The herring bone suit pictured to the left was purchased at Mr. John's Mens Shop on layaway. Every week I put $5.00 from my salary at the Valley Inn Motel on Central Blvd. until it was paid for. The salesman sold me a size 36 when I needed at least a 37, but that was what he had on the rack and he said it looked great on me. It always fit a little tight. The handkerchief is fake. Back in 1966 some cleaners put a fake handkerchief with a paper sleeve into your suit pocket to give it a smart look. If it matched your tie your were good to go. Anglos controlled Brownsville back then. A few were corrupt. Most were benevolent like Judge Dancy, Glen Herman and Jimmy Pace. The sheriff was a red-neck jerk.
There was no internet, only teletype, portable typewriters and Walter Cronkite. There was no need for blogs. Ernie Hernandez, Jr. was in junior high. Armando Villalobos and the corrupt Escobedo brothers had not been born. There was no $500,000,000 annual school district budget to lure con artists like Carlos Quintanilla from Dallas. No Medicare, so no Medicare fraud. Insurance companies settled fender benders for hundreds, not thousands of dollars, so lawyers didn't need chiropractors on retainer. It cost a nickle to come back across the old B & M Bridge after bistek con papas fritas at Papagayo's. A bus ride to the outskirts of Matamoros went for 17 cents. Some of the cheaper beers like Nortena went for a peso, 8 cents in the heroic city.
H.E.B. was just one of many supermarkets. Fed Mart, El Centro, Minimax, Lopez, King Mart, Glen's Supermarket, Pace Grocery, Villa Verde and many smaller stores actually competed. Each store did something better than all of the others. As incredible as it may seem now, all of the stores bagged your groceries for you. If you bought a whole shopping cart full of groceries, they loaded them into your car. Don't look at me that way. Ask your grandparents if you don't believe me.
Was Brownsville actually better back then? Not really. The four corners were under 4 feet of water whenever it rained hard. The residential streets off of McDavit were clay mud after a rain. The children of the poor were birthed by a midwife. There was no daycare for kids or adults. All of these highpaying jobs at BISD and city government did not exist. Oil trucks driving back and forth all day from Matamoros to the Port of Brownsville tore up our streets and highways. The Brownsville Herald was an awful newspaper even back then, as KBOR was an awful radio station.
In all honesty, the main difference in life in Brownsville then and now is the loss of Matamoros as our restaurant and party place, our ambience, where services and skill sets could be afforded by Brownsville residents making a minimum wage. While politicians argue about spillover violence, using semantics that fool almost no one, many of us know that we have lost half of our city and much of our quality of life with Matamoros ruined by violence.
The loss of Matamoros is NOT the only difference between Brownsville then and now. Then, Brownsville was a dusty little town that denied the real world access. Everyone was happy in that environment. Now Brownsville is open to the real world....and we don't like it. There is perception that we can keep everything as it was....simple, corrupt, self-contained...but in reality, the only thing that remains is corruption in politics. Unfortunately, Juliet Garcia has promoted herself while denying the community the educational skills to open the doors to new industry and business. She promotes the old dusty Brownsville in order to place herself above the rest. We don't wear suits the way we did...the city is much more casual. It is time for us to stop serving Matamoros and serve this city....where jobs are needed and skills to fill those jobs have been denied us by our social education system...from kindergarten to college....and thus we are backward in a new world environment.
ReplyDeleteI too miss mi Matamoros Querido, but when I was growning up, i remember no restaurants outside of greasy spoons and I also remember an Amigoland Mall on a downslide. For meals, the people of Brownsville spent their money in Matamoros, or at the Island. For shopping, Harlingen was the mecca. Same with air service. Maybe our loss of Matamoros has helped contribute to our success in this city. Now, we have options...restaurants, airlines, and stores!! Now that every citizen doesn't travel elsewhere for their basic needs. Hopefully, one day soon, Matamoros will come back, and Brownsville will be stronger than ever and in a good position to help that recovery!
ReplyDeleteIt's true. In the 60's there was nothing in Brownsville restaurant-wise to compete with the Drive-In, the Texas Bar, Las Dos Republicas, El Senorial, etc. Now, the upper middle class in Matamoros eat in Brownsville.
DeleteBrownsville has upgraded out of necessity. You make several good points.
Jim
As a child, I was an "illegal" in Matamoros (being a U.S. Citizen). I remember my mom worked at a restaurant on 12th street back in the mid sixties and early seventies. When we moved to Brownsville, she would take me shopping to GIBSONS, NEISNER's, el KRESS. I loved MR.Q hamburgers (no McDonald's), having a milkshake at the Walgreens coffee shop area (there is a payless there now). When I was a freshman in high school I remember seeing Vicente Fernandez as Mr. Amigo at Amigo Land Mall. I didnt go to any of those places that you mention in your writing not only because I was a minor, but also because monetary wise it was out of our reach. My memories of Brownsville's growth come from the 1980's when Amigo Land closed, the major stores from Amigo Land moved to Sunrise. Sunrise mall did a total remodeling (Kmart was taken out of the mall)and the city moved its operations to the north side. I would like to see the maquiladoras on this side of the border, more industry and better infrastructure, BETTER city, county, and education leaders and not just the same leeches that pretend to work in favor of our city and end up going with the flow because they have no idea how to handle every day city problems and are more interested in looking good for the camera.
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