Reinsertion

      “South of Tijuana, the highway settles down to a single winding tape of
        asphalt... and the country opens up. You don't have to worry which road to
        take. There's only one.”
                                                                                     Jeopardy, 1953



Steve and Charlie drove me from the First World to the Third World, via Sunday brunch in Capistrano. We ate at the El Adobe, Richard Nixon’s favorite Mexican restaurant. I got to sit in his nougahyde chair. I ordered the ‘President’s Choice.’ It turns out that the El Adobe had originally served Continental cuisine but Nixon, desperate to appear like he routinely dined among the common folk, promoted the place as having the best Mexican food in the region. The chef at El Adobe made the switch. The food wasn’t bad, but I was going to Mexico, and the notion that I was leaving behind the barrio of the boy who poured ketchup over his cottage cheese as he bombed Cambodia, was going to work out just fine. By the time the swallows came back to Capistrano, I hoped to be well on my way to their snowbird home in Argentina.
After we stopped in San Diego so I could run into the ocean, Steve steered the Honda across the border, into Tijuana. And didn’t my cozy little world view change in a hurry? It may have been the birthplace of the Caesar salad, but the delivery room was cluttered with tattoo parlours, jumping beans, donkeys in zebra paint, stilettoed short brown girls leaning outside rooms you could rent by the hour, cheap pharmaceuticals and other drugs, Cuban cigars, and Mariachi madness- an assault on all the senses. We had a farewell beer at a little cantina. Steve handed me his pocket Spanish dictionary, ‘just in case.’ They dropped me on a narrow tape of asphalt south of the city, where Mexico began and they ended.
Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United States. There was a kaleidoscope of plastic litter along the sand shoulder of pavement, against the rocky purple hills and the silence. I was alone with sixty pounds of Serendipity and, even though I had planned for what I thought was any contingency, there was an unnerving shimmer on the horizon. Two guys came over the rise. I saw the sun catch the glint of metal blades flicking open. The long sigh I heard was mine. As they approached, a smoke and dust cloud overtook them, and I aimed my thumb at where I thought the cockpit should be. The bearded driver of the old Ford truck veered over, just long enough for me to toss Serendipity in the back and crack open the passenger door. We were off and running before I hit the seat.
“You looked like you needed a lift.”
“Oh yeah.”
His name was Hartley, a nice Jewish boy going to med school in Ensenada. Naval reserves. Football player. Saving lives, one gringo at a time. Back at his trailer, Hartley and his classmate, John, started pouring vodka tonics. Too much later, we went for a walk around town. Around the first corner lay a dead dog, in the middle of the street.
“At least he won’t have to live in Mexico anymore.” Hartley might have been happier in an American school.
The next morning I attended a tutorial. The professor taught in Spanish about tuberculosis. He looked like he had it. After class, I asked Hartley for directions to the highway south. He said he would drive me.
"They don't put up signs in Mexico. Mexicans tear them down and make houses out of them”.