Bridgeport

A couple of weeks ago I visited in Pennsylvania. It's always hard to remember how oppressively humid some summer days can be back there. What Tucson considers monsoon levels of moisture, they describe as refreshingly dry.

On one of those sunny days with dewpoints well into the 60's, I drove through the Bridgeport section of Brownsville. Traces of the former industrial glory continue to fade. One portion of Bridgeport was the Bridgeport Patch: mine-company houses built between the railroad tracks and the river. About 10 years ago most of the houses were still there, including the one where my Dad grew up. Now it looks like over half of the Patch houses have been demolished. Even the 17th St. crossing is blocked. Access to the Patch is via a new road named Camino Drive, which crosses the tracks several blocks earlier. Camino Drive curves left through the old rail yard, then approaches the remnants of Bridgeport Patch from what would have been the middle of the roundhouse. As it passes through the rail yard not far from the riverbank, Camino Drive provides an unobstructed scenic view of Krepp's Knob across the river.

John Camino was not the only young man from Brownsville to die in Vietnam, but he was the first, and he was from Bridgeport. I remember the large-type headline in the Brownsville Telegraph. He was about in eighth grade when I was in first grade. I vaguely remember him as a patrol-boy standing at the front of the school bus, flirting long-distance with the patrol-girl in the back. It's nice that Bridgeport will always remember.