Chapter 1 ~ Page 25
"Is everybody happy?" I sang out in a Ted Luis falsetto that I had picked up from the leader on my first mountain climb years ago.
"Yahoo," they replied using a favorite exclamation used by our Alaskan bush pilot, Don Sheldon.
And James, from his childhood of watching TV came up with a, "Hey Cisco."
"What you want Poncho?"
"Canada, she is the other way."
The word 'border' soon was to become a goal, an end. On that sparkling day as we wound our way through Spanish Bayonet and mesquite towards an adobe building on a hill near Castle Rock, it meant the beginning of adventure. There were no plaques saying that this side of the fence belonged to our nation, and the other was a foreign country. Or that this was the start—as it was recognized years later—of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.
No monuments were needed, for the building itself told a story that no man would ever write. It was one of the original customs houses that were in use when California was admitted to the Union. Abandoned, unrecognized as a historical treasure, or wept over by the "Daughters of ...", the stout structure still stood sentinel, even if surveyors had come and decided that the boundary line was 60 feet further north.
This is how this old building witnessed another of the millions of little dramas that it must have set the stage for. Standing on one side of the fence was not enough. We had to touch it's walls, try to get them to speak. Separating the barbed wire, we, in James words, "Violated the Mexican border."
Perhaps I am overrating the historical importance of just another customs house. After all, no treaties were signed here, Poncho Villa had not slept here, nor had masses of men maneuvered and slaughtered one another for possession. Yet, standing in the portal gazing in on years of dust, I felt that this building was living history. Had not the cavalry, bandits, smugglers, honest, or corrupt border officials, senoritas, the U.S. Border Patrol, wetbacks, each lived a part of it's past? Even if their lives were as unknown as the story behind the numerous bullet holes that scarred the clay walls, they were real, and the building remembers. A good place, I thought as I reached up to rub a horseshoe nailed over the door for dumb luck, to start a search for a shadow of the past.
That evening, while talking over the adventures of our first real day upon the trail, before the dancing flames of our campfire, I accidentally started yet another family tradition. Wondering, out loud, about the horseshoe tacked above the door of the customs house, I invented fictional characters to fit the known facts of the scene. My children soon joined in, and round-robin style, finished the scenario.
"Yahoo," they replied using a favorite exclamation used by our Alaskan bush pilot, Don Sheldon.
And James, from his childhood of watching TV came up with a, "Hey Cisco."
"What you want Poncho?"
"Canada, she is the other way."
The word 'border' soon was to become a goal, an end. On that sparkling day as we wound our way through Spanish Bayonet and mesquite towards an adobe building on a hill near Castle Rock, it meant the beginning of adventure. There were no plaques saying that this side of the fence belonged to our nation, and the other was a foreign country. Or that this was the start—as it was recognized years later—of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.
No monuments were needed, for the building itself told a story that no man would ever write. It was one of the original customs houses that were in use when California was admitted to the Union. Abandoned, unrecognized as a historical treasure, or wept over by the "Daughters of ...", the stout structure still stood sentinel, even if surveyors had come and decided that the boundary line was 60 feet further north.
This is how this old building witnessed another of the millions of little dramas that it must have set the stage for. Standing on one side of the fence was not enough. We had to touch it's walls, try to get them to speak. Separating the barbed wire, we, in James words, "Violated the Mexican border."
Perhaps I am overrating the historical importance of just another customs house. After all, no treaties were signed here, Poncho Villa had not slept here, nor had masses of men maneuvered and slaughtered one another for possession. Yet, standing in the portal gazing in on years of dust, I felt that this building was living history. Had not the cavalry, bandits, smugglers, honest, or corrupt border officials, senoritas, the U.S. Border Patrol, wetbacks, each lived a part of it's past? Even if their lives were as unknown as the story behind the numerous bullet holes that scarred the clay walls, they were real, and the building remembers. A good place, I thought as I reached up to rub a horseshoe nailed over the door for dumb luck, to start a search for a shadow of the past.
That evening, while talking over the adventures of our first real day upon the trail, before the dancing flames of our campfire, I accidentally started yet another family tradition. Wondering, out loud, about the horseshoe tacked above the door of the customs house, I invented fictional characters to fit the known facts of the scene. My children soon joined in, and round-robin style, finished the scenario.
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Text and Photographs © Barry Murray 1971-2007 Mac&Murray Multimedia