Our next door neighbors

When I was five years old (so this would have been in the mid-1960s), as part of a trip to Southern California, my parents dipped us into Tijuana.  I still remember that trip.  We went to a large, crowded market place that smelled bad.  That’s all I remember.  But what my parents remember is me coming to a dead stop in the middle of the market and howling “I want to go back to my own civilization.”

Tijuana is still an uncivilized place, and continues as a reminder that Mexico is an unstable, crime-ridden society, and that good fences make good neighbors.