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Next week will be the 208th Wednesday Weblog: that's right the fourth year will be complete. The first edition in June will include links to the Top Ten of the past year, so if you are new to the group, you can catch up quickly.

For the past two months, I have been working in another state and racking up the frequent flyer miles, and once in a while I get stuck in a window seat.

This is a photo I took from the plane of my brother Brian standing outside of his house in Hull. He's the one without a hat.

If you have been to California, you know it is different. If you haven’t been to California, you guess that it is different, and you'd be correct. 

We lived there for about five years, both near San Francisco and Los Angeles (and in between). Since I operated restaurants in almost every county of the state, I knew my way around better than most who relocated there.

There is this country adjacent to the state, called Mexico, just across the line from San Diego, and for decades citizens of both countries have gone back and forth. Not sure what it is like now, but when I lived there it was pretty seamless. 

The Mexican government system permitted you to enter that country, and US Customs permitted you to return. A few questions each way and you pass through.

The one question I remember is 'Do you have anything to declare?' This is a story about a wrong answer to that question.

We had the opportunity to cross into Mexico on a couple of occasions. A very different world, even 40 years ago.

The border was not just a geographical line, it was an economic line. The streets of Tijuana were filled with tourists, vendors, and children selling sticks of gum they called 'chiclets' and much of the surrounding areas meet your definition of 'slums.' The poverty was a staggering contrast to the city of San Diego next to it.

A co-worker and friend named Jim lived in San Diego and his parents had a home in Ensenada, Mexico and one weekend we traveled down there with him and his fiancée. He drove in Mexico because, living near the border and with family property, he had car insurance valid in that country.

We stopped at a local restaurant, Ortega’s Place, with a dirt floor, where we ate rock lobsters and drank beer for several hours. 

I think the total for the four of us came to about $9. Great food, great drink, great bargain. Even though it was years ago, $9 was about a tenth of what it would have cost just a few miles to the north.

Since we saved so much money on food, we did a little shopping. I know we bought a handmade blanket, or at least we thought it was a handmade blanket. We were young and naïve, and the blanket could have come from China for all we’d know. 

We do still have that blanket more than 40 years later. I was originally proud of my negotiation skills, probably because I talked the merchant down from $12 to $10. I used the phrase ‘originally proud’ because just around the corner, we discovered the same blankets were selling for $5.

We also stopped by a pottery vendor on the way back to the San Ysidro border crossing where we found a stand in the middle of nowhere, with dozens of clay pots, of all sizes.

We selected a humongous one, probably for $10 or $15 and were thrilled with our Tijuana shopping spree.

Jim and I struggled getting it in the car, both due to the weight and wedging it into the back seat of a two door Cutlass. We succeeded, but my wife and I barely fit in the back seat next to it. I remember putting a seatbelt around it to keep it stable.

We headed back to the United States and lined up at the checkpoint to come back. The crossing was similar to a toll plaza with about 30 lanes to get through.

Very routine, in those days. You pulled up to the gate monitored by border guards, maybe showed IDs, I don’t remember, and one of the guards asked if you had anything to declare. I believe that Customs officials still ask that question.

When our driver, Jim, was asked the question, he answered ‘Just the pot in the back seat.’

Well, that was the first domino and followed by the sharp command ‘everyone out of the vehicle’ and ‘open the trunk’ and more harsh commands as the guards crawled under the car, opened the glove compartment, searched our persons and in general delayed our crossing by about 30 minutes.

‘Just the pot in the back seat’ might have been funny to Jim, and I guess we may have started to smile when he said it, but we quickly learned that joking at the border is not a good idea. Then and now, I guess, although since it serves as a subject for a Weblog, I’m not mad anymore.

The Marketing plan for the book Observations at the Speed of Life is starting up and three new social media platforms are involved so far.

Since this is my first book, I am going along with the flow, but will be supplementing the publisher's efforts with some of my own.

Thinking about a book signing party sometime this summer.

I am also booked as a guest on several podcasts over the next month, which I will happily share links to if I like how they came out.

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