SUMMER ARRIVES

June, July and August are the worst months of the year in Brownsville. The people pray for a natural disaster to lessen the heat with torrential rainfalls. The bishop asserts that God isn't listening to these pleas because Catholics aren't donating to the Church.

A dusty wind covers everything with dirt. The land is brown and buried in concrete. A cancer consumes the region. The border's leaders preach growth as if turning one's body into a huge, malignant tumor were a good thing. There is no water, yet "growth" is the shibboleth that escapes every politician's mouth.

Like the Sahara Desert enveloping the last oasis, an exploding population in the Rio Grande Valley is destroying the last remnants of a paradise. Ignorant people measure progress in convenience stores and fast-food restaurants. They accept potholed streets and higher taxes as the price of admission into the modern world.

Anyone who says that Brownsville is beautiful has spent his life married to a ugly woman with warts for nipples.