Home > Travel > Mexico circa 1988

circa 1988; Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, & Coahulia, Mexico

KMZ map file

One summer in the 1980's (about 1987 or 1988) my mother took my sister, brother, and myself on a trip to Mexico. My mother was a high school Spanish teacher. She taught us some Spanish growing up and this would give us a way to all practice and to see another country. (The only other practice I really got was later when she occasionally took me to a Spanish language church in Henderson County; I don't remember my brother or sister ever going however.) I do not have any pictures from that trip, just my memories. We drove from North Carolina to Brownsville, Texas. One memory of the drive there was that my sister accidentally locked the car doors before shutting her door, and she was the last one out of the car, so that we were locked out of the car, in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot in Lavonia, Georgia. A man that worked there, who was originally from Chicago, unlocked it with a coathanger wire. I have a vague memory of seeing oil refineries (large indistrial buildings with flames here and there) in the distance as we drove through part of southern Louisiana, as well as driving on a bridge through a swamp in Lousiana. I also have a vague memory of driving on a long bridge next to the coast in Texas, I believe near Corpus Cristi. We stayed with the Kilpatricks in Brownsville, Texas, with a good natured message from my grandmother that was passed on to them by my mother, for them to "get back to North Carolina where [they] belong". I remember their son's name was David (which was also my brother's name). There was a small water canal that went by their house with some trees next to it. I climbed on the tree and he came over and told me not to climb it because I might break a branch and that trees were more valuable here in Texas than back in North Carolina. The Kilpatricks were deeply religious missionaries and I was warned before we left not to say even very mild words like "gosh" or "heck" around them because they would be offended. I was also told to not to say that I was from "America" in Mexico but say "the United States", because Mexico was also in the Americas and therefore Mexicans were also Americans. (Many years later, based on the same logic, I referred to a Canadian citizen as "American" and he was very offended.) I also remember them talking about traveling once and having to stop at a random church where they didn't know anyone and attend the service because it was Sunday that they were trying to maintain an unbroken record of attending church every Sunday. We stayed in a mobile home next to their house that they kept for visitors and we ate meals with them in their house.

The Kilpatricks took us to their church across the border in Matamoros (Tamaulipas). However, at first we were not allowed to cross and they stopped us at the border. My mother did not have written permission from our father to take us into Mexico. The Kilpatricks pulled the car around the corner and my mother wrote a letter to herself from my father and forged his signature on it; giving her permission to take us over the border. It worked‽ And, we crossed into Mexico.

I remember being surprised by the broken glass that was set into concrete along the tops of the walls between houses and even in the wall around the church. The Kilpatricks picked up some people, including a few children, along the drive to church and all of us children rode in the back of the truck while the adults rode in the seats. We passed a train and my brother counted the cars in Spanish. At least one of the Mexican children were surprised that he could count in Spanish. I don't remember much about the church except there was a burn pile in the small yard in the back with a lot of ants nearby.

We traveled back and fourth several times. One time we were coming back at night and my brother was asleep in the back of the truck, a cap was over the back, with a blanket over him. For some reason we didn't think anything of this but security at the border stopped us, woke him up, and made him take off the blanket so they could see him and make sure he wasn't an older person sneaking into the US. He was very disoriented by waking up into this situation. By the way, none of us children had passports or any kind of photo identification.

After staying with the Kilpatricks for a few days we prepared to travel further into Mexico. My mother's yellow station wagon was having trouble. It broke down once already on the trip and a man that delivered newspapers happened to be there and helped to fix it. We changed our US dollars into pesos and that was my first experience with exchange rates. Suddenly I had what seemed like a lot of pesos. We went to a bus station just over the border and got tickets to Monterrey (Nuevo León). I remember us at the bus station talking to some people and they commented on, and complimented, my sister's blue eyes. I also remember hearing Spanglish, a blend of Spanish and English being spoken. One word in particular that I remember was a man saying "eightcho" for eight/ocho. I also remember going through a town with a skull and crossbones, with WASP underneath, spray painted on a wall near the bus stop. Other than that I do not remember encountering any hostility directed toward us in any way.

In Monterrey my mother got her words temporarily jumbled up, probably because she was tired from traveling, and asked a very confused person how to climb the towel (she meant tower, toalla/torre). We had a cab driver that I can still remember to this day. His name was Jesse Montoya. He was an older Mexican-American man that was born in Texas. At one point his car died when we were going up a steep hill. I seem to remember him saying it was the carburetor. He was very friendly and talked to us a lot about the city and the area. I remember him telling me that Monterrey was the capital of Nuevo León, and that Saltillo also used to be the capital of Texas (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coahuila_y_Tejas). I also remember my mother being upset that the hotel room cleaners took any change that we left in the room, but I don't think she reported it.

Next we went to nearby Saltillo (Coahulia). It was a smaller city then Monterrey and the air was cooler because it was up in the mountains. I really liked it. The strongest memory that has stayed with me is the hotel we stayed at, Hotel Urdiñola. It was by far the fanciest place I had stayed in my life. There was a large staircase that split in the middle and continued on each side under a stained glass window just inside the entrance. In the middle was an open air courtyard. And, in the back was a restaurant.

Our room had a bathroom with a small window high up on the wall above the shower. One night we were startled by a man trying to climb through the window into the room. He was a part of a soccer team, that was outside, and they had been locked out. He was trying to get into their room but got the wrong room, made his apologies, and left.

I don't remember much about the trip back. I know that we were getting low on cash that my mother had taken out of the bank for the trip. My mother did the best she could with a high school teacher's income and three kids. At one point we were down to our last $50. We stopped at a hotel and paid for a room, but then my mother changed her mind. She asked for the money back and we drove on. After we got back to North Carolina a package came. It had my flashlight in it. I had accidentally left it in the mobile home at the Kilpatricks house in Texas and they returned it to me.