The Last Time I Saw Ciudad Juarez

 

ElPaso and Juarez are much in the news lately.  The mayor of ElPaso has declared a state of emergency because of the influx of thousands of immigrants flooding across the border.  I've only been to ElPaso once, and only once to Juarez, its sister city across the Rio Grande.

My father passed away in March 1958 while I was in my first year of high school.  I was 14.  Newlyweds Jerry and Peggy were in California where he worked, and Peggy was very pregnant with their first child, Elizabeth.  Mom and I flew out to spend some time there and to help them pack up to come back east because Jerry had taken a job with GE in Utica, NY.  It was my first airplane trip; 4-engine TWA Constellation; it was a thrill.  We drove back east, the four of us, mostly along Route 66.  The next year, we took a train up to Utica for Elizabeth's birth.

I met my Aunt Marjorie (Meagher pronounced 'mar') for the first time ever later, but I'm not sure precisely when.  Marjorie was a teacher of special needs children, mostly hearing-impaired, in ElPaso TX which was appropriate since Marjorie herself was quite hard-of-hearing.  She swung by our Brooklyn home on the tail end of a vacation road trip from EP up the Pacific coast, across Canada west-to-east, and south to visit relatives before heading back to Texas.  She stayed with us at 441 for a day or two, convincing my mother during that time that she should visit ElPaso.

It may have been 1960 that we actually did the trip.  I recall seeing "North By Northwest" at a cinema in downtown ElPaso, so it could have been as early as 1959, but I doubt it.  Mom and I boarded a bus at the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan and spent three grueling days in 'coach' seating, rolling day and night.  I've spent 60 years trying to forget that trip and it's still with me.  Marjorie had always gushed over ElPaso and its wonderful climate, hot but bone-dry, and how much we were going to love it.  On the day our bus pulled into the ElPaso terminal, the temperature was expressed in three digits and the humidity was almost as high.  It felt like drowning.

The one thing I distinctly recall from that trip was that much of it was through the South.  At one point, we stopped at a terminal in God-knows-where, and I got out to use the restroom.  There were two: a white restroom and a colored restroom, and I wondered why one would choose a painted facility over an unpainted facility or vice versa.  It took some time before I realized that I could only use the white restroom.  Such things didn't exist where I was raised.

Marjorie loved to pack us all into her car and take us for a ride somewhere.  We went to White Sands; it was stunning.  We went to Carlsbad Caverns; it was breathtaking.  We went to Juarez.  On a few days, there was little to do (or little that would interest a 16-year-old) and I was left on my own.  That's how I managed to head downtown for a movie.

On our trip to Juarez, Marjorie drove across the International Bridge into Mexico, found a parking spot, and the ladies began to shop.  I, of course, was bored to tears.  At one point, the adults decided to stop into a cantina for some refreshment.  Inside, the walls were papered — literally — with centerfolds from prominent men's magazines.  To prevent me from being scandalized, I suppose, Mom slipped me a wad of cash and told me to see what the local shops had to offer.

I don't remember much of it, but I do recall buying a cheap switchblade knife for a few dollars.  I still have it, and it still works.  At a leather shop, I was admiring a beautiful black leather holster, intricately hand-tooled with swirls and flowers.  "Want to buy a holster?" a young Mexican boy asked.  "No," I told him, "I don't have a gun."  "Want to buy a gun?" he pressed.  I considered it, but back home in New York, the Sullivan Law would have sent me to prison for several years — just for possessing it — had I been caught with it.

We stayed with Marjorie for some time — a few weeks, perhaps — before doing the same trip in reverse.  For whatever reason, I have no memory (blessedly) of the return trip which could not have been much better than the first.  What I do recall from the trip is that each morning when we arose from sleep, the first task was to upend one's shoes and shake out any critters — especially scorpions — that might have crawled inside during the night.