Christmas in Brownsville: it wasn't often that I made it home, so when my friend Victor invited me over to help his family make tamales from scratch, I said yes. Soon I was staring into the eyes of a 120-pound pig.(WHERE I'M FROM)

Publication: Texas Monthly

Publication Date: 01-DEC-05

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WERE ON OUR THIRD BEER when the pig finally showed up that morning. Someone had built a fire in the back, and we were all standing by the pit, trying to wake up and get warm at the same time. The burning wood seemed to be the only real light in the neighborhood. A mesquite hung heavy with scrawny icicles that were losing their courage with the approaching sun. It was cold for Brownsville, even for a Christmas Eve. My friend Victor had invited me over to his parents' house, and now we were waiting around the fire with his two younger brothers, a nephew, and some friends of theirs I hadn't met until that morning. The women were waiting in the kitchen, warm and dry. His family did this every Christmas--the men killed a pig and the women made tamales with the meat.

I hadn't been over to Victor's old neighborhood since high school. After graduating, he had moved away and gone to college but had come back a year later, married, and trained to be a surgical tech at the hospital. He and Maggie eventually bought a nice house, the highlight of which is the Cowboys Room, a shrine with a jumbo-sized TV screen and more Dallas Cowboys memorabilia than you'll find anywhere south of Irving. I'd stop by when I was in town, but it wasn't that often that I made it back. I was living in Austin, and over the years I'd made new friends at the ad agency where I worked. There were times I skipped Christmas in Brownsville and spent the holidays traveling outside the country. Maybe I'd visit my parents in the spring or summer, when the weather was nicer and I could go to the beach. I'd been traveling, on business, when Victor called my apartment and left a message on the machine. "Are you coming home this year...

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