Week Five in El Paso (The “hump”)

GEICO has been re-running some classic commercials lately and one of my favorites is the obnoxious camel walking through the cubicle farm office on a Wednesday repeatedly asking the workers, “What day is it?” Here’s the video:

GEICO "Hump Day" commercial

My point is that this weekend is the mid-point of my El Paso adventure (the “hump”) and it’s time to reflect on what I’ve experienced so far. I have been here five weeks and I will be here for five more weeks. When I decided to come here last fall, I was seeking a respite from the cold Ohio winter that caused me a lot of issues with my chronic allergies and asthma.

On that issue, I can say that things are improved. I have stopped taking a couple of medications suggested by my allergy/asthma specialist and my allergy symptoms are much less bothesome. There is one more medication I plan to stop to see what the effect will be. I still get out of breath when I exert myself on a walk or climbing stairs, but I think that is due to altitude. El Paso is about 3,800 feet elevation or nearly 3,000 feet more than the Akron area.

Health issues aside, I am really enjoying getting to know this community. This area is known as the “Borderland” and it is a fusion of both American and Mexican cultures. When I am out in the community or on campus at UTEP, I hear about as many people conversing in Spanish as English. Oh, and the Mexican food I’ve had so far has been really good.

On the border security issue, most of the people I have met want border security, but many of them have family or professional connections with folks in Juarez and the rest of Mexico. The fact is that thousands of people cross the border everyday between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, in either direction for work or school or family reasons. So, they don’t want a large wall or an overly restrictive border.

One thing I did before I got here was sign up for non-credit classes through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UTEP. I am taking three classes and I have really enjoyed them and getting to know my classmates. I met one woman who was born in Mexico, moved to the US when she was a child because her father found a job in El Paso. She raised seven children and several of them have graduated from UTEP. Now, her kids have urged her to go back to school and she is taking some OLLI courses to, “…get used to going to school again.”

This past week the instructor in my class “Borderland: History and Culture” had to cancel class because of a family illness. As I went back to the OLLI lounge area to wait for the start of the next class, I quipped: “I know I’m getting old because I’m disappointed that class is cancelled.” That got a few laughs, but I really meant it.

Instead of staring out at 20 glassy-eyed college freshman in my speech classes at the University of Akron, this is a lot more fun being on the other side. I didn’t think that way when I was an undergrad at Miami and I was always being delighted when a class was cancelled. But now I think the saying, “youth is wasted on the young” really has some merit.

A great experience I had this week was driving nearly three hours east of El Paso to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Once I left the east side of El Paso, I drove about 100 miles through mostly desert including a fantastic stretch of about 20 miles through the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. But, if you ever get to make this drive, make sure your gas tank is mostly full and your bladder empty, because there are no gas stations or restaurants for more than 100 miles.

The seven-mile access road to the Carlsbad Caverns Park visitor center is a phenomenal drive though mountainous terrain. There are several tours through the caverns, and I opted for the least physically challenging one called the Big Room. After buying a ticket, I took an elevator ride almost 800 feet down into the cavern.

It is truly stunning, and it took me about an hour to walk the 1.2-mile trail around the cavern, stopping to to look at various points of interest. The floor area would contain more than 14 football fields and at the highest point it is about 200 feet from the ceiling to the floor in a couple of places.

Walking through the cavern was a great experience, but the stuffy, humid air eventually made it uncomfortable for me. I didn’t feel too bad though because, when I was catching my breath on a bench about three quarters of the way through, a guy in his 40s had to stop and rest too.

When I suggested coming here for the winter months to Pam last fall, I billed it as a sabbatical of sorts along while seeking relief from my respiratory issues. So, far it has been positive on both counts with the allergy symptoms noticeably better.

On the mental side, I’ve found time to write about 16,000 words on a novel I have been thinking about for a couple of years. And no, I won’t reveal the topic until I finish it and it goes to press.

I’ve also read four books since I’ve been here and just started another one this week. I’ve never read that much in such a short time. I’m lucky if I read half a dozen books in a year. And, I’ve kept up with my plan to write a weekly blog about my experiences.

So, what do I think about El Paso? Maybe you remember when you were younger, in college perhaps, and you met someone went on a couple of dates and you thought: “Gee, I really kind of like this person.” That’s where I am at with El Paso. I really don’t know yet if I will come back next year or not, but this is an intriguing area and I want to learn more in the next few weeks. And, I’m having fun so far.

See you next week.

Week Four in El Paso

This is the week where I began to feel almost settled into El Paso. I’m beginning to learn my way around the west side of town and the university area. It was time for me to do a little exploration around the area to get to know it better.

Sunday was a cloudy, cool day, probably the gloomiest day since I arrived in El Paso. It was dreary with the temperature in the mid-50s with a few occasional sprinkles of rain. On Sunday afternoon I drove downtown and explored the area south of downtown. Most of the signs on businesses were in Spanish and the few people I saw walking around were mostly Latino.

Then I continued my driving tour around the UTEP campus. Since it was Sunday, all the gates were open and campus drives that are pedestrian only on weekdays were accessible by car. The campus buildings are nearly all in tan stucco, consistent with the architecture of the area. Because this area is very hilly, the campus is not laid out in a grid, but follows the contour of the land. It is very different from the typical Midwestern campus with large open green spaces and red brick, Georgian architecture.

UTEP has about 25,000 students and is a branch of the University of Texas system. It seems like it has a lot of commuting students because it is in a major metropolitan area and there aren’t a lot of dormitories. Most of the cars in campus parking lots have Texas license plates, although you see some from nearby New Mexico and a few from the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which is right across the border.

The big event Monday was the arrival of the President for a campaign rally at the El Paso Coliseum, which is in the eastern part of the city. At the same time, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who nearly defeated Sen. Ted Cruz in last November’s election, held a rally and spoke at a recreation complex in the same area. In the days before the event, the local TV stations warned of road closings in the area of the rally.

Both of the classes that day were very interesting. In the Borderlands history class, the professor showed a video that called this area “Mex-America” and portrayed how the US and Latino cultures had been intertwined in this area for the last couple of centuries or more.

According to the documentary, Mex-America includes the western two-thirds of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern Colorado, Southern California and two northern states of Mexico, Chihuahua and Sonora. Most of this area had once been part of Mexico until the influx of US settlers in the mid-19^th century led to a series of conflicts that resulted in the US taking control of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

In the second class on Monday, the Anatomy of Law Enforcement, we heard about the various ways drugs are smuggled into the US from Mexico and other Central and South American countries. According to the instructor, a 30-year veteran of the DEA, nearly all of these drugs are coming through the Ports of Entry, the checkpoints on the border between the US and Mexico. Drugs are hidden in cars and trucks crossing the border.

In one chilling scenario, he mentioned that in most towns or cities on the Mexican side of the border, there are multiple pharmacies, medical and dental clinics. The prices at these health care businesses are much less than in the U.S. and many Americans patronize them. The drug dealers hire Mexican teenagers to note the make, color and license number of U.S. cars that regularly visit these businesses.

Once a pattern established, drug dealer employee copies the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) of an American’s car while the driver is inside. The VIN is usually visible through the windshield on the top of the dashboard on the driver’s side. With the VIN, a duplicate copy of that car’s remote key is made. The next time the American visits the medical office or pharmacy, the drug dealer puts a shipment of illegal drugs in the trunk of the car while the driver is inside

Because thousands of cars pass through the El Paso Port of Entry everyday, only a small percentage receive more that a cursory examination by the Border Patrol. Once a car carrying the “shipment” is waved through the border, another drug cartel employee will follow the car until it is parked and the driver goes inside. At that point, the “shipment” is removed from the car trunk for distribution to customers in the US.

Later, I visited a bookstore and bought a copy of Chrissie Hynde’s autobiography “Reckless.” In the early chapters, she details growing up in the Akron area and makes a lot of references to interesting local places. She said her family once lived in a house on 8^th Street in Cuyahoga Falls when she was about three or four years of age. The first house Pam and I bought in 1976 was on that same street. Interesting.

My final excursion of the week was to Ft. Hancock, Texas, about an hour east of El Paso. I hadn’t really explored that area yet and drove out there on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Once out of El Paso, the landscape is desert and there was a lot of dust was in the air on this windy day.

It’s a small village of about 2,000 people with mostly stucco, one-story houses or manufactured homes.  According to Wikipedia, there had once been a US Army fort there that housed several hundred troops. During World War I, these soldiers guarded the U.S. border against anticipated attacks by Mexican mercenaries funded by the German government.

The highlight of my visit was an excellent Mexican lunch of chicken tacos, rice and beans and a small, non-descript truck stop called Angie’s on the outskirts of town. It was really delicious.

Stay tuned for more next week.

El Paso, Week Three

This week, I learned a lot more about the history of this area, called the Borderland by locals, especially about the invasion of the US by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. Also, I made my first visit to Mexico.

On Sunday I went to the First Presbyterian Church again. This week, the pastor’s sermon was based on the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the struggles of Queen’s lead singer Freddie Mercury.

At the service, there was a four-piece rock band and four singers who covered several Queen songs. They did a very good job. The pastor talked about Freddie Mercury’s struggles with drugs and his sexual orientation and how it cost him the love of woman he cared a great deal for.

The pastor’s main point was that we spend a lot of time looking for love, but that is around us in the people we meet and the love of God that is everywhere. The service closed with the rock anthem “We Will Rock You” but with the lyric “We Will Bless You.”

It was Super Bowl Sunday, so I stopped at the grocery to get some snacks and it was packed. A lot of people had the same idea.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and I spent a couple of hours outside reading an auto-biography of Mike Love of the Beach Boys that Pam gave me for Christmas. The Beach Boys were a favorite band of mine, especially in my high school years when their songs evoked images of the California beach scene with warm sun, blue ocean, fast cars and California girls in bikinis.

Love’s book provides another insight into the group’s troubles caused by family discord, drugs, alcohol and unscrupulous managers and record companies.

While I was reading, my Airbnb host Adolfo came out of his house with a container of homemade queso dip and nacho chips. He said he and his wife Delia thought I would enjoy a snack during the game. I already planned to have pizza and a salad, so this was a great addition.

I really wasn’t interested in the game until I found out that Rams Coach Sean McVay played football and graduated from my alma mater, Miami University. So, I was rooting for the Rams, but the other team won.

I thought the commercials were just so-so, but my favorite was for Hyundai with Jason Bateman as an elevator operator taking a young couple car shopping on an elevator trip suggestive of Dante’s layers of Hell. The elevator stopped at floors with a number of obnoxious situations including a root canal, jury duty and a vegan dinner party before it stopped at a Hyundai dealership making the couple happy.

This week’s Borderland history class at UTEP focused on the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. On March 9, 1916, Villa and about 500 men attacked the village of Columbus, NM, killing about a dozen residents and a couple of US soldiers who were at nearby Fort Putnam. After the attack, President Woodrow Wilson ordered a US response and several thousand US Army troops under General “Black Jack” Pershing invaded Mexico and spent almost a year trying to capture Villa. In early 1917, Wilson called off the mission and ordered Pershing and the troops to return home because the President knew the US would be entering World War I soon.

Later in the week, I drove to Columbus, NM, and visited two museums dedicated to the history of the attack. One museum is in the original town railroad station and was created by the local historical society. The the other is at Pancho Villa State Park. One artifact I remember is the safe from the Bank of Columbus that had a bullet hole in the front from the raid. The safe was manufactured by Diebold Co. of Canton, Ohio.

The caretaker at the local display said the town was named after Columbus, Ohio, when it was founded as a railroad stop in the late 1800s. Ironically, one the fatalities in the 1916 raid was Dr. Harry Maurice Hart, who had a veterinary medicine degree from Ohio State and was a government livestock inspector. He arrived in Columbus on business the night before the raid and died when Villa’s men set fire to the hotel where he was staying. His remains were returned to Columbus, OH, for burial.

After I visited the two museums, I drove about three miles south and parked my car on the US side of the border with Mexico. I then walked across the border to Puerto Palomas, a small town of several thousand right on the border. The main street was crowded with tourists on a sunny Friday afternoon and there were police and Mexican army personnel around.

I went to a gift shop-restaurant called the Pink House and the it was mobbed with mostly American tourists. There was a Mariachi Band playing and most of the people were drinking beer from bottles or Margaritas out of plastic cups. It was quite a scene seeing silver-haired women trying navigate the racks of souvenirs without spilling their drinks.

I was hoping to get some lunch while there, but to paraphrase baseball great Yogi Berra, it was so crowded I didn’t want to be there. After about 45 minutes, I walked back across the border and stopped for lunch at a small café in Columbus.

On my way home, I was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint about 15 miles outside Columbus. Orange cones were set up in the road and all traffic was directed by an electronic sign to pull over. A Border Patrol officer looked inside my car and asked if I was a US citizen and then told me I could leave. The previous week I was stopped at another Border Patrol checkpoint near White Sands National Park.

On Thursday, I went to UTEP to see the Miners play Florida Atlantic University. The Miners aren’t very good and they lost this game by 15 and their record fell to 7-17. But, I got a free, souvenir t-shirt commemorating Texas Western College (UTEP’s former name). In the 1966 NCAA basketball championship they beat heavily-favored Kentucky. I remember watching that game as a high school senior and rooting for Texas Western to pull off the upset. This was years before I attended Kentucky. That accomplishment was a college version of “Hoosiers” with the small, unknown school taking down a giant.

At halftime they introduced the wife of coach Don Haskins and the widow of Bobby Joe Hill, the point guard of the championship team and they received a standing ovation from the crowd.

The weather this week was okay, sunny and upper 50s to low 60s. But, Wednesday was very windy and the dust filled the air, making the surrounding mountains less visible. I had some difficulty breathing as I returned to my car after class. But, I can’t complain with the weather here compared with the blizzards and record low temperatures in other parts of the country.

Until next week…

Week Two in El Paso

So, I am sitting in Kinley’s Coffee and Tea, about a block from UTEP, contemplating all the interesting experiences of the past week. I like this place a little bit better than the Starbucks across the street because it really has a campus coffee shop feel. The menu is written in multiple colors of chalk on blackboards and the main counter is faced with corrugated aluminum like you would see on a farm shed.

The polished concrete floor is mostly brown and the stucco walls are dark gray. The best thing I like about Kinley’s is the variety of pastries and breakfast and lunch sandwiches. This morning’s breakfast an egg, Swiss cheese, arugula lettuce and avocado on an everything bagel. Delicious!

One thing I have noticed is that there are often helicopters or small airplanes flying overhead. They repeatedly fly back and forth at certain times over the casita I call home. I think this might be aerial surveillance by the U.S. Border Patrol since my place is only about a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border.

I started the week by attending the First Presbyterian Church, which is about 10 minutes from where I am staying. The minister, Rev. Neal Locke, is a 40-ish, energetic man who greeted nearly everyone who came into the church. It was a fairly conventional Protestant service, but it was the sermon that made it standout.

“Catholics have Mother Theresa, Baptists have Billy Graham and we Presbyterians have Mister Rogers,” he began his sermon. For the next 15-20 minutes he talked about how the Public TV children’s program host was an ordained Presbyterian minister. He talked about how Mister Rogers made young children feel loved and accepted and, most of all, special. 

He showed several video clips from the 2108 Academy Award nominated documentary about the TV show to illustrate his points. And, I am not kidding, the closing hymn of the service was the TV show’s theme “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” While this may sound camp and hokey, it was not.

On Monday, I was excited to start my classes in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at UTEP. The courses run for six weeks and are non-credit. So, no grades or homework! Those enrolled in the program must be at least 50 years old. OLLI is offered at about 130 colleges and universities nationwide.

My first class was “Borderlands: History and Culture” taught by Oscar Martinez, a retired history professor who taught at both UTEP and the University of Arizona. In the first class, Dr. Martinez gave a brief lecture about how the westward expansion of the U.S. in the mid-19^th century led to war with Mexico and the acquisition of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Then we watched a documentary about how this expansion affected the Native Americans in the Southwest, especially the Apaches. Most of the focus was on the life and exploits of Geronimo.

The next class was taught by Alfredo Arroyo, a 60-ish man who has spent a 30-year career in law enforcement. The first meeting of “Anatomy of Law Enforcement” covered the organization and jurisdiction of various agencies. Arroyo had spent much of his career with both the FBI and DEA and had some fascinating stories about cases he worked on. Later, we will cover crime scene investigation, interrogation and how a detective builds a case.

On Wednesday, I have one class called “Maestro in the House” that will deal with how a conductor manages an orchestra and prepares for a concert. It is taught by retired UTEP professor Ron Hufstader. In this class we’ll learn about the makeup of an orchestra and how the conductor studies the music score to prepare for a concert. Toward the end of the class, we will get the opportunity to conduct to recorded music.

On Thursday, I took an afternoon drive around El Paso. The city is divided by the Franklin Mountains into east and west El Paso. I am staying on the west side where UTEP is located. There is an intermountain highway that links the two sides of the city and the drive is very scenic.

On Friday, I decided to take a road trip to the White Sands National Park, about 75 miles northeast of El Paso. The drive there goes through both desert and mountains and passes the White Sands Missile Range where the military still builds and tests missiles. In fact, the White Sands National Park website posts advisories giving the date and time when U.S. 70, which goes through the base, will be closed for a missile test.

White Sands park is stunning. I took the eight-mile long loop that started on a paved road and then you drive on a packed sand drive that takes you out into the desert. The sand is actually made of gypsum that has washed down from the surrounding mountains during winter snow and rain over about 7,000 years. The gypsum hardened as crystals on the ground and then the constant winds turn it into powder. There are dunes 20-30 feet high and the sand is actually very white. It is truly unique.

I took a different route back to El Paso through mostly desert surrounded by mountains. I passed by Ft. Bliss, the major army base on the east side of the city.

Next week, more classes and a road trip or two.