| | One morning after Mexico and my head still hums with a third world sympathy. I did my best to spread the wealth and happiness: sharing taxis, paying for Juan's tecate, returning an old beer bottle to buy Alejandra and her son some cookies, playing (and losing admirably) a game of chess with my father's landlord and such. I ran across the traffic trying to get back into the US on my way to the border crossing for pedestrians, got into my car and drove home without once touching an unpaved road. America the Beautiful.
Without any means of immediate contact with my father in case anything unexpected should occur I told him that I would wait for him on the US side at the Jack in the Box nearest the border. Once there I ordered a small drink, filled the cup with some ice and strawberry soda and waited. I finished my drink and waited some more. I chomped on the remaining ice cubes in my drink and continued to wait. I refilled my cup with Dr. Pepper and looked at the clock on my phone; I had waited for over half an hour, going on forty five minutes. I decided that if my father were not to show in an hour I would be going home. I watched the people come and eat and go and come and eat and go; I even noticed some of the patrons were also waiting for people, turning around every time the door opened just as I did. They all left before I did.
Soon enough a thinner, sweatier, smaller version of my father put his hand on my shoulder. He explained that the long wait was due to his lack of money, which meant that he had to take the burro (bus) from his mansion on the hills to Revolución and then hump it all the way across the border. He was just getting over a week long illness, which explained his poor state; laborers have a harder time than most working through an illness and an even harder time setting aside money for those times. Even though the decision to relocate to a forgien country in the first place was the idea that the lower cost of living would allow him to save money I didn't feel bad for the man, some times one cannot help but excuse the behavior his own father. We walked into Mexico.
Leading the way, my father proudly darted around corners and up stairs and down stairs and over bridges and around poor people and through crowds, and between tourists, stopping along the way to point out various places of interest (the Wax Museum of Tijuana, where my great-great grandmother once lived, the street corner where every mariachi band in all of Tijuana waited). At one point he asked if I had any smaller bills, saying that once we got into the country where he lived that the exchange rate would favor using pesos instead of American money, so we approached a five foot wide store in a row of buildings, little more than a glorified telephone booth with a desk, on which sat a calculator and two boxes of money, and I made ten dollars into something like one hundred eight pesos. My new found wealth was soon diminished after my father had me buy him a pack of Marlboro Milds (for about half the price one would pay were he one mile North) and catch the taxi to his apartment.
Though not a city of skyscrapers or great renown, Tijuana is just as large as any metropolis. From the back seat of the station wagon (taxi) we bounced around Centro, got on the road out of town, turned left into the hills over looking Playas and snaked our way through a maze of homes that could topple in a strong wind. The taxi's final stop on its route happens to be just a block (if there really is such a distinction in Mexico) from where my father lives. I kicked a rock down the dirt road leading to a freshly built apartment complex, shining conspicuously in the sun's last light amidst so many shacks. Dirty children played fútbol in the street leading to my father's house and one of them happened to be the son of my father's girlfriend. The girlfriend was waiting inside the first apartment, which my dad had been helping finish before coming to meet me in America. My father and the landlord were putting the final touches on the small, one room, apartment, installing the countertops on the bar and sink. As they huddled down to fasted screws and check the level I noticed a slight quirk seldom, if ever, seen in American buildings: the wall facing the street and its adjacent met at an angle obviously greater than ninety.
|
| | Posted 11/24/2005 2:15 AM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
