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IT CAME FROM UNDER THE PUENTE NUEVO aka The "Geeve heem a doll-ahr" Syndrome
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Dateline:
Martes 24 Julio 2006 - 22:00 horas

Monday started as an uneventful day. Over the bridge again, back to the stores, more crap purchased, then back before 16:00 in time for my bro in law to get off work. Hot damn, it got better though. When he got there, we changed clothes, hopped on Lauro Villar, and then the evening was spent at Playa Bagdad consuming Tecate and some rather rad peach-flavored 5% liquor soda (¡¡Nuevo!! ¡Contiene Jimador(TM) Tequila! ¡Ponte Bien Pedo Ya!). We got to the beach, turned right at the shanties, and drove about twenty minutes down the beach until we found a place with a relatively low amount of dead fish and garbage on the seashore. Incidentally, you gotta love PRI: Corrupt as hell, robbed a country blind, but damn they could keep some beaches clean back in the day.




As you can see, we swam, acted like fools, found shells, fed stray dogs, and enjoyed a bucket of KFC chicken I nabbed in Brownsville on the way back over. It was one of three things my bro in law asked for that day I went over: Dr Pepper, KFC, and a Def Leppard album...things he devoured in his brief couple of years on the otro lado. Then, at 20:00, the thirteen of us (yes, you read right) hopped into my mini van and came back home. We chilled until an insane hour yet again before finally retiring for the evening.


Tuesday, we decided that Wednesday (bro in law's day off) would be spent grilling chicken and hanging around the house. We decided to go back to Brownsville yet AGAIN (sigh) for chicken. So Tuesday evening we head across the border, but in a classic spazz moment my wife and sister in law decide to visit some old friends of theirs who happen to live in Villa del Sol. Postizo abuelos of theirs, if you will.Now I don't know if you've seen Villa del Sol, but it's a 14-story complex for invalids and elderly folks. Nevermind the fact that it looks like it might fall in at any minute...what bothers me is how they have 80-year-old abuelitas walking to their apartments on windy outside walkways that high in the air. I found a couple of thumbnails of the place but nothing else...so I condensed them into one equally-crappy quality image and here you go:

The place is one of the first things you see as you come towards the US from Matamoros. Well, we get to where the people we know live...and as my bad luck would have it, they live up there. The top floor, to be exact. Jeez, I almost had a fit when I walked out onto the walkway. I have seriously bad height issues folks. Well, after we got there and I let them hang out with their friends, I decided to go confront my phobia by standing at the balcony rail. The view of Matamoros was...spectacular. I don't like using that word in describing Matamoros at all, but the view from that place is unparalleled. You could see La Copa out in the distance, and all the downtown areas. It also put into perspective what a border is. Check it out for yourself:

A manmade piece of crap that doesn't exist. The world wasn't created with chalk and paint outlining places. There is one street, some water, and another street. But between those two streets is something that dictates how people live, what language they speak, and in some cases, separates the 'haves' from the 'have-nots'. If you click the picture and zoom in, you can see the gateway at the Puente Nuevo.





I thought for a long time about how less than a mile from me, there were men with machine guns and fences with razor wire that keep my family apart. People talk about how this immigration system works, but how do you explain the fact that usually only crooks, thieves and drug dealers get visas? I was rather shocked to find out that a young man I won't describe in detail has a visa. So do his parents and his brothers, who incidentally are in jail in the US for participating in the family business: stealing SUV's, passing them, painting them, giving them a new identity, then selling them. HOW do these people get visas and my loved ones don't?


Now here comes the bad part:

Well anyway, we got done with our visit at Villa del Sol and we got on with the business at hand, going to Walmart (I HATE THAT STORE!!!). We made our purchases, and finally around 23:00 we head back home. We are coming across the bridge and I get the green light at the station. Gravy, right? WRONG. This moronic guard starts flashing a flashlight at me telling me to stop. I complied, and he comes up and starts grilling me about crap like he was a gringo 200 yards north of his border station. I give him vehicle insurance, my license, even my passport. He keeps asking me for my registración vehicular and I am steadily telling him that I don't carry a vehicle title in my car with me. I also make a valid point by pointing out that as long as I stay in the zona fronteriza he really has no right to stop and harrass me for being in Matamoros, as I am not nationalizing my vehicle. He keeps going on and on and even goes "Ehy needth tu si jew rreg-ees-stray-shyun." My first reaction was "you patronizing cunt", but since I didn't want to spend the night in jail (or worse), I replied in typical bilingualese: "Que no entiendes que no traigo lo que pides it's not necessary in Mississippi dude."

I finally hit him where it hurt. I asked him for his name and badge number. This is the proper thing to do when being held captive by a mordida-hungry moron. You can put him on Azteca 7 as being corrupto and he'll be strung up. People are getting tired of putting up with that crap. He looks at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look, and sends me on my way. I got REALLY pissed off the further down the street I drove. Instead of being scared (Which I was at first, but it disappeared), I got into this blind rage.

If he knew who our neighbors are down there. If he knew. And I was told by a rather creepy and over-friendly neighbor that if I had problems, to 'just let him know' and he'd take care of it.

The 'geeve heem a dollar' phrase is popular in my family because it was thrown at my great-uncle when he drove from Mississippi to Juarez to get my other great-uncle out of jail for God-knows-what moronic crap he pulled. My uncle was held up at the bridge, and he didn't know what was going on until another cop walked up and informed him. GEEVE HEEM A DOLLAR. Yeah, right.

So, in the off chance your dumb ass reads blogs, tu madre es una ramera, Mr. Border guard.