Barbara and I will be heading for Berlin late next week to take a look at a part of the world we have not seen yet. If any of you Berlin readers will meet me at the airport, I will give you a card good for a free Kindle edition of SPREADING WING. See my next post, put up this weekend, for details.
Not only that, but I will give you extra free Kindle cards to give your friends.
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Progresso, Mexico was a border
town nearby. Thousands of snowbirds, (northern people who go south
for the winter) gather up down there, and many of them go to
Progresso to buy their prescriptions. It is said, if you could spell
it, you could buy it at Progresso. Cheap. But Viagra was holding firm
at ten bucks a pill. Cheap to keep a person alive, expensive to make
a person happy. Now, don't get the wrong idea. I needed no viagra
then. That was 14 years ago.
Our first border crossing was to
Progresso We also went across to Matamoros, a little farther inland.
A bus ride was required, and we armed ourselves with the word
“poynte,” the word for bridge in Spanish, and headed out. We
didn't get a good feel at Matamoros, few Americans. We looked awhile,
then found a bus with the key word “Poynte” on it, and came back.
Our plan was to work along the
Mexican border this winter, into California, then north, hopefully
after it warms up a little. A belt on our RV broke near Mission, and
we spent a couple of days living beside an RV repair place, waiting
for the replacement to come in.
We moved on west. Remember our
ants? The ones we picked up in Little Rock? Well, they were doing
well, and multiplying like crazy. As we moved farther west, they all
just disappeared one day. All of them. I guess they couldn't handle
the dryer air.
As we came into El Paso, we saw
this sign. “100 miles from water, six feet from Hell.” I felt
their Chamber of Commerce dude was slipping a little. We took a van
tour over into Jaurez, Mexico. American factories were just lined up
at the trough, gobbling up all that cheap labor. Whoever dreamed up
“Free Trade?” 60 cents per hour, free lunch, free babysitting,
free ride in aboard an aging school bus. And we supplied them, too.
Where to you think our old buses go? Ordinary houses were mixed in
among the drug lord mansions, and the police traveled in coveys. Now
keep in mind, this was when Mexican travel was “safe.”
A major dust storm blew up while
we were exploring the Carlsbad Caverns. A film of dust just blew
right through our old windows, and some RV's blew over on the road.
Our noses bled. We weren't used to this dry air.
Nogales, Mexico was not a pleasant
visit. We got to noticing there were no other Americans there, and a
gang of young toughs started following us around, Looking at,
Pointing to, and talking about, Barbara. Goodbye, Nogales. That
border crossing sure looked good.
After a stay at Tombstone,
Arizona, we went to Saguaro National Park. Some of the cacti were 50
feet tall. A story was being told that a disagreeable cowboy once got
very mad, pulled both his six shooters, and shot at the base of one
of those giant cacti until it fell over, killing him. Now, I didn't
actually see that. This is not a fiction book. In the visitor's
center, they showed fantastic scenes on a curtain covering a full
wall. When the show was over, those curtains rolled back, showing out
windows covering that whole wall, Saguaro National Park at its best.
That was a breathtaking moment.
The RV park at Tuscon was full,
with a major Rock and Gem Show in process in town. They put us just
outside the fence, and ran us an electrical cord. Anything to avoid
missing out on a few bucks.
Our RV was pointing out toward a
really nice golf course, but only part of it showed through the
brush. I was sitting in our RV, watching a golf tournament, somewhere
in Arizona. The TV was at the top of the windshield. At one point in
time, the action on the TV screen exactly matched what I was seeing
on the golf course, out the windshield just below the TV. How's that
for a coincidence?
We woke up the next morning with
giant balloons right in front of our RV. I guess the wind was
unfavorable, because they never took off. We put in an interesting
day at the Rock and Gem Show, amazing things from all over the world.
We moved to Phoenix, and soon saw
a line of people standing at a stadium gate. We got in line, too. Who
are we to be different? Finally, Barbara asked someone, “What are
we standing in line for?” Seems it was a Renaissance Festival.
Knights of old were jousting, and they took it serious. An ambulance
stood ready to haul them off, and some actually did get a trip to the
hospital. After a camel ride for Barbara, watching a unicyclist on a
high wire, and after watching a guy who could put a handful of
noodles in his mouth and blow them out his nose (travel can be so
educational!) We watched renaissance dancing awhile, and we went on
down the road.
Yuma Prison WAS educational. I put
on a prison uniform to get my picture taken. An elementary boy edged
over to me, leaving his school group, and said, “What are you in
for?” After I told him I was in for beating up a whole gang of
little boys, he ran back to his teacher. A small cell, made for six,
had a small jar for a commode, and it was emptied once per day. I
think Yuma Prison was actually the hellhole it is portrayed to be in
the old westerns.
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