The Long & Interesting Paean To Bus Shelters...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | It comes around as if aboard some of the quietest Gulf of Mexico winds, always about the time this city is itching to forget it even is an issue. Local Blogger Juan Montoya's biting song to his neighbors is one of doing for the poor, for those necessitous, aging souls apparently only he can see.

Old in Brownsville really means "gone," as in dead. And there are many here, perhaps more than in any other Rio Grande Valley city or town - an aging population often shunned off to the side of society's main road by the city's better-off burghers. 

Don't bug City Hall for their needs.

Montoya, by all accounts not a wealthy man himself, plays his well-known song often and leads with references to the lack of bus shelters here, his lyrics arriving in the form of soulful photos showing old women waiting, waiting under an intense sun, waiting out in the open, no shelter in sight.

The blogger is a relatively old man himself, said to be in the 67-68 years of age range. He knows. He has eyes and ears to see and hear the elderly laments, the words of need, of pain, the sounds of despair. There is, he also likely knows, no tortilla to soothe that depression moving ever-so-slowly across an old woman's lower belly.

Can you hear the soft sobbing at dinnertime.

We suspect that Juan Montoya (shown in photo below, at right) has a special ear for these people, for the poor in town.

Brownsville has never come through for Montoya's people, the ones he writes about and defends. City Hall has other things to do. Its occupants are younger people. They don't really care, nor should anyone expect them to. The world revolves for the active, never the bedbound. Brownsville's elderly should be glad blogger Montoya is still around. No other local blogger - and no, not even the once-daily mainstream newspaper - seems to care about bus shelters, for one, as much as Montoya cares.

Sing the song again, Juan.

Pluck those acoustic guitar strings and sing it loud. Sing it proud. All of your pals at City Hall, guys and gals you've helped gain office, have done nothing for your top issue. Work those chord frets and drop that pick heavy onto the strings. Make them hear words and music they don't want to hear. Second verse, same as the first.

The old women and children still stand out there, waiting, waiting for the slow-moving bus to pull-up and open its door, waiting in killing heat and humidity.

Songs come and go. Troubadours fade.

Not this one, not Juan Montoya.

He's wanting to see a few, new bus shelters out there before he dies.

But it's tough getting old in Brownsville...miserably, yes...

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