Oh, good Rapaire, that fgleetly sets aright our Mother in distress. Oh,. kind, oh dauntless, oh brave, nay, oh fine Rapaire for such gallantry to display.

This morning I was again striding through the noisy midden of a Mexican city returning from a dental check and removal of the stitched where the implant rests. The magic of flashing black Mexican eyes in old creased faces and young unflawed ones cannot be gain said. Muscled soldiers with rifles, full breasted young mothers with ninas in arm, the bewildered and aged and the young and hopeful, ebb and fglow through these streets like salt water ripples combining into a tide. Here you can buy anything--hand-tooled belts, hand-knotted hammocks, plaster saints, boots and holsters, sombreros, any drug ever sold over any counter, and many under, the best of liquors and the worst of them, margarita to drink and even humans for companionship. Everything is for sale, but the smiles and the laughter, they are all free.

The pedestrian line across th eborder is hundreds of yards long and thousands of souls strong, each with a story. Anglos, Hispanics, Africans, Middle-easterns, AMerican Indians and Indian Hindi, all wander across this border in a day, one direction or the other. Some of them cross effortlessly--the obvious citizens, the ones with passports and recognizable middle-class values. Others are looked askance, and a few sent off for secondary questions before they get to walk the skybridge across the border, landing in the land of McDonald's (the first one is only a dozen yards away when you come out into California) and the huge blue welcoming sign that tells one and all, without condition, "Welcome to California". Here, that still means much.


I am home now, converting my front plants from sprinklers to drip. The water rates will be rising again.,

q