I just ate at the salad bar in an isolated casino on the California/Arizona border. The parking lot is full of high dollar motor homes, big 5th wheel campers and my pick up with its little pop up camper. Old Gringos come here by the hundreds, maybe thousands, every day, 365. They go across the border by day to get affordable prescription drugs, to get their teeth fixed, eye exams and glasses. By night they come back to casino parking lots and local camp grounds. The casino runs all night. At 6:00 a.m. human drones are still feeding slots and poker machines. I go inside to pee and get back out. The food is alright but I look at the faces and I don't see any joy there.
I have an appointment with a Mexican dentist tomorrow to start on two crowns and a bridge. It will take 4 days. I’ll save $3000 from what I’d have to pay in Kansas. I had a consultation this morning, bought a blanket from a street vender, spoke some Español. Gringos moved through the streets like medieval lords and ladies with their pockets full of American dollars. They walked past natives, trying to sell something, anything. Old women selling worthless jewelry; what they earn is more pity than purchase. Grown men hawking for a dentist or a pharmacy; they scurry like mice after crumbs.
I was in town the day before and noticed a young woman, a teenager with maybe a 3-year old, a 2-year old and a year-old infant in a sling across her chest. She had two cloth covered boards with jewelry and trinkets, working the long line of shoppers waiting to go back through customs. I saw her again today. Their clothes were clean, changed from the day before and her kids, a little boy and girl, they did as they were told and they were smiling at each other. She moved slowly along the curb, looking to make eye contact but nobody would look directly at her. I thought about my own daughter at 19, no babies. She was in college at the time where 19’s should be, studying biology and English literature.
Sometimes, when a conversation is ripe and moving along I ask, when you think of ‘Your People’, the people you identify with, who helped you to understand who you are and what life should be about: what did they look like? I don’t mean family. I meant the class of people your family identified with, how they carried themselves, the looks on their faces. Were they hard working blue collar, smart working professionals, starched military, counter culture artists, what? Not a cliche, beer & pizza question. From my recollection, my people have always been Los Pobres, the poor. It wasn’t tragic. Life was good but it was a struggle, every day: not my family in particular but all of us in general. I still identify with the poor.
If you are poor, someone is worse off and you should be thankful for what you have. That is the lesson my mother never stopped teaching. The message seems to have lost its way with Make America Great Again. There but for the Grace of God . . .” You never, ever want to accept charity but you are required to be its instrument. Help those who are in need. In Los Algodones there are wealthy Mexicans and there are those who struggle every day. I saw them yesterday and again today. I am touched and their struggle is mine as well. Joseph Campbell said, “We can’t heal the sorrows of the world but we can chose to live with joy.” I work at that; thank you Jospeh Campbell. Jesus is credited with telling us, “The poor will always be with us.” But neither Campbell or Jesus meant that you shouldn’t care or that you are worthy and someone else is not.
In her song ‘Weight Of The World’ Beth Hart comes around with a hook in the chorus, “I want to come home, before the weight of the world turns my heart to stone.” I listen to it again and again and my heart hasn’t turned to stone yet either. I didn’t need to come to Mexico to feel the weight of the world. In every city and town along my way, the poor are there in plain sight, American Riffraff. As a culture, we prefer to not see them so we don’t. But I can’t help it, I see them; there but for the Grace of God. I live a charmed life but when I search my soul, they’re my people.
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