i have been to Tijuana. Been going there for the last several weeks, or at least, i felt like i was making virtual visits close to home.

Actually, it is more likely i was virtually in the Philippines like Maureen was earlier in the week when she dealt with the pest control, aka termite control corporation which bought the corporation which bought the local company and then moved the call center to the Philippines because the customer service rep revealed her location to Maureen,  and i immediately suspected she was in Olongapo on Luzon because all of those bar girls had to find a different line of work when the U.S. Navy closed the base and the closest version to “Fiddlers Green” died.

And i don’t think “Erik’s” accent was Mexican. It was reminiscent of many folks i know who have the native language of Tagalog and speak English as a second language. But even though it was a long distance call from Luzan to Baja, i felt like i was back South of the Border down Mexico way.

Years ago, my first couple of visits across the border were pretty much that of a wandering child. i did not know where to go, what to do, or how to act. Since then, there have been many, many trips South of the Border down Mexico way, as Gene Autry once intoned. Yeh, yeh, i know, but even though Shep Fields sang it first and Patsy Cline did a great job, this is Gene’s song from Gene’s 1939 movie “South of the Border,” and re-sung in Gene’s 1942 movie “Down Mexico Way,” and Willie did a good job too, and i wonder if Chris Isaak has ever been to Tijuana, but it’s still Gene’s song: after all he caught the bad guys fairly and squarely although they didn’t fight fairly and Gene did have the help of Frog…er, Smiley Burnett) — now, i gotta watch those two movies again: the plots alone makes me smile.

After those first sojourns across that line in the sand, which is becoming a wall only about eight miles from our house as the crow flies, trips to Tijuana were still along the lines of the image as portrayed in “Lucky Lady,” as well as further south to Califia, Puerto Nuevo, Rosarita, and Ensenada, the stuff of legends (which you will undoubtedly get wind of if i last long enough).

The majority of the trips were bargain hunting, and hence, why i connected Erik to Tijuana.

i first went down for bargain hunting with a wise old chief petty officer when i was on Amphibious Five Squadron staff. i was amazed as he hemmed and hawed and got mad and insulting and made fun of the sellers and threatened to walk out of store after store until he got goods of all sorts for what couldn’t have made a profit for the store. And they all loved it! When i commented on a stone chess set with matching stone board, he walked me through the game they played South of the Border down Mexico way until i walked away with the set, a couple of rugs, and a tequila decanter for about three bucks.

And damn if i didn’t enjoy it as well.

Then, my parents came to visit at the beginning of their annual treks to the Southwest corner, and my mother mentioned she wanted to go to Tijuana for she had heard they had those little glass animals and the glass cases used to show of the little animals. She did not need to prod me, and we were off to the border.

We walked through the gate and there was a sight to behold. Somewhere around three million, seven thousand, two hundred, and sixty-six paintings on black velvet with about three million, six thousand, one hundred and forty-two being paintings of Elvis in cheap wood frames lining the road into the shopping area. There were other bangles of all sorts, and gum, gum, gum being sold everywhere, ceramic pots, straw sombreros, felt sombreros, and serapes, serapes. Mother, Daddy, Maureen, and i worked our way through to the small shops, and we found one with the little animals and the cases. Soon we left with about a half-dozen of the little figurines for a couple of dollars with my mother and father startled by their son’s great talent  — After she and my father learned the tricks, they would go each year and buy some things for family and friends as well as a couple of those glass cases for her and my Aunt Bettye Kate — when Mother saw some rugs she liked in the shop next to the glass shop. i began my wheeling and dealing in earnest again. Mother and Daddy had about a dozen rugs for folks back in Tennessee and i wheedled down. the salesman to less than ten dollars. As we were closing the deal, Maureen who had been wandering around the shop changed her mind and called me with the news she wanted two rugs she had found.

Blew the deal, the package of her and mother’s goods went for just less than twenty bucks.

While on this track, i should point out my favorite moment on these family outings was later when we had wandered down toward the end of the shopping area to a large open-air shop with mostly ceramic pots for plants and chimineas. At the bitter end of this place was a bigger than life-sized Creature from the Black Lagoon, if the real creature stood or swam at about eight-feet tall. My father and i went into plotting mode. We figured we could buy the thing for about twenty bucks. We decided it would be the perfect thing to ship to my brother Joe in Vermont with no labels noting who had sent it. We were reeling and rocking laughing all over that shop lot thinking of Joe when he opened the box.

However, Maureen and Mother pointed out the magnificent statue might not cost much but getting it across the border and shipping it to Vermont would likely run more than a brand new Porsche.

So it didn’t happen. But every year afterwards and just about anytime we were together, Jimmy Jewell and i would revisit that story and laugh all over again.

There was a special poignant moment on one bargaining trip. When leaving and crossing back over the border crossing before the walking bridge, a long line of folks lined the road up to the small gate that was a demarcation of sorts before the checkpoint. These folks were making a last ditch effort to sell you something worthless for anything they could get. Sometimes. they would get right up in your face, trying to convince you to buy. The most tragic were toddlers hawking small goodies as their mothers sat nearby.

On one trip coming back, i had warned my parents about how giving in and buying something would only encourage such activity and not really help anyone. As we neared the small gate, a small Mexican lass who couldn’t have been more than three walked up to my father as she held out a piece of gum. She was pretty. Her face was streaked with dirt and there were traces of tears down her cheeks. She had on a white taffeta dress and was barefooted. The dress, her legs, and feet were equally soiled.

i was going to say something to my father, but as he looked down at the little girl, i realized my saying anything would do no good. He reached down into his pocket, gave her a quarter, and gently tousled her hair.

He didn’t give a damn about the rules, about the games being played on the border. He loved that little girl. i could tell he was hurting for her and, if allowed, would have taken her home with him. This deal was just between him and that little child just like all of his relationships with children.

i admit i did get choked up a bit, but i didn’t cry and didn’t show i was choked up.

But sometimes when i remember that crossing, a tear does escape.

We don’t go South of the Border down Mexico way anymore. We have neighbors and friends who do go. Many frequently travel there. Many have relatives living there and some even live there and cross over to this side for work, shopping, or entertainment.

But not us. i told my cousin Nancy who was visiting from Florida a number of years ago when she inquired about how to go South of the Border, that she and husband shouldn’t go. i told her she could get most of the things she would want to buy right here in the Southwest corner. They could find the same cuisine on this side. It might cost a bit more. The chance of something happening like robbery, kidnapping, or being killed by the gangs was low, but it still existed.

To me, it’s not worth it. Sad, so sad because Tijuana is a great place to go. Great food. Fun places, and i’ve bragged about the shopping. And the margaritas taste superb when looking over the cliffs to the Pacific in Califia. Rosarita is just simply beautiful and delightful. Ensenada is a wonderful big city further south, and the lobster, er, longusta, in Puerto Nuevo with fries and a Modelo on picnic tables can’t be beat for the price. And there are some wonderful people there, just like here. Yet folks have been killed and kidnapped. Just not worth it.

But i need to get back to Erik and the reason i began this tome.

You see, this game began a couple of months ago when we decided to quit getting our daily delivery of a newspaper, and i wrote a post about losing a part of me. Maureen, actually more the reader than i, thought i should reconsider. Well, i will never get this saga straight, but i’ll try. Our renewal fee for eight weeks of daily delivery and internet access had been $64 for eight weeks, crazy to me and what had already given me the pause in  considering renewal.

Then they raised our eight-week fee to $124. i called to protest and was connected to someone with a foreign accent and more than likely in Olongapo or Nigeria or Tasmania or Uzbekistan. Each time i called the foreigner found a lower rate. The internet response offered a great. deal for a fee greater than the last two i got over the phone. i kept calling.

You see as i noted in a previous post, for me, losing a daily newspaper would be like losing an arm or a leg, maybe both. It’s been in my blood for almost three score years. We had decided to ditch the Union-Tribune. Even at the reduced prices, it’s really not worth it, but it is part of my life.

And finally, i connected to Erik, put on my South of the Border bargaining sombrero and got the price down to seven bucks a week, a reduction well less than half of what they tried to charge us at the renewal about two months ago.

i caved, at least for another 8 weeks.

It still bums me out. In fact, the way we do business in general now bums me out. Lost leaders aren’t losses anymore. Whoever attracts customers with bargains is still making money. Price gouging is now a way of life, not an exception looked upon as a scam. Almost no one sells a product or service for what it’s worth. They want to make more. Everybody seems to want something for nothing. It seems we have quit worrying about how useful, how effective a product or service is except in our marketing and advertising where good looking women and handsome men and cute children are doing wonderful things because they bought the product and i’m sorry but i don’t think buying a Chevrolet or a a Lexus or a drug for a malady is going to let me live in some lala land and live happily ever after with visits to enchanting places surrounded by happiness. And customer service is more than likely an eternal trip in a phone tree into lala land.

Maybe it’s the politics (both sides) that have me on a rant. Maybe it’s the pandemic. Maybe because i’m old and perfecting my role as a curmudgeon. Maybe it’s because my golf sucks. Maybe it’s because i can’t go to sea anymore. Hell, i can’t go see my grandson in Texas or my family and friends in Tennessee and elsewhere. Maybe that’s it.

But i caved and we will get our newspaper to read tomorrow morning. The Padres are breaking records and for the first time i can remember the records are for doing good baseball things, not bad. Erik is alive and well in someplace a long way away but not likely Olongapo, and he made a sell. Tijuana is still there and maybe before i reach 90, it will be safe enough to go do some bargaining and having a margarita atop Califia’s cliffs and eating longusta on the beach of Puerto Nuevo.

i think i’ll see what i can get a little glass animal for, and i will buy some gum for a quarter from a poor little girl.

Perhaps it’s because of this Covid thing. Don’t know. But i do know i have been longing for home, the one where i grew up…well, it wasn’t up very much and there is some question as to whether i really grew up at all.

Just don’t know why the longing is occurring  now. Especially since mid-August is about the last part of the year i would really want to be back there. i mean 95/95, temperature and humidity rolling in every day with grave digging on my weekday schedule until two-a-day football practice over on Hill Street came to beat me up even more.

And i sit here under the ceiling fan in my office. You see, we have never felt the need for air-conditioning and use our heating system to knock off the chill for an hour or so in the winter mornings. We prefer the fresh air. And this is really the first time i wished we had AC. Not because of the heat. We’ve had Santa Ana’s running through here  before that would melt the soles off of your flip flops — hmm, i ‘ve got a pair but only for beach days, yet today, i’m flopping around like a penguin — but Santa Ana’s are dry: pools and the ocean can fix that, and buttoning up the house with the insulation Maureen decided to spray in our attic several years ago keeps us comfortable. But this stuff is Tennessee hot, hot and humid. i knew the signal when i retrieved the paper this morning, and looked at the sky just before dawn: cirrus, stratus, and up over the mountains to the east, cumulonimbus and nimbostratus were building: thunderstorm kind of stuff in the mountains, but the pink to reds and the spotty blue sky overhead likely meant no rain here, just hot and humid. See, all those Navy years pay off.

Considering we don’t have AC, i start listing friends to visit who just happen to have such in their homes. Then i realize that social distancing frowns on such. So, i start searching for something cool, like shade or underneath this ceiling fan. There is a gin and tonic in my future tonight. As i searched, it dawned on me the call back home was seated in the deep past.

August on Castle Heights Avenue in Lebanon, Tennessee, circa 1950’s and 1960’s. i searched for cool there and then also…in vain. Oh, the nights were almost bearable (if you didn’t mind the mosquitoes) even though at Baird Park ball fields in my catching gear, my green and white Texas Boot Company ball shirt would be soaked by the second inning, and you didn’t have but one jersey back then. And at 127 Castle Heights Avenue before we had air conditioning, i searched. There was one huge (and loud) window fan in the window above the stairs to upstairs. This was to provide moving air — still warm, mind you — for the two bedrooms, hall, and  bath. i would clear off my bed, strip down to my underwear and sleep at the end of the bed in a position to maximize air coverage. Didn’t work.

◊    ◊    ◊

Now, it’s getting personal. i have a number of friends who are dealing with health issues. i know. i know: As you get older, things happen, and damn near all of them aren’t good. Bodies wear out in different ways. It doesn’t make any difference. Still hurts. Losing people for whom you care is even worse. We ain’t likely to stop it.

Yet there’s this other thing going on right now. Our cleaning lady who has been around us for about a quarter of a century is as much a friend as a service provider. She and her partner have missed the last two cleaning days. Marde is from Mexico. Her aunt and niece just died, one from the coronavirus. Worse, she now has eight family members who have contracted this pestilence. And Marde can’t go to see them. Sad.

i have several family and friends who have been unable to see loved ones suffering from various ills. They aren’t allowed to be with their loved ones. COVID.

It is just flat not right.

◊    ◊    ◊

With our cleaning up to us for the next several weeks and being the bright boy i am, i took on the kitchen this morning. i cleaned and siliconed a window sill for smoother operation. i vacuumed and then i mopped, Spic & Span of course. Like i said: bright boy.

So tonight, fans will be whirring in the Southwest corner if they don’t pull the plug on electricity for an hour or so like they did last night — it’s a roving plan they call “brown outs.” Seemed like a black out to me last night, although i did smile just a bit when it happened thinking about all of those cool people with AC who suddenly found themselves in our boat.

Tonight, i will have sashimi from my favorite Japanese restaurant, take out only, mind you. And a white wine, chilled. Problem is this crazy Tennessee weather is supposed to carry on in the Southwest corner, even get a bit worse for another four days or so.

But there is also happiness around. A grunch of birthdays today.

Siena, our niece with her brother Sebastiani,  is  one.

Then, there is cousin Kinsley with her mother Renee.

And of course, there are grand nephews Max and Culley.

i probably got the relationships a bit mixed up, but it’s okay. i’m pretty much considered “crazy uncle jim” to all of them.

Hot here. Yeh. Got up to 86. Humidity is at 47%.

Well, maybe it ain’t all that bad.

As noted previously, i am in an emotional no-man’s land with a situation where it would be completely inappropriate for me to write about now. This is one of those times where i wish i were still working: driving ships, managing safety and environmental compliance for tugboats, business development for military contractors, team-building, quality management coordinator, nuclear agency consulting and editing, Naval ROTC instructor, sports writing, newspaper editing, disc jockey, grave digger, lawn mowing: anything i had to do to take my mind off what’s going on.

So as i bounced around the house attempting to divert my attention, i also was trying to figure out when okra season occurred. No, no, not back home. i know when okra season is in Tennessee. i was trying to figure out what the season is in the Southwest corner. You see, okra does not proliferate in grocery shelves out here like it does back home. i have yet to find even a Southern themed restaurant with okra — The marketeers at Cracker Barrel drew their line for their stores at the Arizona-California border, probably for good reason; so the Danny Evins’ created feels-like-Tennessee restaurants aren’t an option. Up until now, i had to find a local grocery or the Navy commissaries that might, might have okra, and that was spotty, just by luck, kind of shopping.

Nancy Toennies and i share a love for okra and if either of us stumble across a place selling okra, the phone and text lines between us light up like “all hands on deck.”

With all of this craziness going on right now, it is even more difficult to find fresh okra. My  friend from Kansas, Marty Linville mentioned after golf last Friday, he had resorted to frying frozen okra. Later,  Nancy also confessed to this tactic. i remained stubborn. That was most likely because i had gone down that trail about thirty years ago and the frozen product i got back then was pretty much pure slime when thawed.

But i was desperate. i was planning a shopping trip to the dry side of the Naval Station, one of the few places i had found okra before and my source for Tennessee Pride sausage. But first, i needed some things from Ralph’s, no, not Cramden, Ralph’s is Kroger’s Southwest. It’s a short drive down and then up the hill from our home. i had decided to get okra if they had it in the freezer section. If it wasn’t slimy like its predecessor and worked like it did for Nancy and Marty, then i might have year-round access to one of my favorite meals. As i entered Ralph’s, i took a right turn into the produce section. Maureen wanted some cilantro. i continued along the produce en route to the meat and seafood section in the back. i wanted to check out the salmon, another favorite about which i’m stubborn and stuff of another tale.

Just before i left produce, i just happened to look below the mushrooms, and there, there it was: a bin of fresh okra. i emptied it.

So last night was my night. Cleared the kitchen from the hall monitor chef-quality wife who actually reads directions — i do too but only for my mother’s recipes and this one is mine, all mine.

Martini in hand, i chopped the okra and the onions and the olives. The chef creature had gotten out the diced tomatoes. i fried the sausage and chopped it into small pieces so she wouldn’t know. i mixed the other ingredients in a big bowl and slowly dispensed them to the cast iron pot from near fifty years of my ownership. Would have used bacon grease but we don’t have such in cans for such in this house. Health, you know. i put the burner on low and added a few secret ingredients and forgot to add a couple of others. No matter. All of my cooking, even from my mother’s recipes is an adventure, an exploration.

As my concoction, not goulash, or some Cajun thing because this is mine all mine, cooked slowly, i turned to the corn bread. The chef of the house wanted muffins and wanted them in those paper cup cake thingies. i like it in a pan and cut and served, but i always defer to the chef…well, maybe not always. i mix it from my mother’s unwritten instructions and forty-leben different ideas of how cornbread should be made. NO SUGAR. EVER.

i finish the mixture as the oven preheats. i fill the muffin pan. There is a good bit too much for the paper muffin thingies. So i try again to make a piece of cornpone from what’s left. My mother made it rarely, yet it was one of my favorites. i have attempted to replicate this glorious piece of pastry about a half dozen times with absolutely no success. But this time, oh, this time, it was sublime according to my taste, which tends toward comfort food.  i buttered the two small pieces and took one to my daughter. She loved it. i then dared to walk to the chef who had thus far been banned by my edict from the kitchen. She tasted it and…oh lord, she loved it.

Once allowed in the kitchen, she cooked the rice. Supper was served. It was, if i might be bold enough to judge, spectacular.

i was back home. Okra with sausage, tomatoes, and a whole bunch of other stuff with cornbread (and cornpone) with a nice zinfandel.

Take me home.

It did give me a respite from my worries, put me right back smack dab in the middle of Tennessee. And Maureen declared the next time corn meal was considered, i would make cornpone.

Oh, i forgot the mushrooms.

My world is a little off its bearings right now. i don’t feel it is appropriate to expand on that first statement, at least not now. But as my orbit was being knocked off its course a bit in the last several days, for a couple of months actually, i wrote this:

Hmm…

i am not who i was then;
i am not who i am now;
I am not who i am
whenever I think about
who i might be when.
whoa.
i do not understand how
it all got so turned around, upside down
then, now, beyond
because
i am beyond concern
about who i was,
who i might have been,
who i am,
who i will or won’t be,
and
the same i could say
about any of you:
you see,
i only know
i care,
and
if all is to be right with the world,
you also care.

i had difficulty making out my aunt’s cursive written word on the back of the photo.

It was a single photo amidst many in the envelope my cousin, Nancy Orr Winkler Schwarze, had sent me a couple of years ago. As the pile collected on my desk, this one intrigued me.

i had heard about my aunt Evelyn Prichard at Cumberland. She was a star student, a basketball player, a campus leader, and attractive enough to win the affection of a wonderful man, James “Pipey” Orr whom she married after they graduated. She also cooked fried chicken for her grandfather’s breakfast, walked two miles to Cumberland from his home on Hunter’s Point Pike, attended her morning classes, returned to her grandfather’s where she cooked his lunch, returned to Cumberland for afternoon classes and basketball practices, and at the end, walked back to her grandfather’s where she cooked supper with the help of her younger sister (my mother), her youngest sister, and probably not a great deal of help from my eight-year old uncle.

So i was intrigued with this photo and the one word and the year written on the back. i thought maybe it was “Debutantes, 1931.” The cursive writing became smaller and difficult to make out at the end. The lettering was small and neat, not as neat and orderly as her two sisters wrote, but it contained the same characteristics. The letters looked like the perfectly formed letters, large, above the blackboards in every classroom of every grade in elementary school that i remembered. That’s what their cursive looked like. My sister’s writing had that too. My brother’s also, but he formed his with a backward slant, something i had always intended to ask him about. Toward the end of this exhibit of cursive reminded me of mine, hurried, different, some suggestion of an older style or at least a cruder style. This has been amplified in my later years, this recklessness with the cursive lettering. Perhaps it was college that did that to me. i wondered if it had done that with my aunt.

i asked Maureen to decipher the lettering. She immediately decided it indeed was “Debutants .” i should have dropped it there, but i kept looking. i think the old news reporter kicked in with Coach, JB Leftwich, looking over my shoulder.

i got out my desk magnifying glass i had claimed from my father-in-law’s estate. Under the glass, the writing looked like “debutees.” It seemed like a good word to me, but it was unfamiliar. i looked it up. Google, where else?

It was French as i had guessed. The plural was also feminine, meaning “to start,” “to debut,” to make one’s debut.”

And there it was.

She and her friends. i think i recognize one or two, but i will not hazard a guess as to whohe fr these 1991 Cumberland University students were. i’ll let my Lebanon friends determine if they can put names to the frosh faces.

It seems like a simpler, magical time to me. But as with all periods of history, including the current times, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Hmm…i think i’ve read that somewhere else before. That’s my Aunt Evelyn Prichard Orr on the left.