The El Alamo Dorms

When we first drove into the empty parking lot of the El Alamo building, all of us knew we had found what we were looking for. We were collectively holding our breath when we walked through the doors, because we didn’t want to break the spell. We had been looking at buildings for quite a while, but this one was immediately special. We saw that the main offices were just being filled by another new tenant, who was moving in that very day, but there was a separate building, adjacent to the cafeteria and across an external walkway from the production area. We could immediately see ourselves there, with an eye on the other offices sometime in the future.

We had all worked together in another company and our conversations there had led us to believe that we could start our own company when our manufacturing jobs went ‘South’ in a very literal sense. That company had decided to move it’s operations to Tijuana and we weren’t interested in moving to that tainted city. We chose Mexicali because it seemed very quiet and non-threatening. The people were friendly and being the capital of Northern Baja California, it had technical schools and universities, hotels, shopping centers and most of the conveniences that we were used to in Southern California.

When we moved in, at the end of the year, we moved in to stay. We made the building our temporary home, until we were settled in Mexicali and had some other options. So we built shower stalls in each of the bathrooms and turned the offices into part time work stations and dorm rooms. I was the only woman so I got my own room, christened the “Barbie Suite” because of the two single pink and purple kids beds that were found just for me.  We lived there for almost a year, like squatters in our own building.  It was quite comfortable, really, except for the lack of hot water in the sinks.  We only plumbed the hot water into the two shower stalls.  It didn’t matter in the summer, when the cold water runs hot, but in the winter months, Mexicali is surprisingly cold and chilling to the bone.  It doesn’t rain much, but when it does the huge oversize drops beat down unmercifully.  The streets without drainage, and sometimes without asphalt, quickly flood and the holes fill with puddles of dark water.  Shallow lakes fill our parking lot and parts of the building with slippery pools.  Weather is one of the most noticeable aspects of life in Mexicali.  The seasons are vague and almost indistinguishable, except for the summer which is a blazing inferno for four to five months of every year.  Temperatures reach more than 120 degrees (F.) and even the spiders keep to their darkened lairs during the daytime.  About the only thing undaunted by the heat are the carnivorous crickets and the accursed pigeons (more about them later. . .) that are both ubiquitous and odious.