II. THE TRIP: MEXICO AND ARRIVAL IN MONTERREY

For a twelve-year-old, crossing into Mexico at Reynosa was an exciting experience.  The Aduana (customs) officers were impressively uniformed and exuded old-world courtesy.  One of the officers was looking for a ride to the next checkpoint, south of Reynosa; however, my father, always exercising the utmost in caution, expressed his regrets, and we continued on our way to Monterrey.

Lunch time rolled around as we reached the halfway point to Monterrey.  Always an aficionado  of tamales since sampling some in the home of a Mexican lady in Poplar Bluff, my father was craving real Mexican food and pulled off the road at a small restaurant.  The menu was a virtual compendium of dishes, from which my father found his tamales, while I settled on enchiladas.  From a window by our table, I heard a distinctive noise of "slap, slap, slap."  Peering out the window, I saw a griddle over an open fire, above which two ladies were molding a corn mixture into tortillas, which would be grilled into the fresh, corn-based ovals accompanying our meal.  Although I did not, of course, realize it at the time, I had glimpsed an important part of the Mexican culture and the significant niche held by corn throughout virtually all the Mexican past.  In due course, as I surveyed Mesoamerican religion and mythology, I would find that corn had a very special connection with the Mexican people for almost four millennia.

Entering Monterrey late in the afternoon on a Thursday, we found the business district to be a bustling place.  My father explained to me that Monterrey was an industrial center, well known for the production of iron and steel, and also for its breweries.  As such, he said, Monterrey had been deemed the "Pittsburg of Mexico."

Our lodging for the next three nights would be at the Hotel Ancira, a classic old hotel, where it was reputed that Pancho Villa had once ridden his mount up the hotel's beautiful marble staircase. That evening, we dined nearby in a picturesque restaurant, the Louisiana, where, for the first time in my young life, I saw crepe suzettes prepared tableside by tuxedo-clad waiters.

Friday saw my father obtaining the services of a guide, a student from Monterrey Tech, who escorted us to the waterfall of Cola de Caballo, as well as to the historic seat of the Archbishop of Monterrey, and to a glass factory.

The waterfall was the highlight of my day.  It was a narrow chute, tumbling from a great height and did, indeed, remind me of a horse's tail.  The force of the water's drop was greatly magnified by a trek to the base of the falls on the back of a burro.

After a full day, punctuated by lunch at the falls, my father concluded that, since there was much more to be seen, our guide should meet us again early Saturday morning at the Ancira, and we would resume our tour of the city.

During various stops on Friday, I had seen several representations of a woman clad in a cloak, covered by what appeared to be stars and standing on top of a crescent moon.  At two locations, there seemed to be shrines to the mysterious lady.  When I questioned my father about what I had seen, he replied that, as far as he knew, they were depictions of the Virgin Mary.  However, not being satisfied with that answer, I resolved to take up the matter on the following morning with our guide.

After a quick meal in the hotel's restaurant, we retired early.  Saturday would prove to be another uncommon day for a twelve-year-old from Poplar Bluff.

A LONG-LIVED FASCINATION WITH MEXICO (CONTINUED)

I.  THE TRIP:  TEXAS

It was the day after Christmas. Presents had been opened, wrapping paper disposed of, and the house had been straightened up.  Some days earlier, my father had serviced his trusty Buick Roadmaster sedan.  By 6:00 AM, we had loaded our luggage, locked up and were on Highway 67 South, heading toward Little Rock and points south.

I was no stranger to long-distance travel, having accompanied my father on trips throughout the U.S. and even into French Canada.  My father was a widower who tried to make up for my being motherless by providing me with exposure to as many learning experiences as possible.  His efforts to compensate for the loss of my mother were compounded by the fact that I had witnessed her death in a tragic car crash two years earlier. He was also possessed of abundant wanderlust, and this meant that I naturally assumed that life was one exciting trip after another.  And, as a seasoned traveler and a bookworm, I made certain to carry along plenty of books and snacks. Although several weeks had transpired since the radio history contest, my cranium was still crammed, thanks to Mrs. Corbett, with such a staggering load of historical trivia that - had I known of her at the time - would surely have qualified me as a dedicated servant of Clio, the muse of history.

I recall that our first night's stop was at Eldorado, Arkansas.  I also remember that there was nothing in Eldorado that stirred my imagination.  It was Texas, that land of awe-inspiring history and heroes of epic proportions that I wanted to experience.

Our second day on the road saw us finally entering Texas.  I had no idea of the distances involved in traveling from one Texas town to another.  However, Texas did not disappoint me, largely I think, because my father had planned most capably, with well thought-out stops at Austin and San Antonio.

One entire afternoon was spent inside and on the grounds of the Texas state capitol.  As I wandered the premises, history literally walloped me at every turn.  Not only was the capitol building larger than its national counterpart, there were monuments galore, each one of which eulogized Texas martyrs, revolutionaries, rangers and assorted icons from the 19th and 20th centuries.

After a night in a downtown Austin hotel and breakfast in a restaurant on Congress Avenue, Dad headed the car south.  In no time at all, we had cleared the Austin city limits and were moving on toward San Antonio and the Alamo.  Austin in 1954, although impressive because of its history and monuments, was nothing like the burgeoning  metropolis of 2014, which is rapidly filling up with economic refugees from California and the Rust Belt, resulting in some of the worst traffic jams in the country.

Keeping my eyes focused on the landscape slipping by as our southern progress continued, my imagination turned to what it must have been like in February of 1836, as Santa Anna and his forces marched northward through similar terrain on their way to a dusty little outpost  called San Antonio and the Alamo.

Arriving in San Antonio around noon, I was so excited that I could barely get through my lunch, anticipating what lay ahead in the afternoon at the Alamo.  By early afternoon, we were finally inside the Alamo.  Very quickly,  I found a solitary corner in the vicinity of the Long Barracks and allowed my imagination to run wild.  In my reverie, it was if I were witnessing the final Mexican assault in the early morning hours of March 6, 1836.  Travis, Bowie, Crockett and the martyrs were gallantly facing overwhelming odds, as the sights and sounds of battle filled my head.  Two hours later, my father cut short my daydream, informing me that it was time to move on.

Before leaving San Antonio, however, I was able to view the martyrs' monument in Monument Square.  I distinctly recall the Spanish surname of "Guerrero" somehow standing out among the long list of the fallen.  Implausibly, that would be the family name of the woman I was destined to marry some decades later.  It also made me aware that an independent Texas was not brought into being as a purely Anglo undertaking.  Eventually, I would learn that names such as Ruiz, Navarro and Zavala would  be numbered among the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas.

Not far south of San Antonio, we crossed a bridge over a trickle of water that somehow had been dubbed the "Medina River."   Fom behind the steering wheel, my father remarked that such a "river" would not even qualify for gully status back home.  Nevertheless, I dimly recalled that I had come across a reference to the Medina River in the Encyclopedia, during the many hours I had been segregated by Mrs. Corbett in the library of Kinyon Elementary School.

Further reflection led to my concluding that we were near where the bloodiest day  in the history of Texas had taken place in 1813, when forces led by Bernardo Gutierrez, the self-proclaimed president of the "Republica del Norte" and the leader of a movement which had sought independence for Texas, had been crushed by a crack Spanish army.  During that battle, fully 1,800 Texas partisans - a motley bunch of American frontiersmen, descendants of Tejanos and Indians - fell near the Medina River.  A member of the Spanish officer corps at the battle was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant named Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  The military engagement came to be known as the Battle of the Medina and represented a temporary setback in the inevitable advance toward independence, which would be realized twenty-three years later, in 1836.

After an uneventful overnight stop in Corpus Christi, we continued southward toward our next destination, Brownsville.  What made an impression was  the temperature hovering around 80. Once again, my mind wandered, this time to March of 1846, when General Zachary "Old Rough and Ready" Taylor, following the orders of President James K. Polk, crossed the Nueces River and made for the Rio Grande to press for that River being the southern boundary of Texas, which had finally been admitted to the Union in 1845.  Thus was the conflict known as the Mexican-American War initiated; however, I was more engrossed in pondering how American forces, clothed in heavy woolen uniforms, would have held up over a march of 160 miles to the Rio Grande in humid, 80-degree weather.

The long stretch of highway south of Sarita must have lulled me into an extended nap, as I have no memory at all of our having passed through the inhospitable surroundings that typify that great expanse of south Texas known as the King Ranch.  The next thing I knew my father was driving into Brownsville.  

Brownsville in 1954 was a far different place than it has become sixty years later.  At that time, it stood out as a pleasant town of 35,000, with wide, palm-shaded streets and graceful old homes.  I definitely recall that the town had an aura of spotlessness, in direct contrast to the refuse and littler that one encounters on its streets today.  The downtown was a lively place, with attractive shops, movie theatres and elegant hotels.  In any case, Brownsville made a decided impression on me, and that decision figured prominently in my decision, some thirty years later, to make the city my home.

For the next two days, my father and his twelve-year-old son took special delight in the sub-tropical, early January weather.  A drive to Port Isabel on a day marked by blue skies and pleasant breezes was unforgettable.  And we also had a look at South Padre Island.  Definitely, one of my fondest experiences was being able to spend a couple of hours in a motel swimming pool, thinking that my friends back home would be truly envious.

After two days in Brownsville and with Monterrey beckoning as our next destination, we moved on to McAllen, from which we would proceed to Reynosa and the Republic of Mexico.  As we neared the bridge and the crossing point into Mexico, I felt a surge of excitement, something quite unknown from anything I had previously experienced.  Somehow I must have known that Mexico would enthrall me.  And, despite travels which have taken me throughout the world since that time in 1954, the fascination has persisted and, with it, a long-running attempt to comprehend the vast cultural differences that have marked the often trouble history between the United States and Mexico.