Nuevas Fronteras

My cherished steering-wheel waves are a thing of the past. I got a couple three-finger salutes heading west out of Marthon (where a Border Parol helicopter turned in circles beside the roadway), but past Sanderson the rural greeting of passing motorists is history.

I keep popping my fingers out there, hoping for a response, waiting to for a flash from a kindred spirit who also clings to the small-town and county-road customs. But as the ratio of shiny Suburbans, bass boats, and camo-coated ATVs spikes, civility vanishes. By the time I hit Langtry, I have given up altogether.

East Berlin

It’s come up three times in three days, East Berlin and the Berlin Wall (RIP).

Roberto Lujan (right) grew up in segregated Alpine during the ’60s. His first feeling of truly being an American only came when he and fellow American troops were bused through the communist city in Germany and throngs of residents began making obscene gestures at the troops. But when he moved to Presidio on the River and began to grow closer to his Jumano Apache identity, he said he began to see the U.S. Border Patrol network of checkpoints and facilities akin to “living on the Rez.”