Lost Wallet

I stood on the Mexicali street waiting to catch a ride back to El Centro one half hour before dawn. The air was cool and it was the first day of dove hunting season 1946 when I was sixteen. I was slightly hung over from drinking all night in a Mexicali bar. There were no cars going by, so I walked across the border into the United States. I walked on the left side of the street, the same side I had entered Mexico the night before. Suddenly I was captured by the American border patrol officers who had their rifles ready in case I ran. I was escorted to the American side of the street and asked to show my identification. My wallet was missing from my back pocket but after talking to me and chewing me out for trying to enter the U.S. on the wrong side of the street, they allowed me to pass. They warned that if I tried it again they might shoot me.

The night before had started at the Club Tropics in Imperial, a one store town with an annual rodeo just north of El Centro. My twenty year old sister Edith was in charge of six night club dancing girls who presented a fresh new show with new costumes every week. Although Edith was much younger than the others, she chose the costumes and choreographed all the shows. The older girls protected her from sexual harassment while taking orders from her for the performances. I had hitch-hiked from Anaheim to visit Edith for the week-end. Saturday night, the star of the show an Irish tenor had laryngitis, and he asked Edith to sing a few songs. During the performance I observed a man who came in from the dark holding his coat pressed to his stomach. He sat at a small booth all alone, and nobody would talk to him. He had been stabbed outside in the alley. Everyone wanted to stay out of it. Lots of rodeo cowboys were there.

Everyone became attentive to Edith as tears filled her eyes during her singing THE MAN I LOVE. I was familiar with the beautiful song and my sister's gifted voice, but it moved me when I saw some of those tough cowboys crying without shame as she sang. After the show a beautiful tall blond showgirl named Val decided to be nice to me. She asked me to go with her and some of her friends to party south of the border. Two blocks past the Mexican line we all sat at a bar and started drinking. I was just beginning to fall for the blond when a mature American man picked her up and they left me alone in the bar. That's when I went to the border and discovered my wallet was missing.

I caught a ride in a car with a man on his way to work in El Centro. Just before dawn a dove smashed into the windshield and was killed. The driver commented, "I bet we got the first one of the season."