Tijuana Gringo | by Michael Thomas
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-- I remember when I was a child, Miguel, I went back with my mother and younger brother to see her father. We took the train to Estacion Catorce. My cousins used to run the station there, plus the little hotel and restaurant. No, it's been many years, I don't remember and I don't know if they're still there. You always ask too many questions. Just let me tell it in my way, okay, a mi manera?
Entonces... the station is not up in the town, you see, no, el pueblo esta por arriba, up above on the mountain, por la sierra, and the railroad is down below on the desert basin floor. Si, si, la sierra de Catorce es como una isla flotando is like an island mountain floating above the desert... yes. And I remember all the way up the mountain, from the train station, up the long canyon where pilgrims go toward the town every October for Saint Francis, all the way up, as we went, and then beyond the town, out toward my grandfather's rancho, people were coming out and calling to my mother, "Hello, Juanita, how are you, how good to see you, how well the children look, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera..." and all the way up I could hear them calling to each other even before we got there, look, look, mire que viene Juanita, si, Juanita, la de Antonio Tovar.... --
Well, the movie was nothing like that. Except that Maria's story is like my personal vision of olde Mexico which I didn't make up, she really did tell me (I swear to you this is NOT fiction. All you need to worry about is that her name isn't Maria....)
Except that Maria's story is like my vision of olde Mexico, and the movie The Mexican is a Hollywood vision of olde Mexico. I am stupid cute Brad Pitt character and Maria is pretty dumb Julia Roberts character. HA HA HA heh heh HEHHHhhhh... um gotta go quick before the men in strait (straight?) jackets come to take me away ha ha ha....
But why are they in staitjackets (camisas de fuerza) eh? Hoist petard? Tsk tsk tsk with a bim with a bam with a bim bam boom!
After the film at the mall-plex we go for a drive and end up circumnavigating the landmark hill on the east end of Tijuana sprawl -- el cerro colorado. The city has spilled around it into new zones both planned and unplanned -- like El Florido -- but the huge bulk of the foothill still heaves up into the sky like the landmark which it is. Piedmont. Nobody uses that word here.
A = A .
The sun set. Then we come back into La Mesa and go to church. This is all in a borrowed car, incidentally, which is very bad for me because I've been trying to live free of automobile but Maria wants one very much and letting me drive her borrowed chariot reminds me how much fund and convenience it is to drive....
I'm being perverted and converted slowly but surely... twisted away from my own truth and reality and OH SHUT UP MICHAEL.
Then we came back and went to church at nine p.m. A lone candle came into the darkened mass and everyone lit our tapers from the new fire....
ALELUYA