What a Deal

When our kids were young, we lived in Texas and spent one of our spring break weeks camping at Big Bend National Park. Men from the village of Boquillas del Carmen, just across the Rio Grande, came to the campground to offer interested tourists a mini trip into Mexico.  This was in the 1980’s.  The whole thing was sanctioned, approved and set up through the Park Service — the border wasn’t the matter of contention that it’s become. We were taken across in row boats and once on the other side, we mounted mules and were carried through a breathtakingly beautiful canyon into a small town.  The scenery was amazing and there were a lot of interesting rocks lying around on the ground.  Our six year old son picked up a stone he thought particularly beautiful and handed it to a local Mexican boy around the same age.  That boy held it for a moment, then turned around and sold the rock to my dear, unobservant husband for a quarter.  One of our cherished family stories.