Fireworks

THIS SHORT STORY WAS WRITTEN BY H.O. SANTOS.

ENSENADA is only one hour south of Tijuana but what a difference one hour makes. It's still a tourist town--gringos contribute a lot to the town's economy--but it's more tranquil. Unlike the border town of Tijuana, vendors in Ensenada aren't always in your face trying to sell you a souvenir or a bed warmer for the evening. As a matter of fact, many commercial establishments don't have employees who speak English--we do very well without you tourists, thank you very much, they seem to say. Even the popular Hussong's Cantina with its almost hundred percent gringo clientele is outside of town and doesn't affect Ensenada's relative calm.

I love the isolation Baja California provides, all within a day's drive from Los Angeles. My favorite Baja destination is easily San Felipe, a sleepy fishing village on the Gulf of California side, and that's where Barbara and I were headed for. There are many ways to get there from Los Angeles but my favorite route is the one which goes all the way south to Ensenada via Tijuana. You then cross the peninsula through the winding road over the mountains to reach the other side.

Close to the halfway mark, Ensenada is a good stopping point to take a break. We hit it at the right time on this trip, at eleven in the morning.

I was with Barbara Westbay, my girl friend of almost two years. In spite of her decidedly non-Hispanic surname, she claims to have Latino ancestors. You couldn't tell from the way she looked--she had red hair, green eyes, and freckles that showed prominently if she stayed in the sun too long. Lately it had been fashionable among gringos to claim Latino or Native American ancestry. I often wondered if she has been stretching the truth about her ancestry a little too much.

I never fully understood why she put up with my proclivity for these trips since she can't take too much sun, an almost impossible thing to do in Baja. She's envious of women who tan perfectly, those who can take on a beautiful shade of bronze without burning. She has to be careful for it's extremely uncomfortable for her to lie down when she gets burned. I like to think she puts up with these trips because she loves me but I know she does it as much to get away from the madness of city life as she cares for me.

I parked Barbara's Nissan Pathfinder in the center of Ensenada near the beach. We went to look for our favorite food vendors--the ones who plied the streets in their pushcarts and lunch trucks. She went to a truck that sold fish tacos. I found a vendor who served fresh clam cocktails from his pushcart. He picked a live one from a bucket, opened and cut it up, then put the meat into a large plastic cup. He squeezed lime juice into it, added chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and red peppers and handed the cup to me with several packets of Santos saltine crackers.

We stopped at the corner store to buy two cold bottles of Corona Beer before going to the beach to eat our lunch.

"Have a bite of my fish taco, it's good."

"What did you get this time, the usual shark?"

"They didn't have shark but this tuna is good--it's not overcooked, just lightly grilled." I took a bite and agreed it was good.

"Here, have some of my cocktail, it's pismo clam." I brought a spoonful to her mouth to let her try it.

"Super. I wish we had these vendors in L.A. They're so convenient."

"We're starting to have them already. I see vendors selling ice cream and drinks out of pushcarts. They're probably all illegals, too."

"Come on, you wouldn't know an illegal if you saw one. Just because you see somebody who looks Hispanic doesn't mean he's a mojado."

"They mostly are."

"I don't think so. As an immigrant yourself, I expect you'd be more sensitive to their plight."

"But I came to America legally. I'm not against immigration, only against those who do it illegally," I protested.

"You have a lot to learn about how America stole most of the West from Mexico. All of the Western states from Texas to California used to belong to Mexico. The 1849 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo unfairly gave the West to America. Before, those areas were part of Mexico and people could move freely because there was no border. The worst part about it was that land was taken away illegally from their Mexican owners and given to the new settlers."

"All right, but what are laws for if they're not going to be enforced."

"Some laws are so unfair they shouldn't be enforced."

I let Barbara have the last word because I suspected she would win the argument. She once told me that new immigrants like myself who have been in the U.S. just long enough are sometimes worse than native-born Americans when it comes to tolerating new immigration. Each new group thinks the door should be closed after they've come in.

After lunch, we bought two more six-packs of Corona and stashed them in our ice chest before going on our way. We were soon outside Ensenada going east and climbing along the winding road. Some parts of the mountain range were as high as seven thousand feet although the highway only reached five thousand. I had a chance to enjoy the scenery as Barbara had taken over the driving chores.

Along the mountain road were large boulders that looked like they could roll down and crush us at any moment. Although I knew they had been there for thousands of years, it was hard not to get disturbed. I was happy when we reached the high plateau and left them behind us.

We stopped to buy gasoline at a small town. The mountain towns didn't have electricity--gas was dispensed in a primitive but ingenuous manner. The dispenser was a graduated glass container set high on a stand. An attendant pumped gas by hand from fifty-five gallon drums on the ground to the container until the desired amount was transferred. The gas was then allowed to flow down through a hose to your tank. We took in fifty liters of regular unleaded gas. I paid in dollars and didn't bother to count the change which was given to me in pesos. In all the times I've been to Baja, no one has yet cheated me on the change owed me.

The gas attendant was an attractive young girl who must have been around ten or twelve. She wore jeans, a Western shirt, and cowboy boots. She had light hair and looked European unlike most of the other children around her who had mostly Indian features.

"You know, she could easily cross the border and won't even get stopped," Barbara commented. "None of her friends will make it, though."

I knew Barbara was trying to tell me looks had everything to do with who was mistaken for an illegal alien in the United States. She was good at giving not-too-subtle hints like that to prove a point.

We were soon on the eastern slope of the mountain. From here on, the road is straight for the most part. It didn't need to snake around since the slope is gentle all the way to the ocean. The landscape also changes radically here--the marine layer which blows in from the Pacific and makes the western side of the peninsula green doesn't reach this far. It is an alkali desert--starkly bright white except for the black cinder cones of extinct volcanoes that rose from the desert floor in the distance. Every now and then we would see green farmland made possible by irrigation. I saw a red double-winged crop dusting plane make a pass to drop insecticide on the crops below. I thought of Snoopy--he would have loved to have been on that plane.

After an hour more, we got to the lowlands and at last I saw the ocean in the distance. I soon heard the ocean's roar and smelled the salt air. Even after all the trips I've made to San Felipe, it was still a surprise to suddenly see an ocean at the edge of a dry and desolate desert.

We turned right when we reached the main highway. The road was surrounded by sand dunes on both sides and gently rose and fell but was absolutely straight. The ocean was only a few miles to our left but it didn't do much to alleviate the July heat. We had turned the air conditioner off to spare the car's cooling system and get used to the heat.

There were no clouds in the sky and it was hard to imagine there was life around except for the few scrub cactus and stunted mesquite that broke through the chalky soil. I knew from previous visits, though, that they were simply hiding from the midday heat and would come out when it got cooler.

As we approached San Felipe, billboards touting campsites along the beach became visible to our left. We turned left at our favorite, the Playas del Sol, which was two-thirds of the way to the center of San Felipe from where the first campground was. We left a trail of dust on the gravel road as Barbara drove to the campground which was half a mile from the highway. We were lucky to find a cabaña still available--the shade provided by the thatched palm roof supported on four wooden posts made all the difference between comfort and torture.

Our chosen spot was on a bluff fifteen feet higher than the beach. Barbara and I quickly got our equipment from the car and set them up. Barbara then moved her car to the west side of the cabaña to block the sun when it got low. We decided we didn't need the tent--the wind wasn't strong enough and we could sleep in the open. We worked quickly and changed into bathing suits so we could get in the water before the tide started receding again.

High tide is the only time you can swim in San Felipe. The water is all the way to the beach then. Fish come close and often jump out of the water. You can see an occasional flying fish skip thirty yards or more before dropping back into the water again.

The water temperature was pleasant--cool enough to be refreshing but not ice cold like it was in the winter. We stayed only long enough to cool off and went back to tidy up our little camp area for the evening. It was better to do this while it was still light because it gets very dark at night.

I had some pork chops marinating in a container in the ice chest. While waiting for the charcoal to get going, I set a couple of beach chairs on the bluff facing the ocean. We sat on the chairs and watched the tide go out. Sea gulls were making their last attempts at catching fish before the tide receded some more. The temperature must have been in the mid-nineties so we were dry without needing to towel off.

We had a good dinner--Barbara's salsa was hotter than usual so it required frequent washing down with beer. Coronas weren't heavy anyway and here in the hot climate you sweated off the effects of beer faster than you could drink it.

We took a shower after we washed our pots and pans in the wash area. The camp site had free toilets but charged a nominal fee for showers. Fresh water was trucked in daily from Mexicali which was sixty miles away. The lack of fresh water is what has slowed developers from fully exploiting this place, thank heavens.

By the time we got back, the camp manager had already turned on the generator that provided electricity to the fluorescent lamps along the main camp road. Besides the road, the wash, bath, and toilet areas were also lit. Lights were turned off at eleven o'clock.

At night, there's absolutely nothing to do in the campground except stroll on the beach. It's the kind of place that drive Las Vegas types crazy. We took a flashlight with us to look around--tiny crabs scurried away as we made our way through the tide pools. The exposed ocean floor was muddy, and we found an occasional fish or shrimp trapped in the shallow pools of water.

After the walk, we sat on our folding chairs, sipping beer again. I loved Barbara for understanding there were times when you could be with someone and not need to say anything. The connection was made through the silence, not the exchange of words.

In the distance, I could see the lights of Mexican towns on the mainland and an occasional ferry or fishing boat crossing the gulf which separated us from them. Looking out towards the mainland made it clear to me why early explorers mistook California for an island.

I looked up the moonless sky and through the clear desert air saw more stars than I could count. The Milky Way and the reddish Magellanic Cloud were clearly visible. I thought about my namesake, my tocayo, Antonio Miranda Rodriguez--he must have gazed at these very same stars from this same spot more than two centuries before.

I had read he was a Filipino carpenter who passed through Baja in 1781 with a group of settlers who were going to start a settlement, near the San Gabriel Mission, which would later become Los Angeles. He never made it because his Mexican wife and daughter got sick. He stayed behind to take care of them until they died. He ended up in Santa Barbara instead of Los Angeles.

I wondered what made him and countless other Filipinos cross the Pacific on Spanish galleons leaving everything behind, how he must have felt upon losing his family to illness just when they were getting close to Alta California where they would have had a better life. It seemed Filipinos had been going to strange lands to find better lives forever.

I counted three shooting stars in fifteen minutes but didn't make a wish. What I wanted I already had.

"Do you mind if I turned the radio on?" I asked Barbara.

"No, it would be good to listen to some music."

I fiddled with the dial--I could only get AM. I got stations from the Mexican mainland, a strong one from Albuquerque, but stopped at a station from Tuczon that was giving a news summary. The temperature had been over a hundred in most places along the border and the Border Patrol had found some illegal border crossers in the desert. Four were dead and seven were suffering from heat stroke and severe dehydration. The authorities were investigating whether their coyote had abandoned them or if they had crossed on their own without realizing how high the temperature would be that day.

"My God, what a terrible way to die," Barbara said.

"I don't understand why people take such chances. It's dumb," I replied.

"Maybe some day you will. I'll love you even more when you do."

"There are legal ways to get in…".

"Most people can't get in legally. One day you'll meet a real illegal and you'll find out why they do things you consider dumb."

The news was over. I turned the dial to a Mexican station that played boleros. It was depressing to hear about people crossing the border only to die after they make it to their promised land. The music helped me push the thought away from my mind. I had more beer and watched the stars until I fell asleep.