Border Bars

On our way north to Nogales we saw a place in Santa Ana that looked like a bar. The sign over the door said El Bar Co. We were in a hurry to get to El Regis saloon in Nogales so we kept driving, thinking maybe we'd stop at El Bar Co on the way home.

The only glitch on the ride north was at the military checkpoint where a couple trucks managed to block the automobile/bus/RV lane so we followed the other cars when they drove down the embankment to the dirt road in the median. It was a steep embankment. We were in my cargo van. Demo worried we would tip over. Coming out of the ditch was even scarier but we managed and were soon once again barreling north.

First stop: Ueta duty free shop on the U.S. side of the border - liter of Tangueray $18, same for a liter of Absolut Citron. As we waited for the security guard to escort us into Mexico Demo said, "look at all those gringos" as though we were somehow excluded from that demographic. We carried our booze into Mexico and headed straight for El Regis.

El Regis is my kind of bar - old, dark, lots of wood, stained glass. It's a Mexican bar but gringos go there too. Ramon was working and he was totally smitten with Demo. On the shelf over the cash register was a display of food items - spam, potted meat, vienna sausages, smoked oysters. We opted for the oysters.

Next stops: the bars in Rio Rico - Hilda's and the new bar I don't know the name of. After Hilda's we sat outside at the new bar I don't know the name of and watched the full moon rise over the Santa Rita Mountains. The air was cooling, softening. A typical southern Arizona evening. It's why I fell in love with the place.

A bottle of wine with our pizza dinner at Nonna Vivi's then after-dinner drinks at the bar at Esplendor resort where we met a nice man from France who came up to our room. We chatted for hours.

Needless to say we were quite hungover the next morning. Not pleasant when faced with hours of shopping followed by the 5-hour drive to Kino but we're troopers; as we neared Santa Ana we decided to stop at El Bar Co and check it out.

I pulled up and Demo went in. When she came out she said it was a restaurant only. She said it smelled good and it was cute, decorated like the interior of a boat. We looked at the sign: El Bar Co. Well, shit: El Barco. The Boat. That gap between bar and co is what threw us. We chuckled over our stupidity all the way home.

Vamanosing to Took-sohn

We caravanned north - Demo with me in Vanna, following PJ in her truck. Smooth sailing. At both checkpoints - the military/truck and the federales - they wanted to pull us over and examine the van but they knew we were with PJ and they had waved her through so out of consideration they sent us on our way too.

What did Demo and I talk about on that five-hour drive to the border? Food. All the food we were going to eat in the states. She was even looking forward to the generally uninspiring cuisine on the Big Island of Hawaii where she would be staying for two weeks. We talked Thai, Italian, Japanese, even Mexican - the kind of Mexican food us gringos are used to, dishes loaded with sour cream and peppers and tomatoes and guacamole.

We had a 45 minute wait at the border. Not too bad. Can the vendors there find any gaudier items to hawk? Those bracelets and paintings and hair clips shimmered and glowed in the afternoon sun. The guy in the wheelchair wasn't there but the blind man was so we gave him pesos. (Shoot, now that I think about it, he probably preferred U.S. money. Try to spend a peso in Nogales, Sonora...it's nearly impossible.)

And suddenly I was....home. Santa Cruz County is my heart's home. No other place has ever touched me in such a way - not even Portland, a city and people I love dearly. That stretch between Nogales and Tucson is where I belong.

Just north of Nogales we exited I-19 at Tumacacori so I could stop at the Santa Cruz Chili Factory. Then we continued on the frontage road to Tubac. A lot of restaurants close in August but Shelby's Bistro was open so we stopped there.

As with walking into the Galleria Mall in Hermosillo for Movie Monday, Demo and I once again fell into each other's arms out of sheer joy. Food! Wine! English! Poor PJ could not relate. There is nothing she likes more than caramelos and carne asadas and coctiel de camarones. And speaking Spanish. We probably embarrassed the hell out of her with our giddyness.

Salads! Pinot Grigio! For lunch we ordered a beautiful salad with gorgonzola and other fancy food doodads, a pepperoni pizza, a burger. In August, Shelby's bottles of wine are half price. We had two.

The beauty of living simply is that the simple things - friends, food, wine - carry more beauty than we realize. Or appreciate. Go without Barilla farfale pasta for ten months and suddenly those bow tie pastas are the most treasured items in the world.

It ended up being a long day. It was after 8:00 when Demo boarded the shuttle for Phoenix. I went in search of a hotel, found a mid-range place with a very nice bartender and a very lovely pool.

Now I'm in Bisbee. I have friends here but this town is not my town. I'm already looking forward to being back in Kino. And figuring out how I can make my home - even part-time - in Santa Cruz County Arizona.

Only Crazy People

I was missing city life in general and Portland in particular the night I met the biker who loved me for three days. I'd been away from Portland for almost a year and here was a man who'd lived in Oregon and who not only knew the music of Lucinda Williams but was a big fan. I figured the universe had put me on that barstool next to that man to ease my homesickness.

Lucinda was my road sister on that trip from Oregon to Arizona. The six-CD changer held only Lucinda. I knew the words to every song. I wanted to go to Louisiana with her and her brothers and hit all the best bars, drop a quarter into a jukebox to see what it would do, hang out behind a dimly-lit bar just waiting to taste a certain someone's essence.

About six months after the biker's disappearance I ran into him at the bar. He asked if I'd heard of The Wreckers and I said no. "Wait here," he said. He rode home and returned with a copy of "Stand Still and Look Pretty."

If the same taste in music made for happily ever afters, me and that biker, we would've been together for more than three days.

If you haven't heard it, check out Michelle Branch and Jessica Harp doing Only Crazy People Fall In Love With Me. I can relate. Maybe the biker can too.

Those Three Days

This past week I've killed two scorpions in my bodega. One I beat to death with a broom. The other froze, tail up, in front of the fridge when I clicked on the light. I reached over for the boric acid and tossed a spoonful on its back. It scurried under a box of books. If boric acid works with cockroaches it may work with scorpions. Had the scorpion been outside, I would've left it alone but in the bodega, no. I didn't want to reach into that box of books and get stung, or find one as a stowaway should I ever leave.

Scorpions - and getting the trailer screens replaced - remind me of this Lucinda Williams song:

Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through the flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
Since those three days

Once I was loved forever for three days. He was a handsome biker with curly blonde hair bleached even blonder by all those Arizona bike-riding days without a helmet. He was tall with sexy crooked teeth and emerald green eyes. He said he could feel it down to his bones that we'd be together forever. He couldn't wait for me to meet his mom. He kissed me and said I was a breath of fresh air because I didn't smoke or do drugs.

Then he disappeared.

Rumor had it he was shacking up with a skinny tweaker biker chick who smoked.