It is 10:00am.
I am sitting on an old wood and iron bench on the front porch of Hammy and Tanya’s. Hammy is my wife’s grandmother and Tanya is my wife’s aunt.
i’ve been sipping coffee and reading a tattered, torn, and taped copy of Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose”.
Their house is close to a fairly busy street. I believe that when Hammy and her husband bought the place in the late 60’s, it was much less traveled. The interstate is about a half a mile to the south.
The houses are of brick construction, single-level ranch-style, and the neighborhood has held up over the last 45 years or so. There are a few American flags flying on this holiday weekend. Your basic American neighborhood on a traditional American holiday weekend. It’s hard to believe all that Juarez, Mexico is just over the river, just down the street, just over there.
The reports on the news have made Juarez out to be a killing field. That may be true, and I am not going to investigate myself, so I will err on the side of caution. Anyway, why go to Juarez when AZ has Nogales. I mean, you gotta stay true to your own border towns, right?
Yesterday we stopped in Mesilla, NM and ate at the La Posta Restaurant. Mesilla is a tiny part of Las Cruces, but one full of old west history. Of course, it has become a place to shop for high-end jewelry and crap, but the buildings remain as they were and the streets aren’t crowded with fast moving cars. The La Posta Restaurant was okay. We split their version of a chimichanga and their chili pepper-filled queso and we each had a sopapilla. The sopapiilas were very good… the chimis? Well, we may need to try something else on another visit.
Apparently, Billy the Kid hung out there and was almost hanged there.
“Outlaws such as Dutch Hubert, Nicolas Provencio and Billy the Kid frequented many of the bars and dances in town. It was at the jail and courthouse on the southeast corner of the plaza that Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang in 1881. The town of Mesilla was as wild as the West ever was.” -from ¡Viva Mesilla! (oldmesilla.org).
Now, you can buy original Mexican trinkets made in China.
Today’s agenda? Unknown. I am sure it will be packed with sitting, visiting, looking at jewelry, shopping for stuff we don’t need, and food. But that’s just a guess.
Papa's Point 