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Stories by Abe Opincar

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Surreal Estate

A typical conversation went like this: “Excuse me, do you offer home mortgages?” “Well, yes.” She seems startled. “What sort of customers borrow from your bank?” “People who have no other choice.” On April 25, ...

There Is One God

"It was very difficult. We wanted to distinguish ourselves from Muslims and educate the public about who we are and what we believe. But at the same time we didn't want to single out Muslims ...

Where the Mountain Meets the Sky

"My Get Up and Go Got Up and Went," says the legend carved into the seven-foot-tall, four-foot-wide white marble headstone of Kenneth James Amundson, born November 7, 1945, deceased February 6, 1975, "Beloved son of ...

The Kids Are All Right

Dori Lowell, business manager for the National Pygmy Goat Association based in Snohomish, Washington, says, "People who love pygmy goats come from all walks of life, but they're usually animal lovers who've had some exposure ...

Out of Africa

In the office where I met David Omen Acana II, paramount chief of the 800,000-member Acholi tribe in northern Uganda, a large color photograph of two hippos hung on the wall behind him. The animals, ...

Why Not the Red, White, And Blue?

"I thought I had come into hell. Van Nuys was so hot. I mean, God. And at that time I was naughty: I smoked. And I thought, 'How can anybody have a cigarette in this ...

Don't Look Now

Under normal circumstances, it would be difficult not to stare at ten men dressed in black who brandished submachine guns. Under normal circumstances, ten men dressed in black who brandished submachine guns would be the ...

American Interests

When Dean Haas considers his career so far, he describes its most emotionally difficult period as a two-week "hostage situation" involving a group of Americans "who'd gone to look for Noah's ark." There was, of ...

Tijuana Muscle

"This gym, NeoSpa, opened in 1988. It was started by a Russian group that came to Tijuana. They came up with the name and made the original investment. They also opened a disco and a ...

When the Loud Bell Rang

My first day in school was really my second day. It was September 1950, and that first day my brown uniform shirt scratched, the heavy corduroy pants were stiff with newness, my suspenders would not ...

Life's Too Short To Be Small

"At the time it was cross tops and black beauties. Not yet the methamphetamine." "I was caught up in the first DUI sweep in San Diego. I had my picture on the front page of ...

Tijuana Gardens

I didn't recognize where I was. "Things have changed a lot," said Jorge Rodríguez, leading me out of the rain, into his two-story cinder-block house. "I came to Los Arenales looking for new horizons," he ...

Mom

As Thin as Butterfly Wings My mother was born in the high desert of northeastern Arizona. Even now it's a hard place to thrive, with rain unlikely and resources few. Her father built their house ...

Nowhere Zone: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Normal Heights

“I’d lie awake at night and think, ‘I am in hell.’ I’d get up in the morning and think, ‘I am in hell.’ At one point we had heavy trucks making 200 to 300 trips ...

Grateful to the Dead

Not long after my brother died and was buried in Oregon, I found myself in the depósito de cadáveres, or morgue, at Tijuana’s Autonomous University of Baja California. My hand rested on the handle of ...

Tijuana Dream Tracker

'Just like Florence, just like Rome, Tijuana, too, has its monuments." Professor Julio Rodríguez steers his blue Ford through Zona Rio, gesturing at one statue after another. "And what are monuments? What do they represent? ...

Blubbo's World

Steve Esmedina wrote his first story for the Reader in July 1973; his last story appeared in September 1994. He wrote about popular music and film, mostly in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Esmedina ...

Married to the Peso

In Mexico City in June of 1994, Pat Nelson took a friend, a Mexican financial consultant, to lunch. "My friend said to me, 'Pat, in '92 and '93 the Mexican government issued short-term bonds that ...

Survival Poet

'I'm totally lyric," says Erika Lara, a woman in her early 30s who sits on a metal folding chair on the marble landing before Tijuana's municipal government building. "A lyric poet. Uneducated. I barely finished ...

Our Students Don't Kill

'We currently have 20 kids here who've committed homicides. We get about one a month. In every case except one, it was an armed assault, usually a robbery, involving money, drugs, or both. The one ...

Alejandra's Difficult Choice

'Let me explain it to you slowly, because my life is very complicated. When I was 15 years old, I went from my small town in Puebla to Tecate, where I crossed into the United ...

Mother Tongue

“I even speak Yiddish with a Mexican accent. I can’t help it.” If you call the Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan and ask to be referred to a Yiddish speaker in San Diego, you’ll ...

Tijuana's Troubled Families

'Go to the border between 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning, and you can understand something about my patients' lives. At that time in the morning, the border is crazy. People honking, yelling, fighting for ...

Rules for Your Life

'Not everyone who comes to this country comes for economic reasons. Money. I hate money. I don't even like to talk about money. I don't think Americans understand that. There are many things more important ...

Escape from Iraq

Most of the Arab-speaking cab drivers who wait in front of the zoo or down at the Santa Fe Depot know Sam Alsiadey. "He's had a hard life." "Very difficult life." "It's amazing what that ...

Cornucopia

“You’re eating bug excrement.” Stephen Facciola and I are standing in the parking lot of a Middle Eastern grocery in disheartening Anaheim. The streets are eight lanes wide. The blocks, a mile long. The air ...

African Luck

Koffi Kouakou is the first member of his family to read and write. The first to ride in a plane. The first to leave Cote d'Ivoire. The first to leave Africa. The first to drive ...

When There's Trouble in the World

'In late 1985, we fled Kabul and crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the dead of winter. We walked ten days and nine nights. There were about 60 people in all. Friends, neighbors. Eight members ...

Fraternal Spiritualist

Denomination: Fraternal Spiritualist Address: 4720 Kensington Drive, Kensington; 619-281-4557 Year founded locally: 1932 Senior pastors: Millie Landis, Chris Christensen Congregation size: 83 members Staff: all volunteer Church school enrollment: no Sunday School Annual budget: $99,000 ...

American Cabstand

A sort of unofficial United Nations meets near the San Diego Zoo's main exit. On a narrow street shaded by palm and pepper trees, taxi drivers from Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Syria, Italy, Tunisia, Nigeria, ...

Check in at Hotel Internment

A wicked Hungarian count tries to seduce a pubescent American blonde. A resort manager falls hard for a German baroness. Hitler masterminds the slaughter of millions. There are love ballads and some tap dancing. When ...

His Lightness, My Weight

Until he lost consciousness eight hours before his death, my father was lucid. He did have night terrors, usually around 4:00 a.m., when, animated by morphine dreams, he’d rise cackling from his bed, hairy arms ...

Galli's Survival

Last December Todd Galli made a list he entitled "Things I Want to Accomplish in My Life." Dissatisfied with how that sounded, he started again with "Things I Will Accomplish in My Life." At the ...

Long Gray Line

Growing up in rural Massachusetts in the late 1940s, David Valley had only one serious goal: "To get the hell out of small-town New England." When he was 17 years old, he got his chance. ...

Mark Chapman's Bane

On the evening of December 8, 1980, Kristy Mundt, a cashier at Vons, was relaxing in her Lemon Grove home, watching the Miami Dolphins play the New England Patriots at the Orange Bowl. When Howard ...

Art of Glass

For the past 25 years, Peter Dreher, an artist from Freiburg, Germany, has painted the same 100-year-old, half-liter glass 3200 times. Dreher's method is simple: in either day or night, in either artificial or natural ...

In Defense of the Ultimate Underdog

'Let's say that you're an American man, living in France, and you meet and marry a French woman. You decide to spend your honeymoon in America, and while you're here your wife discovers she loves ...

Wind, Water, A Rice Field

Murray Lee runs a finger across a family tree he’s displayed in the Chinese Historical Society Museum on Third Avenue downtown. On the left of the big white board, Lee taps at a solitary name, ...

Not That Liberal

When Martin Luther invented Protestantism, he created anarchy. Luther's unmooring of Christianity from centuries of Church practice and teaching generated ironies and contradictions that remain unresolved. Reverend Cindy Witt is a recent orphan of the ...

Comedian in the Mist

Jennifer at the San Diego Zoo's media relations office adopted a strident tone. "Well, if you can't tell me exactly what Mr. Sedaris will be writing -- I mean, if you can't give me a ...

Through the Flames

The first thing you notice about Iranians is their language. Farsi is filled with soft a's, like the a in father, and sh's, as in shore. "Sh" occurs often because it appears in shoma, meaning ...

Out of the Woods: How to Build a Career with Your Own Two Hands

On the coffee table in front of the fireplace the maid set out Earl Grey tea and thick slices of Christmas cake. A German shepherd dozed on the Oriental rug near the crackling, popping fire. ...

Loving Scrutiny

Those unfamiliar with the Anglican Communion's range of belief and practice were puzzled in early August when, on the lawn of Kent University in England, Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Nigeria tried to lay hands on ...

Submission with Grace

Viewers tuned to the June 12 broadcast of CNN's Larry King Live were treated to an exercise in confusion. King's guests were at such opaque odds, spoke at such broad cross-purposes, that the program seemed ...

Roger Hedgecock and His Vegas Lawyer

Secretaries and a janitor crowd around John Hunter in the leafy courtyard of a Carmel Ranch office building. They squeal and whine "I wanna try it! I wanna try it!" like crazed kids and paw ...

Breaking Story

'I have known persecution and oppression all my life," Neuman Britton says and clasps his callused hands above his coffee cup in an Escondido Denny's. "Oppression and prejudice. We were more discriminated against than any ...

Bard Mitzvah

On a well-to-do street in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Thursday, June 18, a 60-year-old gentleman named Robin Spark received an anonymous package from San Diego, California, and promptly called the police. In a very short time, ...

Prisoners of Truth

A few weeks ago, some folks in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho got calls from Calgary Herald reporters informing them that Axciom DataQuick, a San Diego-based company, had given 200 convicts in several Canadian prisons ...

Baltimore to Buddha

'I was in the middle of death. I was surrounded by death. Most Americans, most Westerners, wouldn't think this was a good or healthy thing because we either try to hide from death, or we ...

A Unique Warmth for Youngsters

'How did you get this number?" snarled an unidentified male voice at the other end of the line. "John isn't involved involved in anything! Don't ever call here again!" John's phone number isn't hard to ...