Day LVII

Down Mexico way

     It was really cool driving down there with the top down, enjoying a beer, and those cool wide open Texas spaces. There was no problem drinking, and driving back then.

     The border was no problem either, back then all we needed was our ID. Since we were GIs, our military ID was more than enough. Today you need a passport. Once across the border, I was surprised to see such a piss poor place. I had never seen anything like it in my life. The streets were all unpaved, dry dirt, with a mud puddle here and there, almost everywhere.

     The cantinas lined both sides of the street, much like the Irish bars on 2^nd Avenue. They spread out one after the other. Once inside they were pretty much like those I had seen in so many cowboy movies.

     I hadn’t had a drink of rum since I left the city. I was like nineteen, and in Texas you had to be twenty one to enjoy a real drink. The only place to get a real drink on base was either at the officers club or the non comm’s club, the sergeant’s club. If you weren’t one or the other, then you had to go off base. On base you could drink all the three point two beer you could handle, but off base you had to be twenty one.

     After we parked, I ran and got myself a bottle of rum, and we enjoyed a few slugs, before putting it in the trunk, so no one would take it. Then we went cantinaing, that’s where you go from one Cantina to the other having a drink in each one, much like the Irish do on 2^nd Avenue on St. Paddy’s day.