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Show mighty Teevcc. And where did they congre-j1 gate? Smack in the middle of the' international highway, of course, jits smooth pavement was so rest- ful to the feet after a day of j clambering over stones or clods. And when the cowboy spurred his (horse in among the people there jwas such a satisfying clackey-ty (clack as the animal's hooves struck the hard roadbed. The people shouted and waved to us as we slowly inched our way through their midst. "Darn!" David muttered be-, tween his teeth. "Don't they know this is a highway?" "Relax, boy. Relax and enjoy it," I advised. "This is Mexico!" Mr. and Mrs. George W. Kitchen Kit-chen gave a wedding breakfast! for their son, Richard Earl Kit-! chen and his bride, who was the former Patricia May Nebeker. The couple was united Wednesday morning at the Salt Lake Temple. Twenty-three members of the parity par-ity were able to attend the break-Ifast. break-Ifast. I TRAVELING I THROUGH ffifflCO With this issue of our paper, x we begin publication of the weekly! column, "Exploring Mexico," ( which is written by the well-j known Utah "author, Joseph H.j : Weston. Address all communications to Joseph H. Weston, 170 "A" St., Salt Lake City, Utah. By Joseph II. Weston "Watch out! Those steers will, crash you!" My son, David, was driving the( family car on his first trip into J Mexico and was preparing at 60 miles an hour to whiz past a group of white-faced cattle that was half on, half off, the highway. high-way. "Aw, they won't get in my way," he said, with the all-embracing wisdom of an 18-year-old boy. Having toured these Sonora highways for several years, Ij knew better, and it occurred to me that I had only to wait a few more miles for enough tragic evidence evi-dence to support the need for extreme ex-treme caution. "Only taller and straighter,") put in the practical Steve. "They'd make good lumber." As a matter of fact, these oak trees of Sonora make good charcoal, char-coal, too, and there's plenty of labor to cut them and to tend the kilns. A North American named Farnsworth, who makes his headquarters head-quarters at the De Anza Hotel in Hermosillo, makes a business of buying this good oak charcoal to ship to the United States, where it supplies the fuel for many a California - style backyard barbecue bar-becue pit. "What's that pile of stones?" excitedly asked my wife, Lou Jean, as she punched me between my shoulder blades. (She was riding rid-ing in the back seat surrounded by her three daughters.) We stopped for a closer look. There, on a dangerous curve of the road, just to one side of the pavement, was a pile of stones three feet high and five or six feet across, surmounted by a wooden woo-den cross on which was an inscription inscrip-tion in Spanish. "What's it say, Pop?" asked seven-year-old Nancy. Being the old professor of the family, I kept my mouth shut while 16-year-old Ann, proud of the diligent study' she had given to the subject of Spanish for the previous year, eagerly translated for the others. "In memory of Jose and Lidia de Leon, who died on this spot in jan auto crash on 28 June, 1949 at the age of 31 and 36 years." j "Brrrr," said Martha, aged nine. ! "Let's get out of here!" After that, ihowever, it was Martha who first called our attention to each of the many roadside shrines we passed, j These shrines, some of which jare beautiful miniature gems of j architecture, or of sculpture, do Jnot always, like the first rude j cairn of stones we saw, comme-jiriorate comme-jiriorate an accident or death. 'Some are erected in fulfillment of a vow, or in thankfulness for some great favor done by the Virgin Vir-gin Mary, or one of the Saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Catho-lic Church, to which more than 90 per cent of the people of Mexico '. belong. I Although such places of outdoor Sure enough, within 15 minutes; we saw the still warm carcase of a cow lying on the highway shoulder at the end of a trail of blood, scorched tire marks and shattered headlamp glass. Sweat popped out on David's brow. After that, he kept a respectful re-spectful distance from groups of horses, wild donkeys or cattle that wandered across the right of way. Most of Mexico, and this is especially es-pecially true of all its northern states, is one vast open range. In many respects, both in regard to occupations and to social and economic ec-onomic status, much of rural Mexico Mex-ico is almost identical to our own western states immediately after the Civil War. Their appetites whetted by tales T hari hrniiht hark from all of worship are common to most of the older Catholic countries, in none of these have I ever seen such a profusion of them as exists in Mexico, where almost every prominent pro-minent feature of the landscape seems to be capped by a cross, or a cairn, or a "santo," even if it's only a rudely carved figure of the worshipper's patron. We found that the highway, wisely, avoided most towns by skirting around their edges. As we approached each of these, the road signs read "Cuidado con Po-blacion," Po-blacion," which freely translated means, "Be careful with the people." peo-ple." "Oh, NO!" exclaimed Ann, in mock - dramatic dismay. "Don't tell me people also wander onto my many trips into Mexico, my family, at least my wife and five ; of our nine children, were headed; v for the city of Hermosillo, capital ? of the Mexican state of Sonora, : to spend their vacation. We traveled the new international internat-ional highway, a fine strip of j pavement that threads southward from Nogales, Arizona, along the! west coast of Mexico. Passing successively through the states of Sonora, Sinaloa and Nyarit, this! road, which had been open only a few years, beckons the North American tourist to such beautiful beauti-ful cities as modern Hermosillo, ancient Alamos, fantastic, Hollywood Holly-wood - like Ciudad Obregon, and the exotic seaports and recreation centers of Guaymas, Mazatlan, San Bias and Acapulco. One branch of the road, turning inland, carries a continuous line of pavement to the beautiful university uni-versity city of Guadalajara, and on to Mexico City itself, the very hub of the republic. Accustomed to the deserts of Arizona, my family was surprised surpris-ed to see forests of giant oak trees " not far south of Nogales. Between these trees were great stretches of grassland, just beginning to turn green from effects of the first heavy deluge of the rainy season, which comes here in summertime. sum-mertime. "Why, these trees are almost like the oaks along the California coast above Los Angeles!" Ann exclaimed. the highway the way cattle do!" Dusk was dropping over the landscape as we neared the next town. It was the warm, vibrant dusk of a Mexican summer evening. even-ing. Time for socializing in the rural community. The girls and women who had abandoned their kitchens and laundry boards and men and boys, in from their labors la-bors in the field or on the range, jsought the company of each oth-!er, oth-!er, and of all the others. It was a jgregarious, happy lot of humanity jwho found in their crowding together to-gether the age-old stimulation that we northers began to deny ourselves our-selves when we turned our backs upon each other, first in favor of the radio, and later for the al- |