United States of Mexico
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008In searching for a good place to watch the Texas Longhorn football games, we found a new tex-mex restaurant called 7 Salsas close to Dallas Cowboys headquarters. There’s a pretty bartender and a football-loving manager who cheers along with us. After trying out a number of supremely obnoxious sports bars, we sat down at the bar and suddenly felt at home.
Last week we arrived after half time because the first place we went to was such a dud. But this week, we arrived for kick-off and stayed until the Red Raider fans rushed the field for the second time, when the game was actually over.
Apparently they do most of their business at the lunch hour, so the crowd was pretty slim for Saturday night. The intimate bar area was full, kinda like having a party at home, where I cleaned the whole house, but everyone is congregating in the warmth of the kitchen.
So, in talking to the manager about his travels and his daughter studying to be an architect in Chicago, I asked him where he was from. He was born in the US, but was raised in Mexico. I asked him what state. He misunderstood my question and said it was Texas. After I clarified, he said he was raised in Coahuila, so today I went to my trusty map of the Mexican states to see where that was in relation to Sonora and Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon, the three border states I could see in my head at the time, and it was right there in the middle.
I can’t count the number of times I have visited this map. I just love to scroll over the states to see them light up and show their names. I can adventure here any time I want, even if I’ve only ever stepped foot in the state of Quintana Roo, which is as far from the Texas border as I could get and still be in Mexico.