costs are understandable. Especially when one considers that a committee has to ensure that the following provisions are followed:

"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool."

Apparently, none of these endeavors provide jobs. And are evil. Or wet. And golf, well, we all know about golf, and even if the television ratings of golf tournaments are far higher than those of, say, soccer matches in the U.S., golf is just too boring. And don't get me started on swimming pools, those snarky lifeguards and smug pool maintenance people piss me off. And everyone knows that employees of zoos, aquariums, and gambling establishments work for free, for the love of their hobby. So far, I'm down.

Another provision that must be closely watched for compliance is that construction projects funded by the bill must use steel produced in the U.S. This is important because of the ever-thriving steel industry in the U.S. See, the lying bastards that told you that the steel industry in the U.S. died because they couldn't compete with the Japanese and then the Chinese were wrong. It's a conspiracy. Honest.

So, the President appoints a seven-member board to conduct oversight of spending. After all, you can't trust just anyone with 825 billion dollars, freshly printed cash money, these people must be hand selected. The board members are chosen from the same departments where the President just nominated Secretaries. This is a lucky coincidence. The first thing that they will do is to create a web site so that you can see how wonderful everything is going. And it will be wonderful, you just wait and see.

Next, the President selects an independent advisory panel consisting of five people. I know what you're thinking: "But if the President selects an independent advisory council, isn't that conflicting what with the President selecting the board?" No. Congress and the Senate have come to learn that President Obama is actually Obi-Wan Kenobi. The force is with him, and only good flows through his light-saber.

The board gets $ 14,000,000.00 because Obi-Wan says so.

So far, we've spent 2.314 billion dollars. But we do have a Jedi Knight. I think it's worth it.

Next: Chapter Two – The Care and Feeding of Farmers and Ranchers

Floating

"This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are." ~ Plato

* * * *
They always let themselves in, because they are Rocio’s parents, and because this is Mexico and people really do marry the entire family here. I reckon that I am married to a lot of people, then, and many have keys to my house. My home is many things, it is a pit stop and a sports lounge and a restaurant and a public bathroom, and all of these things are conveniently situated near the main boulevard. There are currently several huge sacks, each filled with several hundred crushed aluminum cans sitting in my living room.

"Guess what happened?" she asked in Spanish as I emerged from my office this morning before nine o’clock, robed and disheveled and still choking down my first cup of coffee.

I didn’t want to guess. Maybe they were going to turn my living room into a recycling center. Perhaps Mexico was no longer trading in pesos and the crushed aluminum can is the new currency. Possibly, owing to the great bean bag chair craze back some forty years ago, they were bringing us the latest trend in home furnishing, the crushed aluminum can chair.

"We went down to turn these in and the recycling center is closed!" She laughed.

This time I had an answer.

"Yes, well, this is a holiday."

"Which holiday?" she asked.

Some Mexican holidays, much like many on the other side of the big metal fence, are now considered to be floating holidays. The fifth day of February is Constitution Day in Mexico, but now it floats to the nearest Monday. Today is also Ground Hog Day. Today is also my late grandmother’s birthday. Today is also Día de la Candelaria, an obscure religious holiday in Mexico celebrating the blessing of seeds and candles. Some days on the calendar are busier than others.

* * * *
Yesterday, Rocio’s parents came down the hill and watched the super bowl, the spectacle that defines American Football, even though neither understands the game. Soccer is infinitely more simple. Kick a ball into the net. American football is complicated, a game of controlled war without ammunition. They seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. Maybe they liked the halftime show.

Anna is a New England Patriots fan. I would like to tell you exactly how this happened, but I can’t. It seems that she just woke up one day and made a decision. She owns a New England Patriots cap and wears it whenever they show a game on television. One time I tried to give her an historical perspective on her favorite team. I lost her at Jim Plunkett, back in the days when they were called the Boston Patriots. This is what happens.

Everybody ate my first attempt at cooking mole verde, and even though I screwed it up, it was received with rave reviews. One ingredient, a very important one that I completely omitted by mistake, was cilantro. I have a large bag full of cilantro and I completely forgot it! Another ingredient that I knew nothing about, but apparently essential in all green mole, is pumpkin seeds. How would I have known?

I am still learning their food and I am still learning their holidays, but I am gaining on both.

* * * *
The large sacks of Aluminum cans remain static in my living room tonight. I presume that they’ll be gone at some point tomorrow. Before they left this morning, Rocio’s parents again congratulated me on the mole verde, which I knew wasn’t quite right, and so I did the best that I could to be humble in accepting their compliments. When Rocio came home, I mentioned this to her, that her parents have had many of my dishes here that are far more complex, everything from caldo de siete mares to paella. Why would they go so far out of their way to compliment my first attempt at mole when I know that it wasn’t quite right?

"You have to understand," Rocio said. "Mole isn’t just a dish, it is the defining Mexican dish, and it is complex and unique. Family recipes are guarded and passed down from generation to generation. On your first attempt, you surpassed anything that I could ever do, and you’re not even Mexican! We knew what ingredients that you left out because we know. And we also know what you put in. No one told you how to do this, and you did it, the mole was really good."

"Next time, roasted pumpkin seeds and cilantro," I smiled.

"And don’t precook the onions, they need to be raw," she added.

Unless I’ve forgotten some holiday, I’ll be going to the other side of the big metal fence tomorrow. Rechargeable batteries, kidney beans, and cayenne pepper are on my grocery list for items I have a heck of a time procuring in Mexico. But I’ll be trying mole verde again very soon. And I’ll keep my eye on the Mexican calendar, just in case some floating holiday is looming to confuse Rocio’s parents.

Those big sacks of aluminum cans make for very uncomfortable chairs.

Rapid And Sudden Collapse

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

~ "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams

* * * *
People come and go like clearance sales and lottery tickets, much as all events that are sometimes ordinary but fill some empty spaces for memory in our thick and stubborn skulls. We are certainly here temporarily, and while the important components of life serve as donkeys that we use to haul around such memories, it is these donkeys that we most neglect to address. All of the times I’ve crossed the border into the United States of America, many of which were quite eventful, will only serve mostly as wasted moments and dubious opportunities at storytelling - of occasionally angry tales involving inhumane treatment of tourists and expatriates, and several inadequate and poorly trained gatekeepers. I have crossed that border thousands of times along with thousands of other people who likely have their own bad memories.

The border is the donkey and my many crossings are packed onto it, its legs buckling under the weight, and it stands obstinate and unfriendly in its burden.

Richard Millhouse Nixon opened the current National Border facilities at San Ysidro, California, by deciding to have every vehicle entering the United States of America thoroughly searched for a period of twenty-four hours. President Nixon was somehow convinced that people were smuggling contraband into the United States of America about as easy as rivers carry water. They didn’t find anything of note back then, which only proved that Nixon was a few decades too early. Many people have bad timing; this is not a trait limited to those who hold office.

Timing was not an issue with me on Monday, nor did I have anything with which to burden the beast. For the first time in many, many years, I timed it perfectly - a border crossing in which I had absolutely no wait. I walked up to the gatekeeper and actually had to fish identification out of my pocket at her counter, when usually I have a good long time to have everything ready to present by the time I get up there. I wanted to do a dance except that it was ten o’clock in the morning and I had a tequila hangover, two circumstances that discourage spontaneous celebration of any kind.

* * * *
It wasn’t but a week ago that I awoke to the radio and to a voice that informed listeners that the Joint Forces Command of United States of America placed Mexico at risk of rapid and sudden collapse, on equal footing with Pakistan. After I stopped laughing, I began to wonder then, if they are so incorrect about Mexico, how accurate could they possibly be about Pakistan? The voice on the radio said the worry about Mexico was from fears that violence by the cartels and how this was something that the Mexican government was having a difficult time controlling. I shrugged and got dressed and came downstairs to make some coffee and read.

Apparently, the United States of America has its own issues controlling violence up there, according to the news reports I read every day.

Then I read about the four hundred million dollars in aid that the United States of America is gifting Mexico, in order to fight the war on drugs. This aid is not being given in the form cash money, but in equipment. The United States of America also estimates that the value of the drugs that are smuggled into their country each year from Mexico are valued at somewhere between ten and twenty billion dollars. I didn’t need to break out a calculator in order to realize that someone up there failed mathematics.

* * * *
I did my business over there quickly and efficiently and made my way back over to this side of the big metal fence. I looked for any sign of impending rapid and sudden collapse and I found nothing out of the ordinary. The tourists are still mostly missing, the Mexicans in Centro still do what they can do to survive in spite of it, and everyone else here seems quite fine. I met up with Scott and we had a few beers and I asked him what he thought of the possibility of a rapid and sudden collapse here. Scott laughed.

"I wouldn’t know," he said. "Everything looks normal to me."

I bought some tacos and took them home, watching out the window of the taxi, looking for signs of civil unrest. People here were just being people. I walked in the door and Anna was watching television. My tacos tasted every bit as wonderful as they always have. From my office, I could even hear my neighbor Ted over the hum of my radio, in his backyard and tinkering with metallic objects getting ready to fire up the grinder. Everything was just fine.

I hope that everything is just fine in Pakistan, too.

Bringing Home The Bacon

I told Anna to grab a jacket - unsure of what was going on outside, the suddenly unpredictable climate here produced rain yesterday along with some sunshine. I needed to go to the supermarket, and Anna is great insurance in cases like forgetting something important the moment after I walk out of the store – if I am alone, I have to make two trips, but with Anna, I can send her in while I wait.

"Do we have to take the cart?" Anna asked, obviously hoping for a quick trip

"We’re taking the cart."

How embarrassing for her! To be seen with her father toting along one of those carts that the old ladies use to carry their goods home must be a traumatic event for a teenager. To keep Anna’s mind off of it, I handed her my camera, and told her to shoot whatever she wanted to.

"Except for me pulling the cart," I added. "That’s off-limits."

The other thing I reminded her was that taking pictures inside of a business in Mexico is technically not legal unless you first get permission. If I had been the one with the camera there would have been trouble, or at least they would have wanted money for the privilege of photographing their shiny offerings. A fifteen-year old native, however, innocently practicing her hobby, would either be overlooked or else warned to stop.

Off to the market we went.

Calimax Fiesta. Calimax is a large chain of grocery stores in Mexico. At one time they nicknamed each store, and one could actually navigate Tijuana using the different stores as road markers.

* * * *
Even fifteen years ago, many supermarkets here were not well stocked nor regularly maintained. My initial perceptions, tainted by the clean markets with an abundance of inventory in the United States of America, were not based so much from what I was experiencing but more from what I had experienced. I saw the stores as dirty and inadequate. And they were, except that Tijuana has changed a lot in seventeen years. But back then there was no way to quickly build more supermarkets.

I love these chiles. From left to right, serrano, güerito, jalapeño, california, pasillo, and morón (or bell).

Chile California, also known as Green Chile, is always sold fresh here, it is difficult to find it canned.

Imagine San Diego with no more than perhaps thirty supermarkets. Most of these supermarkets would become so overcrowded with customers that no matter how much labor it took in order to maintain the stores, it would quickly turn into a somewhat hopeless endeavor. And supermarkets operate on the principle of selling in large volume in order to lower their profit margin and be competitive, which precludes spending money unless it’s necessary. The solution, or at least the best solution, would be to build more stores.

Fresh strawberries. In January.

Cilantro, radishes, and green onions belong together, they are all garnishes for tacos here.

Tijuana was in a constant state of flux twenty years ago, acting as a leaky portal into the relatively stable economy on the other side of the big metal fence. The population grew at a rate where Tijuana’s infrastructure, already inadequate for the population that existed even twenty years prior, became so heavily burdened that every large storm was a disaster and systems designed to provide the population with basic necessities failed regularly. Mexico’s economy, for a wide variety of reasons – including an often-corrupt government and a lack of sound regulation in banking and finance – was in a constant state of crisis.

Building new stores was not an option for most of the supermarket chains. Who would finance them?

The scales weigh in kilos and the prices are in pesos. Other than that, and some of the produce and fruit sold, it isn’t all that different than anywhere else.

* * * *
There will always be differences in supermarkets when comparing Mexico to anywhere else, most of which are cultural. Anna was born and raised in Tijuana, and while she’s seen supermarkets in the United States of America, she has not experienced the changes that I have in presentation concerning the stores here. I didn’t pay much attention to what she was up to, but I did catch her taking pictures of the dairy section.

"Why are you shooting that?"

"Look at all of this milk!" she said.

"Honey, most places have milk."

"Yes, but dad, look at all the milk!"

I shut up after that and concentrated on shopping. Anna, when not shooting pictures or poking fun at some of my purchases or not advising me on the brand of toilet paper that mom prefers, took every opportunity to use any mirror that she ran across in order to assure that her hair was still perfect. I never realized what a priority this is for a teenaged girl until recently. I always thought that the supermarkets used mirrors in order to promote the perception of inventory depth, obviously a mistake on my part.

Produce. I sent Anna to get me a head of lettuce. I guess she wanted a souvenir.

Nuts!

There are items, and large sections of all supermarkets in Mexico that I find endearing. While the markets have begun to prepackage many meat and poultry products, the butcher counters here can’t be beat. And cheeses, I have never seen so much fresh cheese before, the variety is amazing. Twenty years ago, I never imagined that there was such a thing as a style of chorizo, but there are so many styles I couldn’t even begin to explain it all in a sentence or two. These are the most profound differences compared to the supermarkets that I grew up with.

The locals love their eggs, which are relatively inexpensive here.
Mexico’s supermarkets offer a vast selection of sugary goo. Don’t even begin to ask me, I have no idea what the attraction is.

* * * *
The supermarkets in Tijuana began to change during the approach to the twenty-first century, whether by coincidence or by the effects from several changes that occurred at the time. The big metal fence, once porous and relatively easy to traverse, became increasingly difficult to get through, around, or under, and Tijuana’s permanent population began to cement itself, and less migrants arrived for what once was simply a pit stop. Concurrently, the economy in Mexico began to stabilize, in large part due to the diligence and patience of the Zedillo administration. Banks and other financial institutions were scrutinized, and regulated, and financing became an option once again.

More types of picante and chile sauce exist than I ever imagined. Appropriately, lime presses hang nearby, because chile and lime go into everything here. Soup, shrimp, potato chips, and whatever.

Many supermarkets here have their own bakery inside. The breads are outstanding, although the locals seem to prefer pastries from the smaller bakeries.

It didn’t take but a few years into the twenty-first century before supermarkets started popping up everywhere in Tijuana. Most are now clean, well stocked, and not so impossibly crowded as they once were. Notable exceptions still exist in the more urban areas, where building more stores is not so much an option due to unavailability of land. While the peso is fluctuating and the World economy is volatile and affecting Mexico as much as anyone, so long as this squall can be ridden out, Tijuana’s supermarkets every bit as wonderful and often times better than anywhere I have ever shopped.

As much as these people love their beans, you would think that I could find a kidney bean somewhere in all of this. Not a chance.

And this is just some of the packaged cheeses. There is more in the other side of the case, and a long counter that sells fresh cheeses.

* * * *
The last stop in the supermarket was the tequila section, where a young lady kept trying to assist me with my selection. This was nice of her, even if it is her job. Both me and Anna kept attempting to politely hint to her that I was fine left alone to browse the massive inventory and choose my own poison, but it wasn’t until I put a bottle in my cart that she stopped trying to be helpful. We found a short line - any other Saturday in the afternoon in that same supermarket around the time that Anna was born and we would have been in line for checkout for at least on hour. These days, it is the easiest thing about grocery shopping here.

This is my counter is my nemesis. Here is where you purchase Chorizo, bacon, lunchmeat, and so on. The last time I was here, there were thirteen people behind the counter, I stood there for five minutes looking at them, until finally someone asked me if I wanted anything. I was then asked five times if I wanted some hamon de pavo (ham-flavored processed turkey). Just bacon (unpackaged, you can buy it in whatever quantity you need) and chorizo, thank you.

Check-out. Young boys and girls bag your groceries for a small tip.

Anna and me rolled our goods over to a counter near the exit where, upon entry, people are encouraged to check for storage anything that they happen to be bringing into the store. We were there for the cart, the embarrassing thing that I use when I don’t wish to carry forty pounds of groceries for a few blocks. We had to wait for an older man who came in to do some shopping, he was having the young lady behind the counter stash what he had brought in with him. Two stacks of aluminum cans, three very long and sharp and heavy steel rods (try bringing that into a supermarket in your country), and a minute later, we got our cart.

It’s nice to know that some things here will never change, no matter what the economy brings.

(Photos courtesy Anna M. L. de Dodd)

Nearly Tourists

Because these things happen, it was no longer ninety degrees yesterday, as it had been here for over a week. After the forty-degree days of a few weeks ago, I have no idea whether to bring a jacket or wear a tank top. The weather, the stock market, and the money exchange rate are fluctuating madly, in spite of the new guy in charge of things on the other side of the big metal fence. Rocio’s parents stopped by yesterday morning, they have never been over there and they don’t much care to go, but they are curious sometimes about the politics.

"So, this new guy is going to stop the war over there?" they asked, or at least they were waiting to hear what I had to say about it. My son - their grandson, is over in Iraq at the moment on his second tour. They think that he is stationed in Germany. Rocio says that it’s better this way.

"Apparently," I said, "but Obama’s about to learn a lot of information that none of us will probably ever know. I have no idea what will happen next."

The distressing news to me was that our local fruiteria seems to be closed now. I shouldn’t be so surprised, as their inventory had been shrinking for quite some time. It was convenient, and the fruit and vegetables were mostly really good, better than in the supermarket. And they had the best pork chorizo in town.

The fruiteria, days before it closed. Not much there, but what they had was excellent.

I grabbed a coat and headed out to the boulevard to get a cab. The sky wasn’t sure what it wanted to do, there was sun and there was overcast and it even sprinkled a little bit all of the way to Centro. I crammed myself into a collectivo with eight other people and we took off, toward Downtown Tijuana, where we could become nearly tourists.

View from the alley out into the boulevard. Different color cabs identify different routes.

Near the Racetrack, a lot of surprisingly tall buildings.

One of the only remaining relics from the casino, this chimney was used to burn trash.

Finally in Centro, a view looking north at the dwellings that cling to the hill on the other side of the Tijuana River.

* * * *
The Nuevo Perico was again almost empty on Monday, and so there we were, the unusual suspects, gathered around on one end of the bar along with some not too unusual suspects. Scott and me stayed for a good long time, swapping stories and so on, others came and went, only to show up later somewhere else. Run an errand, have a beer, run another errand, have another beer, many locals spend a day this way.

Thankfully, I always seem to miss karaoke day.

The Nuevo Perico, from the back facing toward the front door.

Two lovely young local girls enjoy a beer during a break from work.

That is a genuine regulation NFL football. Honest.

Mexico is different. The local government invents some new rules, many of which make no sense. One of the rules that came up a few years ago was that unless you served food at your establishment, they would shut you down, pull your liquor license, and fine you. Mexican bar owners found ways to comply, serving botanas, or hors d'oeuvres, from makeshift kitchens in order to comply with the new rules. Obviously, there was money involved, too, for the food license. Taxation is an impossible ongoing battle for government here, but they find ways to obtain revenue as potential taxpaying enterprises look for ways to pay as little as they can. It works somehow, for both parties.

Scott reads a Tijuana newspaper while Javier looks at television.

Joe and his family own the Perico. Joe served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Jody arrives and immediately begins to charm the girls.

Me and Jody, arguing. This argument was over his insisting that Jewel was the lead singer for The Cranberries. Other arguments are even more stupid.

Javier left, then Jody left angry and still believing that somehow, Dolores O’Riordan is secretly moonlighting as Jewel, and so Scott and me headed down the street and went to another bar, called Tropics. Tropics is about as close to a dive as a bar can get. Very little in there has changed in twenty years, the beer is cheap, the clientele is often, well, sleeping off last night’s drunk, but it is sometimes open all night. It is sometimes deserted in the afternoon.

Tropics from the front, very long and narrow.

From the back, a good view of the long and oddly shaped bar.

The cantinera drinking yogurt or something.

No idea. A dance move, perhaps?

The rules for operating a bar in Baja are simple. Well, maybe not so simple. The law states that bars may open no earlier than ten in the morning (liquor may not be purchased before that time in a store as well), and may not be sold after two o’clock in the morning. I presume this gives people eight hours to sober up here, unlike Americans who only need four. But there are exceptions. For every hour that a bar stays open after two, a fee must be paid. Obviously, the longer that the bar remains open, the more it costs the bar.

Every so often, sometimes as the government changes guard, the system is scrapped, and a new system is put into place and the fees go up. Suddenly, no one is open past two anymore. The local government, noting the loss in revenue, then negotiates the price down to the level at which some bars are willing to pay. This happens frequently, and makes for some unpredictable moments for those who enjoy drinking all night.

After a beer, I went across the street to the Dandy del Sur while Scott went to grab a few tacos and promised to join me later.

* * * *
The taquero rolls his cart down Calle Sexta getting ready to open up shop. It must be almost six in the evening.

The Dandy, a Tijuana icon.

This guy was sitting where Charlie used to always sit. He’s Italian, and quite a character, he’s been kicked out of the Dandy more times than I can remember. Apparently, he’s a wonderful accountant here, unhindered much by the Italian accent in his Spanish. The locals call him, "Pechetas", which is how he pronounces, "pesetas", which is loose slang for coins, because he is always changing paper money for coins to put into the jukebox where he will play the same song four times in a row. He gets hooked on a song, and plays it over and over again. For a good while, he was also awarded the nickname, "Mr. New York". Apparently, Sinatra has more global appeal than once realized.

No bar can possibly use that many brandy glasses. They are cleaned twice per week anyway, just in case.

A while back, suddenly, smoking was banned in bars in Tijuana. Apparently. Or not. The "No-Smoking" signs are still there, along with the ashtrays and matches. Obviously, money is involved somehow, that perhaps there is a permit to buy. Welcome to Baja.

Javier showed up again right after Pechetas left, and we waited for Scott, drinking beer and I ordered a scotch for desert. Imported booze is expensive, and the government actually sends people around to make sure that the bars in Tijuana aren’t buying cheaper in the United States of America instead of purchasing the stuff in Mexico, which is marked with some official government symbol. Obviously, the way to get around this is to refill the empty bottles with the illegal hooch. Some do, only to buy a new bottle in Mexico whenever the date-stamp makes it necessary.

None of us stuck around there long, all of that drinking can be exhausting, and I need some time for my right wrist to heal a bit. I got some tacos to go and caught a cab home. Like a pitcher, I keep my arm on ice until my next start, next week, when I’ll have another chance to show the tourists how it’s done.

The Dandy is quite popular, especially around midnight, but even at eight in the evening.

Scott is amused by something.

I could write a novel about these two. He’s an American who owns businesses here, she’s his reason for not finding something more profitable.

Sandra, the beautiful and wonderfully smart-ass cantinera in the Dandy, assuming you speak Spanish and appreciate phrases containing a lot of sexual double entendre.

If you see this guy down there, avoid him at all costs! He’s not the tourist that he appears to be.

The Real Tijuana

Sometimes it gets to be a bit chilly in the middle of the night in Baja, and while I realize that this is relatively warm to other places that regularly receive snow and ice and sub-freezing temperatures quite frequently, I don’t appreciate the difference enough to apologize. I’m throwing on a jacket when the thermometer dips below seventy degrees Fahrenheit, no matter where I am and no matter what people might think. One would possibly believe that the indigenous people of Baja might react the same way, but one would possibly be surprised. Right now, someone is outside wearing sandals here, no matter what the temperature.

Believe me, wearing sandals here isn’t for lack of other footwear, they take shoes quite seriously in Mexico.

I was born in San Diego and never took up residence any farther north than Los Angeles. I have visited many places where it gets cold enough to snow, and I am glad that they enjoy it. Please, keep the snow, ski on it, build snowmen, have a great time. I am miserable in it. Nothing is going to change that and I am not missing a thing.

The hottest place I have ever been is Bullhead City, in Arizona, right across from Laughlin, Nevada, on the bank of the Colorado River. It was one hundred and twenty eight degrees Fahrenheit there. I was fine. I wore jeans and a tank top and if someone had decided that I could never leave that place, then even though I would have preferred the temperature to be slightly cooler, I could have lived with it. Everything is a matter of preference and even if it makes no sense to anyone else.

Such is my life and love for Baja California and Tijuana; it is simply a matter of preference.

* * * *
Some of Tijuana is a gimmick-filled showcase for tourism and gambling and drinking and other activities that have made this city famous for almost a century. Avenida Revolución, once a bustling strip of curious stores, cantinas, and pharmacies, wakes up slowly now and goes to bed early, as the tourists have largely disappeared. A decade ago, on almost any evening – even weeknights – walking that avenue at ten in the evening was a lot like walking Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter in downtown San Diego on a Friday night in the middle of summer. People were everywhere.

For those of us who have been here through all of it, from the border tightening its belt after the World Trade Center came down, to the more recent escalation in violence relating to the control of drug trafficking, we feel a sense of sadness. Life in Centro de Tijuana goes on, regardless, that even with half of the businesses shuttered and the other half struggling, there is still enough money there to maintain some sort of hope that one day, maybe, it will all return. We don’t feel sad for ourselves, those of us who simply frequent Centro on occasion, but for the people who have come to rely on the tourism in order to make a living. These people have nothing else to fall back on.

I came into the Perico at around noon the other day, Scott was there with René, a French-American that sometimes frequents Tijuana, and the beer flowed freely for a good long time. Jody showed up shortly after I did, and pretty soon, the majority of the bar was speaking English, by default – Tuesday is a slow day, and it was just the cantinera and us, although Emilio came in and out of the Perico from time to time.

"How’s business?" I always ask Emilio.

"Nada," he always replies, at least in the last few years.

Emilio is a cab driver who has always worked Avenida Revolución; he is coming up on eighty years old. For over forty years the hustle has always been the same, taking tourists to the border for five dollars or for whatever he thinks they will pay above his normal rate. He stands on the corner of Calle Sexta, waiting and hoping, then walks down the street and pops into the Perico out of boredom or sometimes to have a drink. I have no idea how he makes a living any more. Emilio still owes me ten dollars from a few years ago, he never offers to pay it back and I never ask him for it. Emilio can have my ten dollars.

For the gringos it is different for the moment, we are either retired or semi-retired or we work in the United States of America. When our jobs are sometimes eliminated, we can mostly get unemployment checks for a while as we ride out the downturn, until we can find some other way to make ends meet. The Mexicans have no such advantage, they scramble and do whatever they can or grasp desperately to the hope that the tourists return someday. The current President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, gave a speech just the other day promising at the very least that there would be part-time jobs for everyone in order to get through all of this economic drought.

I still have no idea how he is going to accomplish this, but I say good luck Señor Presidente, on behalf of Emilio and hundreds of others who remain waiting for the tourists to return.

* * * *
The real Tijuana lies outside of the cheesy facade that defines Tijuana for the tourists, never mind the zebra-striped donkeys, the strip clubs and the dive bars, the pharmacies and the curios vendors. Away from the tourists, the real Tijuana climbs out of the riverbed sprawling onto the hillsides and out to wherever its fluctuating population will take it. Slowly, as the miles go by in every direction, there are less and less malls and supermarkets and stores and shops, until emerging neighborhoods appear incomplete yet populated, teeming with the lower-middle class people who drive the true economy of Baja California.

Looking north from Infonavit Latinos.

The term Sobre Ruedas means, literally, on wheels, it is a dynamic market that moves from neighborhood to neighborhood from one day to the next, it is in one location on Friday and another on Saturday, and so on. It is like a swap meet or a flea market, except that swap meets are static, and their existing has more to do with the desire of the small-scale seller than the needs of the remote buyer. The sobre ruedas exists primarily to bring the market to the remote neighborhoods, as the market provides the convenience of not having to travel miles and miles in order to buy goods. One or sometimes two times per week, a section of streets are closed or traffic is limited and a market is built for the day.

Small section of the sobre ruedas.

Many booths are so eclectic as to defy explanation.

In remembering my first trip to the sobre ruedas, even before I lived here over seventeen years ago, it felt as though I could have been anywhere in Mexico, and the border could have been a thousand miles away. There were vendors of beef and chicken, manned with two people – one to sell the meat and the other to constantly swing around and keep the flies away. Sellers of produce were everywhere, some of whom sold off a bonus given to him from a long haul of mangoes or tomatoes or whatever he happened to be carrying from the fertile south. This is part of the true economy of Mexico, an economy that remains relatively untapped by a revenue-hungry government.

The wheels inside of the wheels – a candy and nut vendor rolls through the market.

Electrical items and tools, both new and used, are popular attractions.

Construction tools are always in demand as the locals are crazy about construction and remodeling.

Lose a remote control?

The cold weeks of the year, which are few, obviously limit the turnout at the sobre ruedas, but in the spring and deep into the summer, it feels festive and eventful. Neighbors, many of who don’t otherwise find the opportunity to exchange greetings, find each other strolling amongst the booths and they stop and chat for a while. Food is another attraction, featuring everything from pizza to churros and it is cooked on the spot. For anyone who can find it in a sobre ruedas, avocado ice cream is delicious in spite of sounding like an oddly flavored combination.

A shrimp vendor patiently waits for some business.

A small produce stand in front of a graffiti-ridden cinderblock wall.

A churros vendor selling deep-fried dough which is first covered in cinnamon and enough sugar to frighten insulin.

A little too cold for business, the lemonade cart and shaved ice stand sits idle and unattended.

One great feature of the sobre ruedas, other than the atmosphere and the people and the jaw-dropping example of capitalism working at its most basic level, is the items that can sometimes be found there. Used cookware is a favorite target of mine; I own several cast iron skillets that were purchased for a couple of dollars each, which once retreated, have become indispensable. Oven-safe casserole dishes, serving platters, and other assorted kitchenware is among my cooking arsenal, and every so often I wander up the hill to see what else I can find. And the produce, which sports more varieties than one can find in any supermarket, is often of superior quality and usually less expensive than elsewhere.

Leaving the sobre ruedas looking north.

A calafia awaits passengers at the entrance to Infonavit Latinos.

* * * *
We sat in the Perico and drank in spite of the cold - it is likely the chilliest bar in Centro. This works very well in the summer but not so comfortably in the winter. The idea of moving to a warmer cantina never came up because there is no place cheaper to drink than the Perico. We sat and drank all afternoon until the sun went down, and I bought Scott at least three beers and Jody one, and I didn’t count how many times the tap filled my glass, maybe five or six times. I also splurged on a shot of tequila or two, and when I asked for my tab the total came to less than twenty dollars.

"The college isn’t renewing my position," Scott told me, some of his income was from teaching art at a college in San Diego part time.

"It’s the economy. The colleges are also feeling it," I said.

"I have to see if they’re going to extend my unemployment," he sighed.

"If they don’t, you can always go back to the occasional substitute teaching," I told him.

Scott doesn’t much care for babysitting high school students. I don’t blame him. But at least, there is that option. I walked Scott down Calle Sexta and dropped him off at the corner on his way to his apartment and I climbed into a route cab, we agreed to meet on Friday again. I thought about how the tourists never really get to see the real Tijuana, that maybe it would help the local economy if tourism could come to the sobre ruedas.

Then I thought about how maybe there could be a sort of sobre ruedas that consisted of tourists instead of markets, that busloads of tourists could be brought into Centro de Tijuana in the same way that the markets are brought to the remote neighborhoods of Tijuana. And then I drifted off to sleep right there in the cab for a half-hour and awoke just in time to exit at my stop. As I walked the long block home I thought about how lucky I was to be in a place where twelve miles and a nap only cost me eighty-five cents.

(All images courtesy of Anna M. Luna de Dodd)

Everything's Zen

"The reverse side also has a reverse side." ~ Japanese proverb.

I pointed at the crescent moon this evening as me and Anna returned from the store, with ample amounts of beer and flour tortillas in hand, looking forward to a couple of large pots of pozole that Rocio had simmering on the stove. The streets were busy a couple of hours after dark on New Year’s Eve, and the store was crowded with people buying up liquid refreshments for their version of the celebration to bring in the New Year. New Year’s Eve has never been the safest holiday here in Tijuana, but news had spread that the police – local, State, and Federal – were sending a message, setting up checkpoints, and looking for anything.

"See the crescent moon up there? That’s Venus, that very bright star below it," I told her.

"Well, except that it’s a planet and not a star," I quickly corrected myself.

"It’s funny though, why can’t I see any stars?" Anna asked while looking up.

It was true. Even squinting with purpose, not a single star could be seen on what was a relatively clear evening.

"It’s all of these lights. When you were little and we lived up on the hill, there weren’t so many people here. I used to climb up that ladder I made and lay on the roof and look up at all of the stars. They’re still up there, all of those stars, we just can’t see them," I said.

By the time we got home, I was imagining Zen Buddhists turning and walking away from me, ashamed of my lack of recognition for a chance at enlightenment. If a tree fell in the forest and no one was close enough to hear it, would it make a sound? The answer to this kōan varies depending on the Zen teacher, but my answer remains the same: Does the parchment not hear the words that are read from what is written upon it?

Zen Masters of the World, judge me not by my answer, but by my lack of enlightenment!

Anna’s observation was more relevant than I had first considered. We live in a Baja that is faith-based and we are blind to what we can’t see; yet we are supposed to know it’s there. But she questions it, and I sometimes give stupid answers when I should be considering that the question itself is the answer. If one cannot see the stars in the night sky, are they not there? Perhaps Anna is a blossoming Buddhist, and perhaps she proposed a kōan on New Year’s Eve.

It certainly makes me question my parenting skills.

* * * *
The gunshots had subsided, for the most part, since about a half-hour after midnight. Most of the explosions after that were simply large fireworks, growing more and more distant. For a country where guns are illegal, on nights like New Year’s Eve, you learn that a lot of people have guns here. Most of the guns are smuggled into Mexico from the United States of America, unseen and undetected, yet are obviously present and accounted for when bringing in the New Year.

I awoke on the first day of the New Year trying to find Zen in all of it.

I imagined a Mexican family, hard-working and middle-classed, taking a holiday trip up to Northern California to visit relatives. They pile into their van and pay for their tourist visa stamp and permission into their passports and head up the coast of the United States of America. After a wonderful vacation, they come home, and they find themselves interviewed by everyone back in Mexico.

When asked about the drug problem in the United States of America, they would have to answer that, in fact, they witnessed no evidence of drug use at all. They would say that people up there were nice and polite and no one seemed high or under any influence of anything illegal. A conclusion would have to be reached that, empirically, there was no evidence of any illegal drugs in California. This would invite another kōan, perhaps.

If there is no problem with illegal drug use on the other side of the big metal fence, then are people in Mexico not killing each other because of it?

The silent testimonials of over eight hundred dead people would preclude the kōan from have ever being asked. The flip side of that coin, is that in great Zen fashion, the question must be asked anyway. Maybe it just needs to be asked differently, in order to provide attainment. After all, it isn’t the answer, but the insight found in the kōan itself that is important.

* * * *
On New Year’s Eve, when Anna and me returned home from the convenience store, my old friend Ernesto was visiting. We drank beer and ate pozole and talked about everything that was going on in Tijuana. Eventually, as it had to happen, the conversation turned to current events and happenings and then killings and police and the Mexican Army. It is always surprising what two people from completely different cultures find in common when they see such a part of the world at the same time.

We talked about the vacuum, people coming up from all parts of Mexico to fill the void from captured or dead cartel members and arrested or terminated police officers. We talked about how the Mexican Army – once openly corrupt and disgracefully brutal – were now seen as saviors in a region of Mexico where people have been driven to balance on the edge of a coin. It was Ernesto, born and raised in Mexico, with extremely limited English that brought up prohibition in the United States of America, and what consequences of that action brought, even if temporary.

And then we considered a final kōan, one that needed no answer.

If drugs were legal, would they still be smuggled?

Merry Christmas, Ted

Christmas Eve was easy. Rocio’s parents opted for an early meal, breaking with their traditional midnight dinner, and they ate tostadas up the hill while I cooked up two large pots of clam chowder down here. The rain, which had threatened to be steady and strong, instead gifted Baja with a quick and relatively harmless series of sprinkles that fell quietly with lazy disinterest in seriously wetting anything at all. They were home early, and were even hungry when they arrived, so we enjoyed sandwiches and cheeses and chowder and I was in bed by ten o’clock, serenaded by fireworks outside that became more sparse and distant as I slept.

I am not, by nature, prone to violent thought or violent behavior unless my primordial subconscious is somehow tickled or teased in such a way where, as with anyone, some sort of instinctual reflexive response throws a switch and I find myself wishing to beat the snot out of someone. I have a neighbor who, at irregular intervals, is one of the few humans on this planet with this gift. And it isn’t just me, he seems to provoke everyone into realizing that we are, after all, only animals sometimes with habits of instinct that are only realized in extraordinary circumstances. I don’t know his name, so I call him Ted.

Ted enjoys metalworking. Ted’s favorite time to fire up his grinder is after midnight. Ted’s grinder is loud, and so is Ted, he enjoys yelling at his family, in English, especially three or four hours before dawn. There is a story about me chasing Ted off of my front porch one afternoon with a knife that I was using to cut up some pork, because I wouldn’t give Ted money to fix something that I didn’t own which prompted Ted to use English while insulting my mother. Ted stays away from my front door now.

At two o’clock in the Christmas morning, Ted decided to light off his arsenal of explosive devices. Between explosions, many of which dwarfed dynamite by comparison, Ted cursed his lovely family in both English and Spanish. Ted sounded drunk. Rocio, Anna, and Sharon slept right through everything, and if it was any other neighbor, I might have also just slept for a few more hours, but Ted made sure that I was not only enraged but totally wide awake. The fact that it was thirty-eight degrees outside probably saved Ted from an impromptu visit to the Red Cross, as I decided to come downstairs and make coffee rather than to go over to his house and beat the hell out of him.

* * * *
My Christmas morning is a simple matter of logistics and timing. The stuffing has to be cooked before anything else, so at three o’clock in the morning I was making stuffing and an hour later it was cooling. Ted was asleep by then. I rinsed the turkey from the brining, and started in on the bacon and breakfast. Before seven o’clock, I had biscuits ready for the preheated oven and I was creaming my second skillet of gravy. Rocio came downstairs first, followed by Anna. It wasn’t but a couple of years ago that we couldn’t keep Anna from immediately ripping open the presents, and now she’s patient, she would rather have breakfast first.

People like to show up for breakfast here, for whatever reason biscuits and gravy – a food so foreign here that it defies explanation – is probably just as much of a draw as is the turkey dinner. Rocio’s parents came down the hill along with Rocio’s sister, Elizabeth, and then Bibiana, Juan’s occasional girlfriend showed up. While everyone was consuming breakfast, I was busy stuffing the turkey and oiling it up, then covering it all with foil. The turkey went into the oven at eight-thirty. Ted, almost assuredly, was still sleeping.

After they ate, presents were opened. Anna got her digital camera, Rocio got a nice coat and some kitchenware (that I will delight in using), and I got another jacket. I have more jackets now than anyone on this planet that does not own a clothing store. I also got a magic ratchet and socket from Juan, who we spoke with over the internet from where he is deployed in Iraq. Then, everyone decided to go shopping on Christmas day while I called my own parents to wish them a happy Christmas, and Rocio napped.

Ted, obviously, was also napping.

My rice is not so simple as boiling it in water, I steam it first and then cool it, so I got on it right away. I cooked while Rocio napped and everyone else went shopping. I almost hoped that Ted would have found more explosives to detonate, but the early morning activities probably wore poor Ted right out. By the time that Rocio awoke from her nap, I was already heating up the clam chowder from last night, and prepping potatoes and sucking the juices from the turkey pan in order to make gravy. Anna came back with pictures.

Rocio’s folks swinging at a deserted mall here in Baja.

Anna found a large mirror in a public restroom and apparently couldn’t resist.

Everyone snacked while we waited for the turkey to cook. Once that the rice cooled, I scrambled a few eggs and cut up some cooked, leftover chicken from a couple of nights ago, fired up the wok, and fried everything into a soy-infused yummy mixture that went into a casserole dish and into the oven. Anna mashed potatoes and I made gravy, cooked some corn, and got the rolls ready as the turkey came out to rest before the unveiling.

Rocio snacking before Christmas dinner.

Anna bending down to hug Bibi.

The spread, awaiting the rolls.

The Grinch carving the turkey.

* * * *
I was in bed by five in the afternoon, and I slept a full twelve hours. It was a lovely Baja Christmas. The food was outstanding, the company was wonderful, and next year I am brining the turkey again, it was magnificent. Early next week I plan on taking a bowl of clam chowder over to Scott, hopefully his cold has subsided enough to enjoy it. And maybe next year he can come over, and maybe Daniel will stop in as well. I’ll be fully recovered by then.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Ted.

Jerk.

My Lump Of Coal

I am imagining that, as a gift to all of humanity, global warming is taking a vacation so that my environment can continue to be freakishly cold and wet. People everywhere are having flu and colds, in a great show of solidarity, in order to demonstrate the wonderful effects that carbon offsets are having on the health of this planet. Scott is among those selfless heroes, sniffling and hacking for the good of humanity, so he won’t be coming over for Christmas after all. He will instead stay home and continue to fight global warming with germs and involuntary shivers, for the good of us all.

This cold snap is a fortunate occurrence for our proletariat Christmas celebration, that in spite of Scott’s absence I am going to be able to brine a twenty-two pound turkey overnight without taking up precious space in the refrigerator. Good times.

This is the first Christmas that I have been able to procure a whole turkey in Mexico with ease. They sold completely thawed birds at a great discount, but fortunately had some frozen turkeys on hand at highly inflated prices. This turkey is completely thawed now, it sits in a plastic water-filled container awaiting salt and sugar and spices and water. The turkey came from the United States of America, legally I presume, and will feed however many people show up here. I am always surprised by how many people decide to come to my house on Christmas day.

There is a storm brewing off of the Pacific coast, the westward skies are dark and unhappy, and we will have cold rain in a little while that will last well into tomorrow. This will certainly not detour those folks, many of whom I see only one time each year, from showing up and eating a very traditional American Christmas dinner. Many of the guests had never eaten turkey other than in lunchmeat and hot dogs. Gravy was something that I had a hell of a time explaining. Stuffing, which only about half of the people here seem to care for, remains a mystery to many of the natives because I don’t even know where to start.

* * * *
Traditionally, Mexicans observe Christmas at midnight, as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas morning. Tamales and pozole are served, either one or the other or sometimes both, and gifts are exchanged and opened. All of this occurs in the middle of the night. Santa doesn’t slide down the chimney here, mostly because no one has a chimney, but also because everyone is awake when Santa is supposed to be delivering the gifts. I reckon that Santa is expected to pull up a chair, grab a drink, and have some tamales or a nice bowl of pozole.

I embrace plenty of Mexican traditions, but one tradition that I have always insisted on keeping is the American Christmas routine that I grew up with. On Christmas Eve, mom always baked chocolate chip cookies from a wonderful recipe that has never been tampered with over time. Now Anna, for the third year, is in charge of that task here. The Christmas Eve dinner is simple and tasty. A large pot of homemade New England clam chowder is cooked, and served along with sandwiches and cheeses and other tasty snacks.

The first time that I made clam chowder here, everyone just stared at it in awe; I explained that it was a soup and then I had to fight them from attempting to squeeze lime juice into it. Happily, after the first two years, they have fallen in love with it just as it is.

I then get up very early and make biscuits with bacon gravy, another wonderful American breakfast food that has now become a favorite here. The bird is then stuffed and into the oven while I make the trimmings. Breakfast tends to hold folks over until dinner is ready, or else there is usually plenty of clam chowder and sandwiches should anyone get desperately hungry. Dinner is usually ready at three in the afternoon. All of this cooking is my gift, better than anything that I could wrap and stick underneath the tree.

It usually takes me a full day to recover.

* * * *
Rocio’s parents will show up here for Christmas dinner, but they are going to have their own version of Christmas up the hill like they do every year. Rocio and Anna and Sharon will taxi up the hill at nine o’clock this evening like they do every year, unless it is raining so hard that the taxis won’t go there. They will then come home in the middle of the night and sleep, and a few hours after that I will get up and do what I must. People aren’t so willing to discard their holiday traditions, and instead compromise by partaking in duplicity of traditions in order to placate each other’s cultural tendencies.

That, and apparently people really like good food.

As for me, my many years of relying solely on public transportation have surely earned me a truckload of carbon offsets, which will hopefully be delivered very soon. I’ve been patient about it, I haven’t contacted any government organization nor mentioned it to anyone with the authority or capability to lay my just reward at my doorstep. With the coldness around me, I confess that I am losing patience, perhaps I can count on Santa Claus to come through the back door and leave it all underneath the tree. I already have a half can of lighter fluid, and a metal trash can would work perfectly so long as those carbon offsets can heat up this cinderblock house to the point where the adequately ventilated glowing embers would allow me to take off my jacket for a while.

Or else, maybe Santa can send some lumps of coal, I’m not so picky when the fog from my breath betrays what once was a place where the ice cream vendors were making a lot of money not even two weeks ago.

Flow

On Monday, as Anna arrived home early from school just as the sky darkened, the rain began slowly and then ultimately came down hard and thick in a way that seldom occurs here. I waited while poised to make a run for dinner ingredients whenever the rain stopped. I continued waiting until it became apparent that the rain had no intention of making it convenient for me to run down the block to the small local store, down the narrow alley one block and a half away. The supermarket, just across the street from the convenience store, was probably out of the question. The water comes fast down the hills south of us and it pools in the main boulevard, Díaz Ordaz, where it patiently waits across all four lanes for gravity to take it somewhere else.

The storm drains, designed for a much smaller city, sometimes choke helplessly on anything larger than a few sprinkles when the water begins to flow.

The rain had eased slightly as I strapped on my old work boots and began to trudge through the cul-de-sac, over some mud, and then into the alley, which had turned into a river. I walked along the sidewalk looking for somewhere shallow to cross, and all of the way up to the boulevard there was nothing. Another fellow, ten steps ahead of me, turned back and smiled at me helplessly as I caught up to him and we stood there and thought about what to do next.

"We need a bridge," he laughed toward me in Spanish.

He shrugged, and jumped into water that went up to his knees, waded quickly across, and stood triumphantly on the other side of the alley. I retraced my steps back up the alley, three blocks above, where I finally found a spot to cross. I came back down and hugged the narrow sidewalk on the other side of the alley, and twenty minutes later I was buying bacon and ham and beer while remembering how the water was shut completely off for almost three days not two weeks ago.

Those were the days!

I returned forty minutes after leaving for what is normally a five minute errand, and I was already dicing potatoes when Anna came downstairs in her customary fashion, curious and adorable, however adorable that one could imagine a fifteen year old girl who is almost as tall as I am.

"Whatcha makin’?" She asked with that overemphasized colloquial American accent, pretending to have to stand on her toes to look over my shoulder.

"Soup. Cream of chicken with bacon and potato, and some grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Soul-warming food for the coldness," I told her.

"How was it out there?" she inquired.

"A river. But it’ll never be as bad as it was around the time that you were born," I said.

Anna waited for me to tell the story, but instead I found myself singing the National Anthem of Canada for no apparent reason.

"Dad, you are so weird," Anna told me.

"Probably. But nothing was weirder than the Gigante market in Las Brisas a few weeks before you were born," I started.

* * * *
In the summer of nineteen hundred and ninety two, we rented our first house in Tijuana. It was located on the north side of the Tijuana river, in a small neighborhood on a hill, and it was called Guaycura, which could have been anywhere in Tijuana so far as I was concerned. All I knew is that it was hotter than hell inside of that house, so I spent an unusual amount of time outside. I found work quickly in an American maquiladora, a job I quickly grew to hate, but I was used to hating wherever I worked.

It began raining in early January, right about the time that I quit that job and we moved across the river onto a larger hill on the south side, Infonavit Latinos. It was the first time that I had ever heard of El Niño, that occasionally unpredictable cyclical anomaly whereby unseasonably warm ocean water causes Pacific winter storms to crash mercilessly onto the North American Pacific Coastline. Wave after wave of storms hit through January and the Tijuana River swelled then relaxed and then swelled then relaxed again, and so on. In those days, most of the roads went right into the river, there were only two bridges west of the Rodriguez Dam, all other automotive crossings were made over roads that were built to allow the shallow river to flow over the pavement.

People used to drive their cars into that river and park on the shoulder and wash their vehicles; the river water wasn’t very clean but it was free.

One rainy evening I brought Rocio to the small clinic in Las Brisas, she thought that she was having labor pains. It turned out to be a false alarm, but they wanted to hold her there for an hour or so to make sure. I needed a cigarette and I was fresh out, so I walked across the parking lot in the rain toward the Gigante market, and the skies suddenly opened up and it started to pour. In seconds, as I made it just underneath the roof of the façade in front of the store, it was coming down harder than I had ever seen rain fall anywhere other than the Arizona desert in the summertime. I stood and watched in awe, and the downpour refused to stop; just when it seemed that it couldn’t come down any harder, it did.

Finally, I went into the supermarket, and just a few steps inside I noticed that no one was moving. While it is to be expected that there would only be perhaps a dozen customers in there, what with the rain and the evening and all, I realized that everyone had stopped what they were doing. Shoppers held their carts still, grocery clerks stopped entering prices, baggers stopped bagging. Everyone was looking up at the ceiling.

Water, in steady streams, all throughout the store, was coming down through the roof, through the light fixtures – which remained lit as if water affected them not in the least – and landed everywhere. The floor, through every aisle, was drenched and the water was slowly pooling, and rain even poured from shelves of groceries as if by design from some exotic shopping experience in a really bad aquatic science fiction movie. Slowly, people started moving again, but with their heads seldom leaving the ceiling, in case something else happened.

I bought my cigarettes and got out of there.

I brought Rocio home in a nineteen hundred and seventy-eight Honda Civic CVCC, which, I swear, floated when it had to. Rivers were borne from side streets sloping toward the boulevard, cars were stalled everywhere, but I pressed on, determined to find just the right speed to get through the water without allowing it to enter the tail pipe nor come over the front of the engine and flood the distributor. Somehow, we made it back up the hill to Infonavit Latinos and slept while the rain continued throughout the night.

In the morning, we learned the devastation. The water in the reservoir behind the dam had suddenly and quickly crested over the top, and the Mexican engineers in charge had no choice but to open the floodgates. There was no warning given to the squatters that camped in that river, they were swept away along with trees, roads, dirt, mud, old tires, and everything else. The official death toll was released weeks later by the government, but it is still considered a joke. No one will ever know how many people died that evening, too many bodies will never be recovered.

A lot of people blamed the Mexican government because it was easy to do, but I knew better. For years, police and other officials had been trying to get the squatters out of the riverbed. That night, the rain came so hard and so fast, that the dam surely would have given way, and perhaps thousands of lives would have been lost. The only fault that I found with the government was in attempting to minimize the official number of casualties. It only made things worse.

* * * *
Tuesday, it was drying out. I left, later than I wanted to and too late to get some Cuban coffee, and went to the United States for twenty minutes and came right back. I walked into Centro at around noon, and ran into Jody on his way to somewhere, to meet with someone, but I did find Scott in the Nuevo Perico. I seem to miss him more and more these days between the times where we can drink more beer than we should at any one sitting. Scott plunked some quarters into the jukebox and Cuban jazz decorated the talk about the rains.

We drank a lot that afternoon.

In the evening we wound up at the Dandy del Sur and I found out that Scott isn’t making his yearly trek up to San Jose for the holidays, so he’ll be coming here instead. We’re trying to get Jody to come as well, but I have a feeling like every year, he has some young girl ready to cook him up some tamales or pozole and perhaps something else. Regardless, I came home Tuesday evening and told Anna that Scott is coming over for Christmas dinner.

"Do I know him?" Anna asked.

"Not unless you’ve taken to drinking at the Nuevo Perico," I teased.

She rolled her eyes and went upstairs.

* * * *
Rocio left at five-thirty on Wednesday morning and about two hours later it began to rain hard again. It rained even harder than Monday, and it didn’t let up, I lay in bed happy, at least, that Rocio missed it. I fell back to sleep and then awoke at nine and came downstairs and made coffee, and it was still raining like crazy. I knew that Anna didn’t go to school, and I heard her upstairs moments after I took the first sip out of the mug. I smiled.

After the great rains of nineteen hundred and ninety three, they built bridges over the river and cemented the entire distance from the Dam to where it enters the United States of America. Once on the other side of the border, the river empties into a flood plain, poorly designed and recklessly unimproved. Tijuana fixed things here enough to where what once happened will never happen again, except that there will still be flooding to some extent, people are no longer in danger of being swept away should the need arise to open the floodgates of the Rodriguez Dam.

At ten o’clock the telephone rang, it was Rocio.

"And Anna?" She asked.

"Upstairs, I imagine," I said.

"You have to check, it’s raining very hard," Rocio pressed me.

I put down the receiver and went upstairs. Anna had already called her school and classes were cancelled. She was in bed, covered, watching television, unaffected by anything. I went back downstairs and picked up the receiver.

"We do not have a stupid daughter," I told Rocio.

At four in the afternoon, the rain had finally stopped, and I had to go to the supermarket. I called Anna down and we took off to survey the damage. The street, and the sidewalk across from us, was littered with everything from brush to trash to tires, but the water had apparently drained nicely. We bought groceries and came back just in time to get rained on again, but before it started coming down hard we arrived home. Turning on the news, the only devastating pictures were coming from the United States of America.

Apparently, the portion of the Tijuana River that flows over the border, unimproved and poorly planned, claimed the lives of horses, goats, dogs, and cats. At least no people were lost over there. Still, after almost sixteen years, the irony is inescapable when the water begins to flow.

Plastic Buckets

I met up with Scott accidentally when I got back to Centro after a short trip into the United States of America, I saw him on the street, crossing Avenida Revolución. It was almost ten in the morning, so we went over to the Nuevo Perico and opened the bar. The sun was warming the sidewalks slowly, and we sat there for a while and drank Dos Equis Ambar from the tap and caught up on everything I miss because I don’t get out of the house much these days.

"I’ve just been writing and cooking," I told him.

"Oh, did you hear that Stanley died?" Scott asked.

"Yeah, a few weeks ago I was at the Dandy del Sur and Aida told me. It was funny because she was so sure that I would somehow be rocked by the news. I just had to tell her that I didn’t get along with Stanley all that much, but I was sorry that he died. She seemed surprised, like all of us gringos love each other’s whiteness or something," I said.

Stanley was one of the most negative and depressing individuals that I ever knew. Almost bald, with a long and very out of control white beard, the first thing that Stanley would tell you, initiating a conversation, was that he wanted to kill his ex-wife. Then, he would tell you about how his paintings were worth thousands of dollars but that he couldn’t sell them in the United States of America for this reason or that reason, and that his artistic ability is recognized in France and Spain. He would go on about how he wanted to go to France and Spain but couldn’t, which would bring the one-sided conversation back full circle about him wanting to kill his ex-wife.

Stanley and me had this same conversation on three separate occasions, many years ago. The last time that he initiated verbal communication with me, I wanted to pull my eyeballs out of the sockets and stick them in my ears, and then it got to the point where I had enough. It was as if Stanley enjoyed swimming in his misery. But that wasn’t enough for him, he wanted to bring everyone else into that putrid pond water that held his soul, as if everyone else should want to feed off of his negativity and loathing.

"Stanley, you are the most miserable human being on this planet!" I finally told him, and walked away.

We never spoke after that. He was around occasionally, but we successfully ignored each other. Scott got along with him well, that while acknowledging Stanley’s preference for suffering and grieving as a life experience, they were both artists and drew and painted. Stanley lived in Playas de Tijuana, which is a large section on the beach a few miles west of Centro. He was in his sixties.

Miserable no more!

Jody came into the Perico at noon so we sat and drank and talked for a while, I bought both of them beers, I really miss seeing them as often as I used to. Another gringo came in, a guy that has been around for a few years, another guy that I don’t much care for. The first time that we met, he bummed a cigarette, and while I normally do not hand out cancer I gave him one anyway. Twenty minutes later, when I refused to give him another, he became irate. I told him to purchase his own cigarettes. We never spoke after that.

He chatted up Jody mostly, apparently he has learned how to buy his own cigarettes, until Jody left and then Scott turned to me.

"Dave, come with me up to Zona Norte, I’ll show you my pad."

The other guy, the gringo that didn’t leave with Jody, made overtures about wanting to tag along. Scott, ever aware of my wariness of many of the part time gringos who show up out of the blue and vanish just as quickly, blew him off. We finished up our beer and got out of there, heading up toward Zona Norte.

* * * *
I always found it amusing to look at my birth certificate, in that I was born in San Diego and yet never really knew the city until after I moved to Mexico and then eventually worked in San Diego for many years in various locations. Working over there taught me San Diego, or at least most of it, in more ways than one. I pull out a copy of that birth certificate now, every time that I cross the border. I present it along with my California State identification card.

I used to have a passport, but it expired long ago.

When I present the birth certificate and the identification card, the Department of Homeland Security representative either looks at everything and I move on, or they punch in some information so a computer can determine anything that would make me a threat to enter their lovely country. Or else, they argue with me over not obtaining a passport. I argue back that I only need to mail a letter and cash a check, but apparently my length of stay only being forty minutes does not impress them. They let me enter regardless; at least, they have so far.

I was going to go back over Tuesday, but a funny thing happened when I woke up that morning: no water. No water means no shower, so I put off my journey until the water returned, which was last night. The water company doesn’t hand out notices down here, they simply turn the water off and perform whatever repairs or maintenance is required, and it is only through the gossip and sometimes the local news that anyone has any advance warning. Rocio’s mother had heard something, she filled about a dozen five-gallon buckets in her own home, and then early Tuesday morning while I was still sleeping she filled some large containers that we have here for just such a purpose. For a few of days, we used the downstairs bathroom for everything, and flushed the toilet by dumping a bucket of water into the commode in order to empty it.

Gravity is wonderful that way.

Rocio, Anna, and Sharon took sponge baths until the water pressure returned because they needed to leave every day, so I waited patiently since I am in no hurry. Meanwhile, I cooked food that requires little in the way of pots and pans, we ate hamburgers that I fried using an electric griddle and fish tacos that I cooked in a deep fryer. The hamburgers are very good clones of an In-N-Out Double-Double, and the fish tacos are from the same recipe of Baja’s finest, right down to the beer-batter and the fresh tortillas. The dishes, what few were dirtied, were washed using our drinking water – an expensive but necessary use of what normally is only consumed in cooking and liquid refreshment applications.

I have often replied, when asked what living in Baja is like, that this is a campout in a cement tent.

Sometimes it really is.

Last night, the water returned, and I awoke this morning anticipating another border crossing and then, perhaps, meeting up with Scott and Jody afterward. I matched a cigarette and listened to the radio, thinking about getting some Cuban coffee on the way over. I am hooked on the dark, rich flavor, which is something that couldn’t happen in the United States of America since the apparent key to defeating communism precludes uniquely robust coffee and genuine Cohibas.

Then, the voice on the radio told everyone that the line to enter the United States of America was over three hours long, attributed to Mexican holiday celebrating the Virgen de Guadalupe. Many people take this day off, attend mass, and then head over the border to do some shopping. No matter how long I live here, at least some of these holidays will always elude my peripheral vision. There is a station on this Mexican cable that we subscribe to, and it covers nothing but the lines at the three border crossings between Tecate and the Pacific Ocean. The cameras, panning endlessly to give as many aspects of the border wait as necessary, confirmed what was said over the radio. The wait to cross was ridiculous. I will go Monday or Tuesday then, and imagine that today Scott and Jody are enjoying the Coahuila, much like we did the last time I was given the tour of the new and improved Zona Norte by Scott.

Besides, I don’t need to go back there anytime soon.

* * * *
Scott led, and I followed him up to the Coahuila, he is one of a few people who actually walks faster than I do when left to his own devices. The streets are the same as when I last walked them, except cleaner and rebuilt. There are even palm trees now. The prostitutes are still there, except that there are more of them, a lot more, and they appear younger now. I am older. It seems relative somehow.





The economic crisis and lack of tourism probably has something to do with it as well.

We ran through perhaps a half-dozen bars, most of them decorated with young dancing girls. The two most impressive locations were Adelita, a mainstay in Zona Norte, perhaps even a landmark, filled with girls of every flavor. They have remodeled since I was last there over ten years ago, they are always remodeling here. But the menu remains the same. The other bar, which I can’t remember ever having entered, is Hong Kong, which baffled me. Scott took me through everything way too fast before we finally went up to his apartment next to the Chicago Club.





Scott’s apartment is a glorified hotel room, a single room with a bed and an attached bathroom and no room for anything else. There are paintings and drawings scattered everywhere, except for one side of the room which is piled three feet high with old newspapers and magazines, like a long line of sandbags might fortify a bunker. There was no alternative to some clutter because of the size of the room.

"They keep bitching at me to throw these out," Scott laughed, looking at the stacks of print.

"Come on, I’ll buy you a beer, I want to go back to that Hong Kong club and take some mental notes," I told him.

We left, into the streets, onto the narrow sidewalks navigating through crowds, past taco carts, watched suspiciously by the same people that remained throughout the remodeling of the red light district. They painted lipstick on a pig, and while the pig looks a lot nicer, it still smells like a pig. It’s nice to know that the Coahuila hasn’t lost any of the charm.





The first time we saw Club Hong Kong, Scott led me in through one entrance and out through another, there was barely time enough to soak it all in. This time we sat, and I bought us some beers. It is spacious; spanning the length of a very short city block, you can enter through either door on two parallel streets, and unlike most clubs in Zona Norte, this place was relatively clean and well decorated. I counted six customers other than Scott and me, and I gave up on counting how many girls were in there.

Maybe fifty girls were in there, dancing in various locations, including on top of the bar.

"Check that out, Scott, they’re being directed where to go," I said.

There was an older woman, perhaps forty, with a wireless headset, directing the girls where to go, rotating them like a choreographer. Upstairs, against railing, some girls either danced or just stood. Scattered throughout downstairs, there were several small platforms, which held two or three girls dancing in various states of undress, and everywhere else they either posed or moved playfully to the music. Next to our table, they rotated two girls upon the small platform, and I looked up. One girl danced topless while the other danced in a short skirt and a flimsy top, and wore nothing else except for high heels. She made sure that we got a nice view looking up at her, and might have been disappointed in my lack of interest.

I have seen plenty of strippers, but fifty girls for eight customers made the scene completely surreal.

"You should see this place at night," Scott told me.

We finished our beers and left, there wasn’t a girl in there under the age of twenty-five.

"Anything else that you want to see?"

"Not especially," I answered.

"Well, then I want to take you to this bar that Jody drinks at sometimes. It’s a dive, but it’s full of locals," Scott said.

After a short walk, we parted the thick, vinyl-coated curtains at the door, past the disinterested doorman, into a small place with about twenty people inside. There was just enough room at the bar. The jukebox blared Norteño music while a couple of people danced, a working girl and a patron, and then another girl dressed in sweats went up on the stage and gyrated ridiculously, which chased the couple back to their table.

People looked on, bleary-eyed and stone-faced.

"She’s pregnant," I said.

"Before she got strung out on drugs, she used to work here," Scott informed me.

I stopped watching her. Jody walked in, and we all chatted about whatever, but I mostly just listened and realized that no matter what they do, it won’t change Zona Norte. I thought about Stanley, and how nothing would have changed him either, that some things and some people aren’t meant for change. New sidewalks and palm trees can’t transplant new people. There will always be fifteen-year-old prostitutes and pregnant crack addicts there. And the gringo money, like when the water supply is cut off and other means are used to survive without it, will always find a way to trickle into that place and keep it going like it always has.

The five-gallon plastic buckets replace the free-flowing water pipes.

Me and Scott eventually wandered back up to the Perico and had a few more beers up there, where the girls aren’t so young and the money isn’t nearly as precious.

(All images courtesy of Eric Rench)

Tony's Tales Of Woe

*
"If life gives you limes, make Michelada." - Olesya Romanovna

*
The Nuevo Perico was becoming somewhat crowded as I read a magazine at the bar and sipped on a beer, having just come back into Mexico with a belly full of American junk food to which I wasn’t accustomed. My stomach was finally settling, and I looked up occasionally to adjust to the difference in clientele from the afternoon crowd into the evening locals just getting off of work. Friday nights in the Perico are like that. The single billiards table in the back was full and the jukebox was loud and the beer was flowing steady from one of the few taps in Tijuana.

By the time that he came in, the shift change was in full effect. I remembered him from a couple of weeks ago, when Jody and me were talking baseball and politics and he occasionally and politely chimed in and then obligated us to stay longer than we wanted by buying us a beer. His name is Tony. Tony looks as Mexican as anyone but he isn’t. Tony lives in Costa Rica. Tony speaks fluent Spanish and very good English, but he feels like more of an outsider that either Jody or I seem to feel.

Friday evening, Tony saddled up beside me and ordered a beer, Michelada style, except with only lime juice and ice like many Mexicans do. Tony is a very unassuming, dark-skinned man who is slow to speak and haltingly polite. I asked him a lot about Costa Rica. I also refrained from sharing with him any trivial information that I might have come to understand about his country. It was a lesson that I learned many years ago, that it is often wise to keep my mouth shut no matter how impressive that the knowledge of someone not native to one’s country might seem at the time.

You run the risk of embarrassing people to the point of extreme annoyance, a risk that isn’t worth it in the long run.

Instead, I learned about Tony. He ran a brick-making business in Costa Rica with his father. At first, they made the old brick, heavy and traditional, but recently in the last few years they had converted everything into cinderblock. The business was thriving. Tony told me that he held two passports, one from Costa Rica and one from the United States of America. Our conversation was mostly in English and occasionally in Spanish.

"We found a spot in the middle of nowhere and moved our manufacturing out there. We started with six machines and now we have twelve, we used to make two thousand blocks a day, then four thousand, and now six thousand. We bought the land. Then people started to build houses all around us. Now we are thinking of building houses on the land we aren’t using and renting it out," Tony shared.

"How did you learn English so well?" I asked him.

"My parents sent me to school in the United States. I have family that lives there now. I went to various schools. I even went to school in Salt Lake City," Tony said.

I laughed, "I bet you loved that!"

"I called my parents after a few weeks, and asked then if I was being punished for something," he confessed.

"And Tijuana?" I asked.

"Vacation. I just visited my family in the United States, and I like it here in Tijuana so I’m staying for a few days more. I’ve had a few problems but I’m learning."

And with that, Tony proceeded to share, in great detail, his tales of woe.

* * * *
Estelle was always dangerous for me and I usually kept my distance the best that I could. She knew where I drank and would come around every so often and sit next to me and I would buy her a drink or two, that I was obligated to be a gentleman. I didn’t mind. She is beautiful and very well-built, we became friends when she worked at Paco’s bar for a short time; she even speaks English reasonably well. Once, on her birthday, she talked me into going to another bar, and we sat in a dark corner booth and got half drunk and things began to get out of hand.

I got out of there just in time that evening.

Many people have their preferences and Estelle prefers her beer Michelada style and her men to be married to another woman. I always believed her preference for married men to be deeply psychological, in so much as knowing that the one marriage that she had ended with her husband’s constant infidelity and unwillingness to stay with her. Married men ensure that she isn’t going to get hurt again, especially if she assures them not to ever leave their wives no matter what.

I always believed that Michelada-style beer is a waste of hops.

Estelle’s steady and married boyfriend over the last decade or so is Jaime, a successful dentist. Jaime and me were acquaintances before I knew that Estelle was seeing him, we sometimes happened to drink together in Paco’s bar. Or else, sometimes, he would just pop in and buy cigarettes and then leave, presumably back to his dental office around the corner. At least when Jaime drank there, he preferred his beer straight out of the bottle. It was always very small talk.

One day, not long after I found out that Estelle and Jaime were having an affair, and not long after Estelle would seek me out occasionally and drink with me when Jaime was busy somewhere else, we had a deeper conversation, me and Jaime. And Jaime is quite charming when he wants to be charming, and appears very intellectual at times. Other times, Jaime is as full of it as anyone.

We were discussing the border, and it didn’t take long before Jaime was simply countering every statement that I made. Jaime spoke very little English, and our conversation was in entirely in Spanish. Jaime started getting to the point of ridiculousness.

"Look," I finally said, "I wasn’t born here, but I’ve lived here a long time. I have a lot to learn, but you’re simply discounting my opinions because I’m not a Mexican."

"I’m discounting your opinions because I don’t think that you know very much about Mexico,"
he said.

"I bet I know more about some aspects of Mexico than you do," I offered.

Jaime smirked, half-amused and half-annoyed.

"What is the meaning of the colors of the Mexican flag?" I asked, I had a hunch.

"Red is the blood shed in the civil war, green is the trees in the forests of Central Mexico, and white is peace," he said smugly, crushing a cigarette but into the ashtray.

"Red is correct, green is close enough – it represents the natural resources of Mexico, but white is incorrect," I told him.

His eyes got wide, and then narrowed.

"White is hope," I said.

Esperanza.

Jaime was clearly irritated. He got up and drained his bottle, preparing to leave.

"Then tell me, what is the meaning of the colors of the flag of the United States of America?" he asked me.

I thought for a moment.

"There aren’t any," I said.

"Don’t be so sure about that," he told me.

When I came home I looked it up. Although unofficial symbolic ideals had been thrown around in government, none took hold enough to become anything close to official. The colors of the Mexican flag were purposeful from the start. The next time that I saw Jaime, I tried to console him by letting him know that he had given me enough reason to look it up, but we never had another conversation after that beyond a couple of sentences.

Jaime was being a pompous ass, but Estelle was sort of delighted that an invisible wall had been erected between us. It was a wall that, over the course of the next few years, she enjoyed passing through as often as possible. She used it to try and make me jealous. She would receive calls from Jaime while having a drink with me, run into the ladies room and then come out and make a preposterous excuse, purposefully, and take off in a hurry.

It would have worked had I been interested enough in her. Jody would sometimes see this happen and after Estelle would leave we would share a laugh.

"She must like you an awful lot to go so far out of her way," Jody would say.

"Aw, she’s just after money," I would tell him.

"But you’re not giving her money," Jody would argue.

"Yeah, but she knows that I’ll buy her a couple of drinks. Besides, even if I weren’t taken I wouldn’t have anything to do with her beyond this. She’s toting around enough emotional baggage to fill the luggage compartment of a jumbo jet."

Sometimes when I look up at the Mexican flag and I see the white center of it, I think of Estelle, that maybe the hope is meant for her.

* * * *
For a good while now, I have pictured humanity as some sort of massive, ever-forming ball of earthworm-like structure on a large raft, and as the ball grows, the raft gets smaller until portions of the ball run the risk of falling off of the raft. Hope is like some sort of clear cellophane stretch-wrap that keeps it all in. It was probably that same semi-invisible film that kept me in the Perico Friday night for a few hours with Tony.

He told me about several encounters in Tijuana with the local police.

"The other night, I was drinking here and then I got drunk. I went to go to my hotel room, and one guy here said, 'Not yet, Tony, you don’t want to leave yet.' But I didn’t listen to him, and I got three steps out the door and a cop was calling me over. Then my friend came out and called me back. So I walked back to my friend and the cop started yelling at me, but my friend pulled me back in here and said, 'I told you, it isn’t time yet.' Good thing he came after me."

I didn’t say anything at that point, I just listened. There were stories about loose women, about people who he had made friends with that maybe weren’t such good friends after all, and about others who turned out to be better. He began every story with the fact that he was drunk. I suspected a pattern.

"I did get robbed by the police here," Tony told me.

"I was drinking in Manolo’s, and I got drunk and decided to go to my room. I came out of the bar and took a few steps and there was a cop. I showed him my Costa Rican passport. Then he wanted to search me, but I didn’t want him to get into my wallet. Then he told me to put some money in my back pocket and he would only search my back pocket. I took what I had in my front pocket and put it back there, about sixty dollars. Then, some people from Manolo’s came out and got involved so I got away with only sixty dollars stolen."

"How much did you have in your wallet?" I asked.

"About sixteen-hundred dollars," Tony said.

"Okay Tony. Look, I’ve lived here a long time, you never walk around with that kind of money unless you know what you're doing," I started.

"Yeah, the owner of Manolo’s told me that afterward, he offered to keep my money for me," Tony said.

"Regardless, you’re better off not having a lot of cash here. Secondly, if you carry a passport from the United States, then you always present that passport, unless you have a United Nations passport. If you carry passport from the United States, you are entitled to travel within twenty-six kilometers of the border without a visa. Plus, if they insist on hassling you, then so long as you’ve done nothing wrong, then call their bluff. Tell them to arrest you if you’ve committed an offense. And do it in plain view of people, because these people don’t like nor trust cops here, and the cops know it," I preached.

Tony nodded solemnly.

"And Tony, watch how much you drink, it’s the most important thing you can do here," I said, risking a defensive response.

Tony smiled and nodded, and I excused myself and left, leaving Tony to think about it.

* * * *
I caught a taxi collectivo up the street in front of where Paco’s bar used to be, a van that seated eight plus the driver pulled out and headed east toward Zona Rio, a few passengers short of being full. The nights are getting cooler here, I closed the window on my side and watched Tijuana go by. The company that I left in March has contracted me for a short while, they are moving into a smaller and less expensive space and they will need help coordinating the move. There is a lot of machinery, complicated electrical hook-ups, running an airline and venting, and basically trying to cram everything into half of the space they once occupied.

I’ll be crossing the border again on a frequent basis for a while, rolling back into downtown Tijuana, watching all of the people I used to watch every day. I thought about what a nightmare their move would be, and the challenge of attempting to fit everything into that space, and the Goddamned border. I haven’t missed crossing the border. I loathe that aspect more than anything.

By the time we got out of Zona Rio, the taxi was full. The driver was impatient, darting in and out, changing lanes, the compact disc skipping often from the jerky maneuvering and the sudden stops. Then, perhaps four miles from where I would be disembarking, there were sirens on the other side of the street up ahead. And no traffic coming from that direction. And then the taxi came closer to the scene.

"An accident," I heard from various people in the cab.

The taxi driver slowed to a crawl, even though there was no traffic in front of us, he isn’t unlike many here and it was curiosity controlling the accelerator. It was dark and difficult to see, but I first saw police with flashlights searching the blocked-off street and others surrounding a car in the middle of the boulevard, and officials of every type were everywhere. Discussions of an automobile accident continued.

"It’s not an accident," I finally said.

Everyone in the cab looked at me, as I stared straight ahead.

"The police are looking for bullets and shell casings," I said.

We drove on.

"Every day it is this," they discussed amongst each other.

I felt bad. I felt like I had just told Jaime that the white in the Mexican flag doesn’t mean peace, that it means hope instead. I felt like I had stolen their hope. I felt like I should have kept my mouth shut. I got out of the cab and walked home, and had a beer and went to sleep. I knew I was right, but I regretted saying anything.

This morning I read the death tolls from yesterday’s carnage. Amongst the paragraphs of the many executions, I found this in El Sol, which I translate into English:

"Upon arrival of municipal and ministerial officials, a gold
1976 BMW sat in the middle of boulevard Federico Benitez
Lopez, across from Plaza Carrousel, without license plates.

Reclining on the right and in the driver's seat was the
lifeless body of a man who wore a black colored cap, and
in the passenger’s seat was the body of another man.

Witnesses said that three subjects drove a pickup from
which they fired while driving next to the car, they were
both shooting rifles at the car twice. On the pavement
evidence experts collected about 20 shell casings, while
the victims’ car showed broken glass and various bullet
holes and damage to the body of the automobile."

I reckon that my fellow passengers would have found out anyway, it isn’t as if the press isn’t taking full advantage of the killings. It isn’t as if they can ignore it, either. I reckon that I couldn’t ignore it either.

* * * *
The flag of Costa Rica features three colors: blue, while, and red, and each color has several meanings. Blue is the sky, religion and spirituality, eternity, perseverance, opportunity; white is peace, happiness, wisdom, and power; and red is blood that was shed in defense of liberty, and warmth and generosity. I guess they didn’t want to leave any possibility out. Who could blame them?

I think of my new friend Tony, and of Tony’s tales of woe, and that really, in the scheme of things, he is much better off figuring out the dynamics of being a tourist with a long leash rather than to traverse the dangerous streets outside of that comparatively safe haven.

Today, I feel like maybe Jaime was right even if he was wrong. I feel like maybe we would all be better off here if we could assign more meanings to the colors of the Mexican flag. The green, in addition to representing Mexico’s natural resources, could represent the limes and the ice cubes that go into making the Michelada-style cerveza. And maybe the drugs that bring more money than the government can supply the means to combat its trafficking. The red may stand for more than the blood that was shed during the civil war, maybe it stands for all blood that is shed on the streets in this corridor. The white can still be hope – there is always hope – but maybe peace as well.

Or maybe the white represents surrender.

The only thing that I know for sure is that the money buying the drugs is more responsible for the death of every Mexican caught up in this carnage than is anything else.

The Ghosts And Spirits Of Guns And Tacos

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep." ~ John Milton

The very early mornings in Baja are often full of lovers betraying other lovers when the night is so still, so I sometimes imagine, as a smoky and funky dampness finally manages to hold for a while. Rocio was snoring again, I could lie in bed no longer, and even considered coffee before grabbing a beer instead and reading in the aloneness of my office, the radio accompanies me. This could be any of my early mornings in Baja California; this has been the cycle lately. I wake up and sit here and wonder about betrayal and denial and ponder the lust and greed of humanity.

The ghosts of human weaknesses haunt even the noblest among us.

Sometimes there are gunshots here late at night or early in the morning, it momentarily breaks the silence long before the birds begin to wake up and argue with each other in a nearby, semi-suburban tree. Usually, nothing ever comes from it, there is no news report, no police sirens, and no evidence at dawn of anything other than the passing of another evening. Occasionally, if I am paying attention to news the next day, I find out that there were targets for the bullets, sometimes successful and sometimes not. In such cases, betrayal is usually the pin of the hammer of the gun, and greed is then the ignited primer of the bullet.

Tijuana lies directly in the path of the northwestern corridor of the drug trade. It is an illegal yet lucrative business running drugs through Mexico, much more lucrative than is smuggling people over the border. The narcotics traffickers protect their footholds on their territories with rabid aggressiveness, because competitors are waiting patiently to exploit any perceived weaknesses in the organization. Greed may turn ordinary men into brave opportunists, but betrayal is not tolerated; retribution is swift, bloody, and final. Heads will roll, literally.

But drug trafficking affects the dynamics of Baja so indirectly, that it is probably the most misunderstood aspect of life in this region.

* * * *
In the United States of America, there are often times hazards directly related to geographical location. In the Northeast, there are snowstorms, and along the Southern coast there are hurricanes. On the West Coast there are earthquakes, and in the Midwest there are tornadoes. In fact, just about everywhere, there are environmental hazards in residential commitment to remaining in one place for very long.

Such hazards are not limited to random or intermittent acts of nature.

Any large city has its share of crime. Racism is a problem in many regions, and religious intolerance can fan whatever embers still smolder from fires that burned long ago. Corruption, graft, police brutality, and the incompetence of local government can be a hazard anywhere. In Baja, the added element of the constant battle to control drug trafficking is simply an another collection of ghosts. All of these ghosts can appear quite scary, which is certainly by design, so that they are categorized as hazards to be avoided.

It is Halloween in the United States of America and here in Baja as well. More ghosts. It wasn’t too many years ago that the local governments in Baja outlawed the use of masks in costumes on this day, the criminal element once took advantage of enjoying an evening of permitted anonymity in order to rob stores. Halloween is not widely celebrated in Mexico, it is a holiday borrowed from other cultures. As if Baja needed any more ghosts.

Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is celebrated on the second of November, preceded by one day with Día de los Inocentes, or Day of the Innocents. These celebrations are perhaps three thousand years old, with roots that far predate the Aztec Empire. As with most celebrations of this type, there are slight regional differences concerning the method of celebrating, decorating, and observing these days. In Northern Baja, a true regional melting pot of Mexican heritage, anything could be happening in any particular household or gravesite.

* * * *
Spirits are real.

Maybe it is the tiniest amount of blood I carry from ancestors that were part of indigenous America. Maybe it was something else. When I was a boy, I climbed up Mount San Jacinto, in the middle of the desert, all alone. The hot wind blew across the mountain and the higher I climbed the more I felt the presence. I would stop periodically, knowing that I was walking on the burial grounds of people who possessed a sense of spirituality that I could never imagine, and I wondered why they chose this place to die. By the time I reached the first burial site, I stopped wondering.

There was grace and nobility in the simple and humble structure, wooden branches carefully chosen and lashed together to form a shrine. The spirits were there, flowing through me, I dared not break their silent presence. I gently touched the wood and felt a chill. I hiked farther up and there were more shrines, similar in their demure majesty. I wanted to stay on that mountain, to be there all night, but people were going to wonder where I was.

As I wandered back down the mountain, it occurred to me then that there was a profound difference between spirits and ghosts.

* * * *
"He was connected," Rick told me yesterday over lunch, we were talking about the latest of the killings in and around Tijuana.

"Obviously. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have killed him," I replied.

"And otherwise his boys wouldn’t have hit back," Rick said.

Rick continued after swallowing a bite of lunch, "He used to be the President of my ejido, then he went to Rosarito. They named the school where my daughter goes to after him. The army showed up there, there was talk of retaliation. She came home scared, I told her that we aren’t going to give in to threats."

"It’s all rumor, Rick. You know how it is in Mexico, the old women talk, they start rumors and then everyone thinks it’s true. It’s all bullshit," I said.

Rick nodded.

His brother used to be a cop. And Rick used to be smuggler, carrying human beings into the United States of America in the trunk, backseat, or other compartment of a car specially designed to be used once and then sold cheaply or discarded. He made a lot of money until he got caught. Rather than to stay in Mexico, he turned himself in. Over two years in Federal prison changed him back from a ghost into a human being again.



A Tijuana cop might make a hundred dollars a week, maybe a little more. That cop can go home every night and put away his gun and take off his uniform and be content to have put his or her life on the line for the good of the community. But the cop knows that other cops are making a lot more. Some build new houses and buy new cars. They enroll their children in the finest private schools. They vacation to wherever they want to go.

They become ghosts.

Growing up in El Florído or Sánchez Taboada or some other gritty neighborhood on the Tijuana outskirts can be difficult. The criminal element thieves and steals to get by, drug addicts clan together and take light bulbs to smoke crack from, everyone knows everyone. Opportunities present themselves, get a fake passport and move some packages. Move up in the organization, make some real money. Buy a black Ford Expedition with tinted windows and slick rims, buy your family a new house.

Defend your territory.

There are ghosts on both sides. Greed and betrayal. Their bullets are meant for each other, they don’t want to be seen. Lawyers can buy the judges, everyone knows how it works. Como corre la agua, how the water flows.

It flows North, a river of drugs, to supply the users in the United States of America.

* * * *
The spirits are urged to come visit us here, starting tomorrow and ending on Sunday. We present candy and fruit and bread and flowers, lighting candles and speaking lovingly and whimsically to our dead ancestors. We decorate their gravesites and tell them about how they have made us laugh and love life over the years. We invite them to come home for a while. We climb that mountain that I climbed in my youth, to feel the spirits run through us.

We let the ghosts here kill each other and hope that one day their spirits will return, exchanging the guns for tacos.

Another Case Of Mistaken Identity -or- The Winds Of Change

The Nuevo Perico used to have a bar made out of ceramic tile, back when Armando owned it, and back before a lot of people started to go there. When Joe bought it, he changed the name because it wouldn’t make any sense to own a bar named after someone else. Joe hung a bunch of fake parrots in there and painted the walls green and eventually bought a better pool table. But that ceramic tile bar remained for a very long time.

I was a patron then, every weekday after work I could be found in the Perico, drinking beers and sometimes something stronger. Joe recognized the time of day when people might show up so he created a happy hour and the place started getting busy. Other than the very occasional tourist that wandered in off of the noisy and crowded Avenida Revolución, everyone was a local, and even some of the gringos who lived in Tijuana would show up from time to time. You got about five pesos to the dollar back then, and a beer would run you ten pesos, and during happy hour it was two for one. Those were the salad days of the Nuevo Perico bar.

A few of the regulars could be counted on being there, other than myself. Darren would show up almost daily and we would speak English mostly, which occasionally irritated someone who insisted that we should speak Spanish because, after all, we were in Mexico. Darren would get into the occasional fight with a drunk Mexican over nothing at all, simply that the Mexican decided that he didn’t like Darren for whatever reason. Darren would only take so much of someone else’s mouth. It was difficult to feel sorry for the idiot who pushed Darren’s buttons to the point where we had to stop Darren from killing him.

Jeff would show up there too, every so often. Jody came in irregularly, and Charlie made a stop in there after he finished at the Dandy del Sur, there were usually plenty of gringos in this place. Mostly, we never had any trouble. Mostly, we were always respected for having some ability to speak the language, and our willingness to try and understand Mexico and her customs, and for our love of Tijuana.

Sometimes the Mexicans in the Nuevo Perico enjoyed drinking with the gringos.

* * * *
When the wind changes direction in Baja it shifts from coming in off of the Pacific Ocean as it normally does, to coming from somewhere else, like it’s doing today. It is easy to feel the breeze from a more northerly origin, everything even smells slightly different, and the sun seems warmer than it should. The low pressure that was moving across into the Midwest on the other side of the border has now been replaced by high pressure, chasing the low pressure because apparently nature really does abhor a vacuum. These meteorological anomalies often times cause a wind condition to occur, known as the Santa Ana winds, where dry wind, mostly hot and occasionally cold, comes in from the north or the northeast at great speeds.

We have no autumn here, just the Santa Ana’s through December when we get winter until February. And we have had some Santa Ana’s since Monday, it can be felt in the nose on days like today. In Baja such winds blow dust off of the hard ground and it scatters everywhere, eventually settling on anything. But the hot winds feel good, like something that has to happen in order for something else to happen, so that eventually, in spite of the dust, everything will be just fine.

A couple of days ago, a few hundred miles below, hurricane Norbert was wreaking havoc in Southern Baja California, winds over one hundred miles per hour were coming from any and all directions. And to the north, fires are destroying parts of Los Angeles, and even near Oceanside fires fueled by the Santa Ana winds threaten homes. In Northern Baja, there isn’t much to burn - the stark landscape and dirt roads and cinderblock houses defy combustion in contrast to other places with trees and plants and houses made from wood.

Sometimes in Northern Baja we have it much easier than we wish to admit.

The economy is shifting, too, in an odd and ironic way, to the point where the money exchange houses are overprotecting themselves by using a wide gap between buying dollars and selling pesos. Only on Saturday, when the financial markets were closed, did I get a true idea of what the peso is worth when I took Anna to the supermarket with me to buy some groceries. Friday, the normal machinery used to automatically convert my dollars into a cash register based on the peso was turned off. The store manager was calculating the exchange rate on a case by case basis, because the exchange rate was moving too fast to trust a machine to properly handle such a transaction.

Imagine that!

The fact that the United States of America is going to spend almost one trillion dollars that it doesn’t have in order to prop up its lending institutions is where the irony begins. Printing money that doesn’t exist in reserve should, by all logic and common sense, mean that the money has less actual value. But apparently it doesn’t work that way. The dollar is getting stronger against many foreign currencies, including the Mexican peso. A couple of months ago, you couldn’t find anyplace that would give you ten Mexican pesos for a dollar, and Saturday I received over twelve!

It could be worse, except the Mexican government just spent over six billion of its reserve dollars in order to prop up the peso.

The irony completes itself in the fact that in many foreign countries, and especially in Mexico, investors buy dollars in times of financial crisis much in the same way as investors in other countries might purchase gold. And sadly, my superior purchasing power here will be very short lived because prices will be adjusted in order to reflect a weaker peso. I have been through this quite a few times in my sixteen years here. In a week or so, most prices will jump by twenty percent for most products except where the government controls the price.

Comercial Mexicana, the third largest supermarket in Mexico – and a fine place to shop – is seeking bankruptcy protection, and so its shares on the Mexican stock exchange fell over seventy-five percent. It seems that their debt can’t be paid due to the fall of the peso. Some of the Mexican banks probably aren’t far behind. After that, it’s anyone’s guess.

Hurricanes, fires, and strong winds are the least of Mexico’s problems.

* * * *
The Mexicans that frequented the Nuevo Perico were the working class for the most part, and during happy hour it was cheaper to drink beer in there than to purchase it from the store. The music was mostly Mexican banda, but the Mexicans also loved some American music. The Doors, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Nirvana were regularly played, and they knew all of the words even if they didn’t speak a word of English. Back then, my beard was less gray and in the dark light of the bar the same thing would happen over and over.

I would sit, reading the newspaper, and a beer would appear in front of me. The cantinera would point toward some Mexican gentleman I had never met, who would keep staring at me. Finally, even though I acknowledged his gift with some nice hand gestures, he would have to make his way over and engage me in broken English.

"You Eric Clapton," he would tell me.

I would answer him in Spanish, not only to save him the trouble of attempting English, but so that he would know that, in fact, I was not Eric Clapton. But more often than not, he would insist.

"No, really, you Eric Clapton," he would insist.

"Look, if I’m Eric Clapton, then what am I doing in the Nuevo Perico during happy hour?"

Sometimes this logic worked, and sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t, then sometimes it got nasty. One time I almost got into a fight over it. How does someone almost get into a fistfight over not being Eric Clapton? It only stopped when, for a few months between jobs in the United States of America, I ran the grill out of the Nuevo Perico. I guess that the very idea of Eric Clapton slinging burgers and dishing out chili beans was enough to dispel any doubts that I was, in fact, not Eric Clapton.

It was simply a case of mistaken identity.

* * * *
Today, I will go again to the supermarket and get whatever I can out of my dollars, until again everything changes and prices increase or else the peso strengthens and the exchange rate returns to where it was a week ago. It won’t be the same though, no matter what happens. In Baja California, these Santa Ana winds might only blow some dust from here to there, but the change is relevant, as all change is relevant.

Joe finally ripped the ceramic tile out of the Perico a couple of years ago, I went there last week in the morning to have a beer and catch up with Jody. Now, the bar top is like any other bar top, some imitation wood and a padded rail in front. The gringos don’t hang out there like they used to, everyone goes someplace else now, and no one is running the grill. The green painted walls are now some sort of red brick, it feels like I’m drinking in a large fireplace.

It seems as though at any minute, someone will throw some kindling inside and light it on fire.

The economy feels that way, too, as if all of these American dollars are just so much kindling waiting for a fireplace. In contrast, the Mexican bills are made out of plastic now. While plastic will burn, it isn’t so combustible as paper can be. Perhaps this is yet another change, subtle in its effect, which might predict a different future for Mexico.

Maybe there will come a time where the average Mexican will learn that the dollar is not all that it is cracked up to be. Little by little, they may come to realize that the dollar is just another piece of paper, and that it becomes worth less and less as more dollars are printed and backed with nothing but debt. Then, at some point, whenever there is a bump in the economic road here, worried investors in Mexico might not turn to the dollar in order to protect their holdings. They might realize that the dollar is not what they thought that it was.

Then they would reach the conclusion that it is just another case of mistaken identity.