Ok. Now on our street, it's a relatively quiet area. Neighbours are friendly enough, despite the aforementioned midnight mewling from the 2nd floor window.

One night, a crackhead poked his head through the burglar bars to my motherinlaw's window and showed us a jar of Kroger(Tm) [wtf. In MEXICO?] peanut butter. He begged us to buy it, and finally we did, for 10 pesos [$1], and off he waddled into the darkness of 21st street. I went to the front door, into the 'courtyard', and peered into the black to see where he was going. My brother in law is behind me, and startled the crap out of me because I didn't see him follow. He says, 'Oh him? He's heading down to the piedrero four blocks down.

SPANISH LESSON:
Piedra=rock

Do I need to go further? Thought not..

Anyway, dude's going to see the crack dealers, two dudes who are unassuming and sit on a stoop all night eating ice cream and cookies (which makes me think they spend their evening smoking herb, not crack, but that's another story, as it turned out that my suspicion was correct).

NEXT DAY...

We are driving around running errands (Read: seeing divorce lawyers, threatening people that owe my brother in law money, etc).

There are SIX FRIGGIN HUM-VEE's on 18th street!!!! It wouldn't bother me, but they AREN'T the yuppie mobile H-2's we've seen lately. They are old, olive green, and have MACHINE GUNS mounted on top, loaded, with short little brown people aiming them menacingly. I thought in a short instant, "Is this it? Am I a statistic a la Nuevo Laredo on CNN?"

We drive by, and for kicks, drive back the other way after pulling a U-turn. Turns out they are at the 'tiendita' (the 'little store'), a housing project building where hard dope is sold in that neighbourhood as well. They're supposedly 'busting' the drugpushers. Yeah, right. We go home, and ALL the monkeys are over on our street!!! ALL the piedreros from several blocks. They're hiding, also eating junk food, squatted down on the sidewalk and laughing. I get pissed, and enter into manifest-destiny cowboy of justice mode. We turn around (by this point, G n R are on the Sirius radio playing 'my michelle', which fit), and go back to the checkpoint. We roll down my window, and say the following in spanish: 'Yo, army dude. The rock slingers are on our block. Why don't ya'll actually do something about it? Thanks.' and drive off before he can respond. We get to the end of the cross-street we've barrelled down...AND IT'S CLOSED OFF AND IMPASSIBLE DUE TO REPAIRS (arrrrgh). We have to turn around, and drive back towards short brown men with machine guns, who flag us down at this point. I contemplate urinating in my pants as i picture my parents with a bad VHS tape of me chained to a shower head sans an ear and two fingers, and dude pulls us both out. He checks my papers to see if I'm 'legal' in Mexico *snicker*. He goes through our van thoroughly and after finding a Bible under my seat, he lets us go. We leave, and 4 to 6 hours later, my butt begins to un-clench.


Tomorrow:
Wreck boys and tater chip thief.