The average person, at least in the United States, will most likely either grow up in their home town or move two or three times before graduating high school. Well, I am not the average person, while I did spend a majority of my childhood in my home town of Brownsville, Texas, my family and I began moving a lot after I was about eight years old. Brownsville is a city that is right next to the United States and Mexico border, thus, the city had a lot of Mexican culture. Brownsville is also right next to the Gulf of Mexico, meaning that it was hot and humid most of the time. Thus, my sister and I would mostly only play outside whenever it wasn’t too hot or raining too much. Brownsville is the kind of city where everybody you ask will have a different opinion or point of view on it. However, my point of view was from a young kid who saw his mom struggle to support her two children by herself.
This helped me see the part of Brownsville that was for those people who were just trying to make the most of what they had. I remember being amazed whenever we would go to the local flea market, being a young kid it was amazing seeing how many things and people there were in one place and how you could find just about anything there. Something that made Brownsville even better was that it took less than fifteen minutes to cross the border into Mexico. This was great because my grandparents and some of my more distant family lived in Mexico. Not only that, but I used to like going to Mexico because of all the Mexican candy and food that got about five times better when you got it in Mexico for some reason. That is one thing that everyone from Brownsville can truly agree on, which is how amazing the food there was, there was a reason I was a “husky” kid. Being a border city, Brownsville had a combination of food from both the United States and Mexico, which, in my opinion, is a pretty incredible combination. I remember I couldn’t wait for Sundays when there would be barbacoa, which is Mexican food that is very hard to describe, the best way I can describe it is that it tastes amazing and is kind of like a Mexican barbecue.
Another thing that I liked about living in Brownsville as a kid was that there were many things to do. The beach was no more than a few minutes away, which I loved. One thing that I especially loved doing was going to South Padre Island because the beach there was amazing. However, having the beach so close came at a price. I remember that on one of my birthdays Hurricane Dolly hit Brownsville, which lead to the electricity going out in my house. However, I remember that birthday quite fondly because my family and I were still able to have some fun and the hurricane brought us a bit closer together as a family. The hurricane wasn’t the only thing to happen when I lived in Brownsville, I remember that one winter it actually snowed. This was amazing because it hadn’t snowed for over a hundred years in Brownsville, which lead to an amazing day being able to play with what little snow there was. While I only spent the first few years of my life in Brownsville, I was able to enjoy everything that Brownsville has to offer. Brownsville is my home town and I have nothing but fond memories of it.