Tijuana, 1958

by Bruce Patterson

I was eight years old in 1958 and already I knew Tijuana well. My dad did regular business in San Diego, and when possible he'd bring the family along and camp us in Rosarito Beach, a tiny pueblo just over the mountain from Tijuana. In the morning my dad would re-cross the border, run through his list of appointments and then return to Rosarito in time for an early supper with us and fun on the beach. (He'd surf-fish).

Back then Tijuana had a population of about 35,000, which is about 1/20th of the population the city has today. Maybe a third of the people were living under lean-tos made of corrugated tin, discarded lumber, plywood and other scraps assembled along the gravelly flood plain of the usually trickling Tijuana River. There stood a long, sand-colored, butt-ugly concrete bridge that took you from the border checkpoint to downtown, and from the backseat of our car I'd look down on the shanties — if you could call them that — and notice that about all I'd see stirring down there were kids and dogs. Twenty years later when I mentioned my observation to a friend of mine who was an Indian up from Michoacan, he laughed heartily before telling me that, in the pueblo where he was born, they still had plenty of kids but they'd eaten all of the dogs.

Maybe another third of Tijuana's population was employed in manufacturing or in making handicrafts, and they lived up in the denuded canyons surrounding the city in mostly dirt-floored, mostly adobe casitas connected by dirt, flashflood ravaged roads. The remaining, most affluent third of the population lived in town. Most of them were engaged in selling goods and services to the American tourists and bargain hunters.

Visiting Tijuana was a wondrous adventure for a little American kid like me. Lining downtown's Boulevard De Liberdad were side-by-side hole in the wall plaster shops and the wide open mouths of covered markets that were laid out like roofed, circus mazes. And whether the shops specialized in selling jewelry, tooled silver, blown glass, leather goods, pottery, onyx, wood carvings, Indian baskets, Indian blankets, hats and sombreros, western attire, European fashions, consumer electronics, French perfumes, pearls, diamonds or gold, in all of their front windows they displayed intricately woven and beautifully decorated round open Indian baskets filled with Mexican Jumping Beans.

Stationed on the sidewalks in front of the shops were mustached hawkers in loud satin shirts running through their spiels to step right in while stalled tourists, ignoring them, knotted together and window shopped. Towering groups of off duty American Sailors and jar-headed Marines patrolled the sidewalks, stepping it out while being sure to give each other wide berth as they passed. Also, prominent in the crowds, were loose-legged Southern California Hot-Rodders sporting ducktail haircuts, loud mouths and big black combs. Mostly the "Okie" sons of Dust Bowl refugees, they didn't march the sidewalks or shop the windows but shambled aimlessly up and down the Boulevard, occasionally stopping to circle up, lollygag, slap their knees and laugh at the tops of their lungs. They'd circle up and laugh just as if they didn't care who heard them or in whose way they were standing (unless a group of Sailors or Marines were coming). Also, out of reach of the hawkers, wove street peddlers with open patent leather cases strapped to their shoulders displaying glimmering, miniature trinkets that flashed in the sun as irresistibly pretty, especially because their prices were so spectacularly cheap.

Hanging out on street corners, beside the souvenir street photographers with their gaudy, giant sombrero-festooned oxcarts hitched to bored, slack-eared donkeys painted with stripes to look like Zebras, were well-dressed and well-groomed Tijuana street hustlers. They wore stiff clean Stetsons, tooled cowboy boots, satin shirts and creased slacks held up by tooled leather belts sporting giant tooled silver belt buckles. While specializing in selling fake gems and low grade silver, imitation gold, culled industrial diamonds and flawed cultured pearls, they bragged in "perfect" English to any passersby who would listen that they could get at prices no true bargain hunter could resist anything they'd seen in any of the windows of any of the shops — anything. If you just followed them into the side streets or gave them the money to cover your purchase and then — don't move — waited for their prompt return, they would acquire for you the deal of a lifetime. Or, if what you were after was a bit of border town fun, for a small fee one of them would hire on to be your personal guide and bodyguard and take you anywhere — anywhere — you wanted to go.

In addition to the Tijuana cops standing in intersections directing traffic with dramatic hand signals and shrill chrome whistles, other cops were parked on the shady sides of street corners, standing or leaning against a wall with their long-barreled pistols holstered for the quick draw. For the Tijuana cops my dad always gave me one crisp American ten dollar bill to keep in my front pants pocket in case of emergency. If ever I got separated from the rest of my family, I was to immediately find a cop and hand him my ten dollar bill. The cop, my dad assured me, would keep me safe until they returned and found me.

Standing tall, bright, clean and shiny along the Boulevard were various Farmacias with big bay windows plastered with painted paper flyers announcing ridiculously low prices on penicillin, aspirin, Rolaids and the like. I remember my dad explaining to me that the pharmacies were among the biggest money makers in town because, under Mexican law, they could sell anything to anybody, whether prescription or non-prescription, real medicine, fake medicine, bottled vitamins, hair growers, skin restorers, muscle builders, fat reducers, rare, precious, youth-restoring organic minerals, "aphrodisiacs" and old fashioned snake oils in all flavors. In fact, my dad pointed out to me (he was a student of human nature) the pharmacies made most of their profits selling miracle drugs, the latest scientific discoveries, wonder cures and magic potions that could be found only in places like Tijuana.

Sprinkled along the edges of the Boulevard, making sure to keep out of the way, were refugee Indian women sitting beside their skinny, sad-eyed daughters who held out their stick-arms and begged for money. Also, dwarfed by and dodging the crowds like me, walked boys my age holding flimsy little cardboard boxes filled with tiny colorful boxes of Chiclets gum, two gum drops each, one box for one penny American. When ever we were in Tijuana, my dad always kept my pants pocket stocked with nickels for the Chiclets boys. My dad explained to me that because few Chiclets boys had the money to buy their own inventory, most of them were working on commission for adult Padrones. And so that extra four cents I was giving the boy was a significant profit for him. I was to have pity on the poor, our ancestors, but at the same time I was never to give any one Chiclets boy more than one nickel in one day. That was because I — we — didn't want to be taken for suckers and draw a hungry crowd. Besides, my dad informed me, the boy was working for a living and if I gave him more than a nickel I might insult his pride.

If I was really feeling full of pity for the poor, my dad told me, the Chicago slum Irishman showing through, then I could forgo buying myself gumdrops and put all of my nickels into the hand of a little beggar girl. Yet, to save me from having to make a moral choice, my dad always made sure I got enough nickels to buy gumdrops plus enough left over so, just before we left town (again so we didn't draw a crowd), I could place a pile into the palm of a beggar girl.

After sunset on the beach on Rosarito, we'd often drive over the mountain and into Tijuana for a night's entertainment. After dark downtown Tijuana was a jungle of snaking neon lights except for the Spanish Cathedral like, white stone Jai Alai Palace which was lit up with powerful white floodlights. My parents liked to gamble and we'd go in the Palace so they could place bets and sip liquor and we all could watch the matches (great fun). Other times we might go to Caliente Racetrack to watch the horses run (more great fun). Or we'd go and watch the dog races (not so much fun). Once, just once, out next to the beach in the La Plaza Del Toro, we watched a bullfight (my dad wanted to show me what gory was).

Given who I was and the times I lived in, for me the real adventure in Tijuana was to be found on the bustling side streets branching off like alleys from the Boulevard. Beyond downtown's knickknacks and smiling billboards were bustling auto paint shops, tuck and roll galleries, specialty chrome and mag wheel emporiums, tire shops, auto repair shops, body shops, chop shops and — for the sake of the family crowd — out of the way sex shops, sex shows, nightclubs, backroom casinos and clip joints. It was for these haunts that the Marines, Sailors and Hot Rodders were all in Tijuana for, those places and the drop of night, and I wanted to follow along with them.

But, naturally, I knew I'd have to wait a few years for that.