BROWNSVILLE

I am a student at Texas Tech. My grandparents recently moved to Brownsville. They invited me to their new home and I gladly accepted. Since my grandparents don't own a computer and know even less about the internet, I can express my opinions freely without hurting their feelings.

I have never seen an uglier city in my life. I must deduce that my grandparents' eyesight is declining with age. The town's name is apt. I assume the founders associated brown with dirty, this giving rise to Brownsville.

Everywhere I turned I encountered poverty. I remember a trip I took to Venezuela and at times I flashed back to memories of Caracas' back streets when I found myself in one of Brownsville's many barrios where the people live in filth. Nobody speaks English.

I had to ask myself if I was in the United States. I could never determine where Brownsville began and Matamoros ended. I saw myself in the middle of a swirling mass of humanity who seemed to be surviving on a simian level.

When I read in The Brownsville Herald the many criticisms of the Brownsville Independent School District in the letters to the editor, I experienced firsthand the ignorance the readers were describing. Is the entire citizenry suffering from lobotomies?

I would ask individuals for information and they would stare at me blankly. I'm sorry, but I wasn't prepared to spend my holiday in a foreign country. I will never step in Brownsville again. It is the pits!