Veracruz Finds The Blues...

"The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad..."
- Leon Longoria, Brownsville resident

By BOB VERACRUZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It was calm in the barrio last weekend. Too calm. Not a drug dealer was stirring. At the corner of 14th Street where some of the country's cheapest bars do business, three unemployed men discussed ways to beat the benefits system at the local food stamps office. It was mid-day and the black crows were flying low. You'd have to know the land to know that low-flying birds are never a good thing along the Mexican border. Any curandero worth his weight in bad tamales will tell you low-flying birds are bad news on the move. I parked my bicycle at the federal courthouse and began moseying about, wanting to get a clue as to where the Blues were playing, where I could stop in and get an earful of those soulful laments.

I loped a bit toward the International Bridge and caught the sights and sounds of shoppers at a variety of used clothing stores, and then I spotted an owl chasing a wino toward a nearby alley. What's with all the fowl in this town? You can look this way and then that way and see something flying about. They said the same thing about Babylon back before it fell. Same for Saigon. Birds on the wing. I'm hip to that scene, cause I love my harrier hawks in northern New Mexico. There, it is said in the Indian pueblos that the hawks are returning warriors from the days of U.S. Cavalry charges on Indian lands.

In Brownsville, anthropologists say the birds swoop in for no damned reason.

In any case, there is nothing going on to indicate the Blues are alive and kicking here. Nothing in The Brownsville Herald. Local blogs that have pushed the silliness have drifted off to other stories, one to the bid for higher political office by the county district attorney and the other to a local political family known for pushing their noses into the public trough. Perhaps it was all sham, yet another Border mirage or Grand dream that floated and died.

It happens here.

"It's early!" a fat cabbie in a Notre Dame football jersey yells at me when I ask about the city's blues bars. "You have to wait till midnight, ese. What, do you think we're New Orleans or what?"

I beat feet toward the corner, where a mob of nylon-attired Mexican women wait on the bus. It is a motley crew of physically-eccentric broads, one wearing a heavy scarf in 65-degree weather and two others in too-tight blue jeans that make them look like small Boy Scout camping tents on two legs. Their dour faces speak of the pain of poverty, but not the blues.

At the drugstore, I ask a young female pharmacist about the blues and she points me to the Cold-Plus medicine on a nearby shelf. "Music," I say next, and she replies, "Aisle 5."

This, I tell myself, is a lousy assignment. There are no Blues in this falling town. None. Not one blues. Outside the drug store, I catch sight of a young thug robbing an elderly woman. The kid has her by the neck as she holds tight to her purse. She can't scream! Seconds and she'll be choked to death! I freeze, but then see a girl about his age pounce on him like a crazed panther. She is yelling obscenties at the robber while pulling at his hair; he is in agony. I take a deep breath as he falls to the sidewalk, knocked unconscious by the young girl. It is a scene from a Sam Peckinpah movie. Or perhaps it is from a Japanese flick. You don't see Americans taking to the streets to pummel someone. You see it in the movies and in Japan all the time.

"Help me!" the young woman hollers in my direction.

"What's that?"

"Come help me!" she goes on, her arm stretched to the max and the fingers of her hand motioning me over. I see the old woman is bleeding from a wound on her wrinkled forehead. Not gushing blood, but bleeding the sort of bleeding you see when you scrape your knee on concrete. She's not saying much and has her hand over a portion of her face.

I get there and begin to help them both to their feet. The young girl nods and thanks me as a police cruiser siren breaks the silence. About time, I say aloud.

The Blues have arrived...

- 30 -

[Editor's Note: Writer Bob Veracruz has returned to the Rio Grande Valley after an extended stay in Caracas, Venezuela, where he served as a communications specialist for the country's president, Hugo Chavez. He is an expert on the Blues, having amassed a tremendous records collection of the music genre. He prefers bicycles over automobiles..]