Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

Rumor has it that Angel is a little bit more lax on the rents.

You won't find them on a topological map, but these American settlements dot the coasts of Baja, from San Felipe down to Santiago, around the bend and back up to Ensenada. Their names bring to mind the American West of 145 years ago, when brave and greedy men descended upon Nevada and California.

Ben Seeclof, Dan Kessler. “See how our house is crooked to the wall?”

Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

In Baja, camps can be found on every link in the housing food chain — from four-bedroom, 2.5-bath, American-style ranch homes, topped off with satellite TVs, maids,* and lawns, down to camps populated exclusively by ancient 8' x 12' travel-trailers, where the first beer is cracked at 9:00 a.m.

It’s cheap, but it’s not that cheap to live in Mexico. You can’t legally work in the country, so you’ll have to bring money with you or find a way to hustle it on the side. You’ll wind up shopping in the U.S., because you’re used to American food and American grocery stores. And you’ll need to do banking and assorted rum-dum chores.

Mary Tyson ran for city council in Hermosa Beach, was elected, served 8 years, then was elected mayor.

Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

While you’re in Mexico you’ll want indoor plumbing, a phone, electricity, and American television. At regular intervals you’ll get tired of living in a foreign country and crave a break — to visit friends in the States or go to an American movie or maybe just gobble a Baskin-Robbins double-dip hot fudge sundae. At the end of the day, taking all of this into account, living in Mexico is cheaper than living in America, but not fantastically cheaper.

Wanda and Chuck Bennett: “We can see the breakwater and the marina from there.”

Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

When you cross the border into Tijuana, take the toll road to Ensenada. South of Rosarito you’ll see, but probably won’t recognize, a string of camps on the west side of the highway. Once past La Fonda look closely, very closely, and you’ll spy, on the road’s shoulder, a milepost no more than two-feet high discretely announcing “Km 74.” There’s no paved turnoff here, but the highway shoulder breaks, allowing you to exit onto a dirt road. This is the entrance to Angel’s Camp. It’s been here for 40 years.

Drive down the dirt road until it Ts, turn left and then right. Dead ahead are 80 shacks built on a point that ends at the Pacific Ocean. Actually most of the houses are clean and well put together, some look new, so the word “shack” is misleading. But I can’t say they’re houses either, it’s more like walking into a village built to five-eighths scale, like a vast HO train set minus the train and tracks. The homes are small (one story, 20' x 20 ); the majority seem to be built with whatever was at hand at the time. All are unique. One toy ranchero is constructed of black lava rock, another uses 50 surfboards as a picket fence, a third has a sailing ship’s figurehead jutting seaward from the front door. Street signs, smuggled in from the States, are posted throughout camp: “Ramp Closed” “Road Narrows,” “No Parking Between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m.” The alleys—they’re too small to call roads — that separate the toy houses are dirt and never laid in a straight line. I find the intersection of three such lanes, park, dismount, and stroll Km 74. The place appears deserted, and this is Saturday afternoon. After a good 20 minutes, I spot, behind a garden fence, a man sitting on a redwood deck set to the rear of a two-story dollhouse. I call out, “Hello!”

Mark Atkinson is 43 years old, 5'10”, comes with a broad, clean-shaven Irish face and a stocky weightlifter’s torso. He’s dressed in standard Baja gear: a baseball cap, T-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes. Atkinson is a sales representative for the Beach Reporter of Manhattan Beach, California. I’m invited to take a seat and quickly served a cola. We chit and chat for a bit, and then I begin: “How did you find Kilometer 74?”

Atkinson speaks in a hushed tone, as if every syllable he utters is confidential. “I started coming down when I was 16. We camped at Km 55 for years. Km 55 was a great surf spot in the ’60s; it used to be a premier winter beach break. The beach was destroyed by the storm of’74. Then we found another place and camped there until they closed that one. The very next trip I found out about Angel’s Camp, what you call Kilometer 74.

“I was working at the Easy Reader newspaper. One Friday I described, more or less, where I was going, and somebody in the office said, ‘Why don’t you stay at Ron Long’s trailer?’ I asked, ‘Where’s that?’ And he said, ‘Long has a trailer at Angel’s Camp.’

“Ron’s trailer was right on the water. I rented it for three years. I wanted to buy something here, so I gathered three partners. The plan was to get a fourth partner and buy the last place left on the water. The price was $4000, so it would have worked out to $ 1000 each. But we could never make it work, that place sold, and then I looked at the house next door. That was $2000.

“By then it was me and one guy left over from the first deal. He was a Baja fan — in fact, he used to be vice president of Baja Adventures, ran tours down here. We had no money, nothing, so we negotiated loans. I borrowed $500 from my dad and $500 from my grandmother. Then my partner and I got in league with another couple who were my friends. The four of us decided to buy the $2000 house. We gave this couple our money.

“A few days later they called me and said, ‘We can’t go this weekend.’ The clutch had gone out on their car, and they needed their money to fix it. So they returned our money. My partner and I decided to buy it anyway, but we didn’t get back down for six weeks. The weekend we were going down, I told another friend that we were heading to Baja, and he said, ‘That’s interesting, I have a friend that’s going too.’ “I went, ‘Really, where’s he going?’

“ ‘A place called Angel’s Camp.’ “ ‘Oh really, that’s where I’m going.’

“He said, ‘Yeah, he’s buying a house. He paid the down payment last week, and now he’s going down to pay the rest of it.’ ” Atkinson produces a rueful chortle. “It turned out this fellow and his wife were our original partners. They had gotten together with the guy I was talking to and were buying the house out from under us! The really weird thing about the whole deal is that I had met all these people when I’d done EST training in ’75. I don’t know if you’re familiar with EST, but it’s very involved with integrity. Integrity is the key issue in EST.

“So they bought it, and I’m still coming down periodically and staying in Ron’s trailer. I find this house for $500. So I’ve gone from $4000 to $2000 to $500. When I bought the place, this deck wasn’t here. There was nothing inside; it was just an empty shell. There’s a small mom upstairs, an L-shaped room downstairs, and a fenced-in back yard. No other place in camp has a fenced-in back yard.

I glance out to the clearing that separates the north end of Km 74 from the south. I half expect to see a model train chugging around the bend, pulling freight cars filled with toys and snacks. I snap back, “What’s the lease payment?”

“Now it’s $117.75 a month. It’s month-to-month, no lease.” What a sumptuous afternoon: sea salt in my nostrils, yellow and purple wildflowers bloom in the clearing, pristine sunshine. I can’t see another human being or hear the sound of a motor. Sign me up. I wonder out loud, “How long have you had this place?”

“Thirteen years.”

“So you’ve gotten your money’s worth times a hundred."

Atkinson leans forward. I watch as his entire body seems to swell. “That’s the way I figure it. With the marina coming in, we’re all under the gun. We don’t know what our lifetime is on this property.” (A five-minute walk north of Km 74, enormous cranes and dredges are at work building a multimil-lion-dollar marina. The plan calls for condos, a shopping center, and a boat harbor.)

“There always has been a threat of Angel’s Camp being sold. I’ve seen the development come down the coast. About four years ago I began to feel I was getting pressed. The beast was coming our way, and eventually we were going to lose this. So I started looking around for other places to go. The big guys have come in; big developers have made offers to buy this whole camp. Bajamar is here” (four miles south, the largest real-estate development in Baja). “The end is near. It’s just a question of how much longer we have.”

It seems like everywhere I’ve ever lived has been trashed by development: Santa Fe, Mendocino County, Las Vegas, even Fairbanks, Alaska. I just keep moving on to the next place, and then it follows me there, a stampeding blob of minimarkets. What is this fellow going to do? I suck on an ice cube and ask, “Do you think about selling out and beating the crowds, or are you going to wait and see what’s going to happen? You could get another ten years."

“I have a place way down the road, which I visualize as my ultimate place, but it’s not a weekend getaway,” says Atkinson. “This is a weekend getaway, the other is twice a year, three times a year, for retirement. That place is not the equivalent of this, but it’s something that captures the spirit this had many years ago. Right now, my decision is to be here until the bitter end. Under these circumstances I could sell this place for $2000, $2500, maybe $3000. The question is, ‘Now what do I do with this money?’ I’ve lost a place I can go to every weekend. Do I try and buy something like it around here, or do I take the money and throw it in down the road? It’s going to cost $40,000 to finish up down there. So two to three grand on $40,000 is not significant.” Atkinson takes on the look of a businessman considering a merger. I nod as if I am in on the deal, begin to feel uncomfortable, and abruptly change the topic. “What do you do while you’re here?”

“Friends of mine ask me that I say, ‘Nothing. Literally nothing.’ You do whatever you want to do — use it as a base camp, go rage in town, go to restaurants, go fishing, surf, party. This place has a wide range of people. I don’t know what it is, but there’s this subtle understanding among the people who come down here about how it works. Everyone is very friendly. On the other hand, there are people who have known me by name for 13 years whose names I don’t know.

“My girlfriend likes the quiet. She likes to hear the wind and see the birds. This is her time with me and her time alone, and there’s room for that here. You can do whatever you want to do. In general, people work it out.”

The “whatever you want to do” reminds me I have to be in San Diego tomorrow. I’ve spent the last month in Baja and only lately have begun to relax. Returning north weighs in my gut like raw hamburger. I wonder if Atkinson knows the feeling. In a more somber mood I inquire, “Have you noticed that when you cross the border going south you get a jump, a boom, and suddenly it’s a lot less crowded, a lot freer? And then about Kilometer 15 on the toll road you get another jump, still less crowded, more free. And south of Ensenada, just past Maneadero...”

“...You feel that again. Yeah, it’s another jump. When you get south of El Rosario, you jump again. I think when you get south of San Ignacio, you jump again. It’s not an equal jump — the last jump is south of El Rosario, then the whole stretch to La Paz is that jump. But there is a difference in the jump south of Guerrero Negro or south of San Ignacio, not so much because of the quality of the aloneness, but because you’re moving to the tropical.

“Used to be when you were driving the road down by Guerrero Negro or San Ignacio, you’d be in this mode where there’s one thing that you were doing, and there were no interruptions. You were driving and all there was, was scenery. Nowadays there are lights. Lights are big things with me. Now there are lights in El Rosario. You come into El Rosario at night, and it’s agggghhh. Then, going north, everything is closer, closer, ckwer. And there are more and more billboards. And, of course, radio stations. In the middle of Baja there are no radio stations. Or if you’re up on top, at 4000 feet, you’ll get Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas. But when you hit El Rosario, you begin to get San Diego. And there are traffic jams, even in that area. When you get into Ensenada, you’ll find McDonald’s, and all of a sudden there are 48 radio stations, billboards, lights, a constant roar.”

I get up to leave, regard Mark’s castle for the last time. This is probably the way to do Baja. No security in exchange for very little money out front. Enjoy the moment. Most of the time the moment turns out to last many years. I say goodbye and return to the dirt roads of Km 74, walk down an alley, knock on two doors that have American cars parked out front. No answer. It is an odd feeling to be in a toy village, entirely quiet — no radios, no televisions — and no one home. I wander out to the seashore, squat, smoke a cigarette, turn and walk to the northern boundary of the camp; then head east.

Shortly I spot two men sitting on a deck set to the rear of yet another midget house. The men are hard at it, playing pinochle.

“Hi, fellas."

Ben Seecof and Dan Kessler look up in unison, nod in my direction, and return to their game. Both men are in their 30s. Seecof is single, stands 5'8", weighs 150 pounds, has thinning brown hair and a cleanshaven face. Kessler is married and has two children. He’s a big man, 6'4", 200 pounds, blond hair, and a fair complexion. My first take; “This is a Mutt and Jeff team,” which is not far off. I have happened upon the San Diego law firm of Seecof and Kessler. The two attorneys have been leasing here for three years.

I wait for the hand to finish, then ask, “How did you guys find this place?”

Seecof replies, “My friend Mike Farber grew up with this guy Mark who owns a house over there.” (Mark Atkinson, the Beach Reporter sales rep.) “Mike and I came down and saw Mark’s place, and I thought, ‘That’s pretty neat.’ So I looked around and found out this place was for sale.”

Kessler offers, “It was owned by a nurse.”

“How much did she want?”

Kessler actually steps back. “Oh, that’s a sensitive question.”

Seecof: “Our neighbors...”

Kessler: “It’s kind of a tight question. It’s complicated.”

Seecof “When we first moved in here, everyone came around and asked us that same question, and it became really strange.”

Kessler “We became paranoid of talking about money.”

Seecof: “Anyway, we came down here and looked around for a house, checked them all out, here and in Angel’s Camp over there.”

Kessler adds, “Did you know there were two brothers who own this place?”

Shocked that someone asked me a question, I reply, “No, I didn’t.”

“Angel and Ramon,” says Seecof. “There are more trailers over on Angel’s side. Rumor has it that Angel is a little bit more lax on the rents. Either camp, you buy the structure and rent the land.”

The attorneys’ cabin sits on the north edge of Km 74. Looking over a five-foot brick wall.

I can see a pair of dredges working, carving out a harbor. “Do you look at the marina coming in and say to yourself, ‘Boy, my days are numbered’?”

Seecof is first. “Yup. When we bought this place, we figured we were just throwing our money away for however long it lasted. We’re happy it lasted this long.”

“Exactly,” Kessler pipes in. “We were always expecting that the land next to us would become a condo project. They would build them and start to pump sewage straight onto the beach. We never imagined, never in our wildest dreams, that they’d put in a marina.” Kessler can’t help but laugh at the hand he’s been dealt.

“This is the stupidest place for a boat harbor,” Seecof explains, “because this beach gets the biggest waves on the whole coast. The reason we bought here is because this is where we surf. You can’t see the surf breaker when you drive south, so a lot of people didn’t know that on a high tide you can get some fun waves and pretty much have the beach to yourself. And then one day we came down, and they’re building that jetty. And we go, ‘Oh, no problem, it’s way down the beach.’ And then they started putting in another one that’s just on the inside of the first, and now they’re building a third. When they started building the boat harbor, we stopped fixing this place up.”

“The third jetty screwed up everything,” says Kessler. “Now there’s trash all over the beach.” This is what the homeboys and girls of San Diego must have seen in 1943, standing on the comer of Broadway and India, the town busting with sailors and new armament factories, thinking to themselves, ‘Whatever happened to my town?’ I recall the first McDonald’s that went up in Fairbanks, Alaska, sometime in the early 70s. Within six months, it was the second-largest-grossing location in the McDonald’s chain. I would drive by at night and see multiple lines of customers filling the store and overflowing onto the sidewalk — 20, 30 Alaskans patiently standing in line, at 40 below zero, to purchase their junk burgers. The vision is too ugly to pursue. I return to the present and ask, “What’s the rent?” “Our rent used to be $97,” says Seecof. “They just raised it to $117.50.”

“Our landlord, Ramon, died last week,” explains Kessler. “He was the character of this place. He’d been here forever. Ramon was always telling us, ‘There’s a rule for this.’ But the rules were never written down. So we knew there were all these rules that we didn’t know about. We were in the office today, and one of his daughters whips out a couple sheets of written rules.”

“We never knew,” says Seecof. . “We thought he was just making them up by the occasion. You’d get here in the morning, and Ram6n would be sitting right there on our deck. He’d wait until your hangover wore off, and he’d come over and talk. He was always interested in what you were building because he kind of felt, down to the last matchstick, that it was going to be his eventually.”

Seecof points to his cabin. “See how our house is crooked to the wall?” I study the building, notice that none of the walls are plumb. “That’s how all the houses are. Our trailer is crooked; we parked it while we were drunk. Ramon came over and said, ‘That’s crooked.’ I said, ‘Look around, Ramon.’ ” Seecof looks around, reliving the memory.

The man is right. I can see a dozen houses from here, and not one is square. I turn back to my mates. “Are you planning to hang on to the bitter end?”

Chorus: “Yeah.”

“If this went tomorrow, would you try to recreate it somewhere else?”

Seecof “Yeah, we would probably move south.”

Kessler: “I think I’d move pretty far south; the roads are safe.”

Seecof. “We’ve got to get back now.” Both men hike into the house, heads down, to finish packing for their trip home. I walk over to Angel’s side of the camp, still delighted by how distinctive every toy house is. Inhabitants have allowed their whims to rule, and the result is a singular, surprising village. Before me is a green whaling cottage with an observation deck on top. Next to that is a cabin with seashells hanging from the front porch and window shutters made from packing crates. I find the south fence of Km 74 and turn right.

Three houses down, sitting in a wicker chair, is a woman who looks to be in her 60s. She’s fashionably thin, even aristocratic, and appears entirely content. The woman is sunning on a patio outside a 24 x 24' cottage. On her left is a hotel parking sign, the kind you’d find outside a 1950s seaside resort, featuring a tiny, blue-coated bellhop beckoning you. Underneath him the legend reads “Hotel Parking.” I walk toward her and offer greetings.

Mary Tyson was born in Texas and raised in Wyoming. Her father was an oil engineer. Tyson’s family moved to Los Angeles, where “Dad found a job at Hughes Aircraft. I grew up, got married — my husband was a musician. We had three children. He was killed in a car crash. I was alone for seven years, then married a printing pressman. We had a little girl.

“I ran political campaigns for a while, worked for Jimmy Roosevelt when he ran for Congress. I loved it. We lived in Hermosa Beach. I did a lot of volunteer work, helped set up the South Bay Free Clinic. I was on the original board of directors, also on the boards of Friends of the Library and Friends of the Arts.”

Mary remained married for 16 years, then divorced. She ran for city council in Hermosa Beach, was elected, served 8 years, then was elected mayor. “That was a lot of fun. I ran on a slow-growth, lower-the-height-limit platform, and I had a vendetta against the police department. We managed to make some changes, got a new chief. That was good.”

So far this afternoon I’ve met two attorneys, one sales rep, and now a mayor. All this place needs is a therapist, a cop, a crack dealer, some homeless, and we’ve recreated America in this tranquil community. Mary offers coffee. I accept and remark, “It seems like such a full life—marriage, kids, city council, mayor. You’d think you’d be happily retired in Hermosa Beach. What brought you down here?” Mary studies her hands, carefully says, “I’ve been a caregiver all my life, and I wanted to just be responsible for me. I wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. As you get older, your children begin to think they’re the parent and you’re the child. And when your kids start ordering you around, telling you what to do and how to live your life, it’s time to say, ‘Hey, love ya, but I’m gone.’”

“You’ve been here quite some time, right?” “I’ve had this house for six years, and before that I had friends who owned a place here. I’d come down with them every once in a while. When I bought the house, I was the city clerk of West Hollywood. A good friend of mine, Kenny, also worked there. Kenny wanted to find a vacation cabin in the desert. I said, ’You go ahead that way, I’m going down to Mexico.’ He thought about it and decided to come south with me.

“We drove down and this place was for sale. We called the owner, and he wanted, we thought, too much money. So we told him no. Four days later the guy called back; he was being transferred to Oregon. He’d changed his mind. ‘If your $6000 offer is firm. I’ll take it.’

“We gave him the cash and that was it. And the house was furnished down to the napkins. Everything we needed was here.” Tyson offers a pleased smile.

The afternoon is passing. Colors are beginning to develop, becoming richer, thicker, more intense. One thinks, “This is how Saturday afternoons are supposed to be.” I mumble, mostly to myself, “Six thousand for a house on the Pacific coast.”

Mary brightens. “Isn’t that something?”

Returning to the interview, I inquire, “Where’s Kenny now? Is he still coming down?”

“No, he died a year and a half ago.”

“I’m sorry." I allow the moment to stand on its own, then ask, “And how long have you lived here full-time?”

"Two years. I’m retired. There are just three of us in camp who live here year-round.”

“Was there a discussion in your own mind about retiring in Mexico or keeping this cottage as a weekend destination?” “No, when I bought it I knew I wanted to live down here.” Mary twists in her chair. “There was never a question in my mind. The big question was my mom, she lives in Hermosa Beach. My kids all live up there, and I have a phone so I keep in touch. My mother has been down a few times, but this is a little rough for her. My children love it, my grandkids love it. In fact, my son and his new wife own the place next door. That was their wedding present. I gave them their first home as a wedding present. Look, there’s a whale.” I turn, see a California gray whale spouting. I’ve never cared for whales, or more precisely. I’ve never been interested in them. For me, they fall in the category of kitchen appliances or the life cycle of earthworms. But I am an American and understand that it’s my duty to verbally stroke the creature when prompted. I shamelessly offer an “ohh" and hurry on. “What’s your day like?”

“I usually get up about 6:30. The sun wakes me up. I make coffee and breakfast. If it’s nice. I’ll sit out here. I read, walk down and watch the surf on the rocks. If there are people in camp that I haven’t seen in a while, I’ll go over and chat, find out what’s happening in their world. I’ll go into town now and then, but not any more than I have to.”

I try to imagine what it would be like to live here, say, on Day 51. Would the quietness become unbearable? Would this toy town become suffocating? I throw out a probe. “What’s the social scene like in camp?”

“We all get together for dinner now and then. We have birthday parties, usually have a big New Year’s Eve party and Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have a mix of people here. We have a young couple with a 2-year-old girl. Ted is 84 or 85, he’s our senior. We have a wonderful mixture — kids, younger adults, older adults. The attitude is very casual, very laid-back. There’s no turmoil. You can be alone if you want, or you can find somebody to play with if you want to play.”

Tyson strikes me as a tough woman, someone who knows herself. But then, you’d need to be tough to retire in Mexico on a month-to-month lease. I finish the thought out loud. “Do you ever wonder what you’d do if Angel dies or sells this camp?” “No, I learned a long time ago, ‘Don’t borrow trouble.’ If it happens, then I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I’m very happy here. The rumor for 12 years has been 'Angel’s going to sell tomorrow.’ Why sit and worry about it? If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.” There’s something in her tone of voice, a kind of disregard for consequences that prods me to ask, “Do you have a bit of the outlaw in you?"

“Oh, of course. I think most people do who come down here. I’ve never been a knitter or a rocking-chair person. I have a lot more fun down here than up there. I watch the whales and roadrunners; my critters bring me lizards, mice, and baby rabbits.” Mary leans forward as if sharing a confidence. “I love it here. I went to work when I was 12 years old. This is the first

time in my life I’ve just been accountable to me. It’s been wonderful, it really has. And little by little I’m getting things so I can be very self-sufficient. I have my solar panels, so I have lights. It was fun to come down with candles and kerosene lamps for a weekend, but when you’re living here, it’s a little different.” “Tell me a little about other people in camp.”

“Gary and Joanne are my next-door neighbors. Gary works maintenance for some big company in San Diego, Joanne works for Allstate Insurance. They come down every other weekend. The first lesson I had to learn when I started living here full-time was that people who come for the weekend come to party. They want to whoop it up. I learned very early on that you don’t do that. Once in a while I party with people, and when I do I’m careful about how much I drink.”

Tyson studies her neighborhood. “Let’s see, Joanne’s brother Ray just got married to a lovely woman, Helena. They bought the gray house and are fixing it up. And Debbie, she’s a fascinating woman, she has that two-story place with the quad solar panel. She built that whole top story by herself, did a hell of a job. And Pam and her husband have a great place here. They’re foster parents for quite a few children. They’ll come down and have seven, eight kids with them, very well-behaved kids. Mark and Dave live next door to me. The trailer belongs to Mark’s dad, (He lives up at Lake Isabella and likes to fish, comes down as often as he can. Mark has a plumbing company in San Diego, Dave works for a VCR fix-it place. Dave is an excellent cook. And, of course, we all got involved in the saga of Rich and Amy. Waiting for Rich to propose.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yeah. And she said yes, and they’re getting married in August.” Mary shines. “We’re gonna have a party over at the cantina. They’re weekenders, but they spend a lot of extra time here, a nice couple. Right now Rich is out surfing and Amy’s up patching the roof.” Well, so much for the golden years spent in despair and loneliness. I turn back to the exile question. “Do you ever find, going back to the States as infrequently as you do, that the U.S. seems a bit weird?”

“Yes! Too many lights, too many cars, too much pollution. I can’t sleep up there. I went up to L.A. over Christmas and stayed with my mom. I was there three nights, and I don’t think I slept more than a couple hours a night. This morning, I got up at four o’clock to find my way to the outhouse, and oh, it was warm. It was so warm I came back and sat on my patio and looked at the moon and the stars. I thought, ‘You know something, I’d no more do this in West Hollywood than I’d fly.’ When we first bought this house, the only lock we had was on the outside, a padlock. In West Hollywood my door was locked during the day, even when I was home.”

Alaska was that way. I didn’t have a lock on my cabin door for 15 years, then over one summer everyone I knew installed locks on their doors, windows, sheds, and gates. It was the end of the way things had been. Still working on that thought I ask, “People have told me about the cantina, and how, before the marina went in, everyone walked down the beach to the bar.”

“It used to be great. You didn’t have to worry about getting half tanked-up and trying to drive. Instead we’d stumble home. All you had to do is put your right foot in the water, left foot on the oeach, and keep going until you hit the rocks, climb over the rocks, and you’re here,” Mary remembers with a laugh.

“Is there anything that you don’t have that you wish you did?”

Mary comes to a complete stop, considers the question. “I don’t think so. It would be nice, when the rainy season arrives, to have an indoor bathroom, but it’s not imperative.”

Sunset has arrived. I say goodbye and walk down to the ocean again, watch as the Pacific eats the sun. After a bit, I turn around, hike past Mary’s to the home of Chuck and Wanda Bennett. I his is one of the larger houses in Km 74, maybe 40 x 40', with a large bedroom set on top of the ground floor. Viewing the building from the alley, one first sees an aluminum travel-trailer parked sideways, with its backside facing the passerby. At a right angle to the trailer’s front is the back end of an ancient RV. The space in between the two is the Bennetts’ front door.

I’d met Chuck and Wanda last week, 100 miles south of here. They came by my trailer to install four deep-cycle batteries, an inverter, and a 50-amp battery charger. We never did get the machinery to work, but we passed a pleasant afternoon. I tap on their front door. Chuck answers and directs me to a seat by the fire pit. I regard the flames, enjoying the moment, feeling grateful to be among acquaintances.

Chuck and Wanda are in their late 50s. Mr. Bennett has white hair, white beard and mustache, all surrounding blustery red cheeks. This is a face that has traveled hard miles. Chuck, standing 5'7", is dressed in formal Baja attire: worn jogging pants, dark T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Wanda is just under 5'2", has pale blond hair, glasses, and a demeanor of sweet concern that I haven’t seen since I attended the first grade and was under the care of the sainted Mrs. Quick.

The inside of the Bennetts’ home is laid out in one large square, with two sitting areas, each containing a couch and two chairs. In one corner is a kitchen and dining area. On the north end of the large room, a door opens to an aged trailer. Chuck tells me, “This house is not a design, it’s a happening. This trailer came with the place; it’s never been moved. We put in a full-sized refrigerator, and it also has a hot-water heater and shower.”

On the east side of the main room, another door leads to Chuck’s motor home, now set up as an office. Mr. Bennett pulled out the kitchen and replaced it with a desk. On the west side of the house is a bathroom; upstairs, a bedroom with a French door that opens to a roof-patio. “We can see the breakwater and the marina from there.”

Wanda lays out a plate of cheese and crackers. Chuck takes a poke at the fire. Evening has arrived and all’s well with the world. I ask, “How did you get down here?”

Chuck considers whether to add some wood to the fire, decides against it. “I worked for a contracting firm in Los Angeles,” he tells me, “and I’d been with them for a longtime. About 1992, the work really got slow. We had a $1300-a-month house payment. When you’re both working, that’s not really a big deal. My job ended and I only worked sporadically. We finally decided, 'Well, maybe we ought to get out from under this whole thing.’ ”

“Was that the first time you came to Baja?”

Chuck places a small branch on the fire. “We’re both from California, both on our second marriage. Wanda was here before she knew me.”

Wanda calls out from the kitchen, “I first came down before the toll road was finished. I would say it was 1968. We went down to Estero Beach and camped. I didn't like it so much when my kids were little, because I was so afraid. I was one of those people who thought, If anything bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen to my kids.’ “Chuck and I started coming down in .1980. This young man, Rob Russell, had been visiting here since he was a teenager. He knew people who had a place in Angel’s Camp. He brought us down, dragged us the whole way, saying, ‘You have to go.’ I knew he wanted us to get a place and be partners. Chuck said, ‘Oh, that’s too far to drive.’ We were living in Riverside at the time.”

“I had this old motor home, Chuck says. “We raised eight children together, four each. When the kids were between 9 and 14, you could load them in the motor home and go oft for a weekend. But after they turned 14, you couldn’t get them to go anywhere. It was, 'You go, but we don’t want to.’ We bought the motor home in 1975; by 1980 we couldn’t get the kids in it. It’s cheaper for the two of us to travel by car. At the time we were thinking, 'It would be nice to find some place to park this thing and use it as a destination, like a trailer.’

Wanda smiles as she embraces the recollection. “Rob and Denise got us down here. Rob still says, when he sees us,' I his is too far to drive, isn’t it?’ I he four of us got this place. Later on they moved back to Alabama, and we bought them out.”

“This old trailer was already here,” Chuck adds, “and there was a big concrete slab in place and an outhouse — a nice little site. We got it for $750 in 1980. We don’t own the lot; we own the improvements on the lot.

“I parked the motor home here. Now we had a motor home and a beat-up trailer. Rob and I were both in construction, so we had the opportunity to get scrap lumber. I had a Ford Ranchero with air shocks, so I could carry fairly heavy loads. I carried 4 x 6s, some of them 16 feet long. We’d take what we called a ‘Mexico load.’ The trashier-looking the load, the less chance anybody would stop you. We’d literally put trash on top of the building material, throw on a couple old surfboards, top it off with dilapidated camping equipment. Most of the time they’d wave us through. The first year we came down maybe once a month. Sometimes I’d get a bunch of lumber or Rob would get a bunch of lumber, and we’d work a little harder, come down more often.”

I visualize Kilometer 74 in my mind. Every house must have been built that same way, one load at a time. Curious now, I ask, “What do you know about the history of the camp?”

“Angel’s father came here in 1936, squatted on or got this land,” Chuck says. “Angel was 14, his brother Ramon was a bit younger. Thie father died around 1950 — shot during a land dispute, or so the story goes. The word was Angel was living in the States. He came back in order to inherit. Angel, being the oldest son, inherited it all. His mother thought that was unfair, so she stepped in and saw to it that Ramon got a piece.

“Angel got the lion’s share, but his brother got a nice chunk of it. Angel’s father already had this trailer park. It was a well-established format. All Angel has to do is collect. He’s the patron."

I recall the attorneys and the mayor. “Have the kinds of people who live here changed since you first bought in?

“I don’t know," Chuck says. “Some have died, some have gone away, some lost interest. Maybe 25 percent of the people here have been in camp since 1980. In the beginning we had a fire pit outside the house. We’d sit around the fire in the evening, and our neighbors would come over and drink. People would bring their friends."

Wanda, back in the kitchen, adds, “We used to have, almost entirely, a weekend crowd who would party, party all weekend long. I still remember one of the notes that was put in our log. ‘Got drunk. Felt bad. Got up on Sunday. Went home.’ That was the typical weekend. Now you’ve got a lot of different people. They’re working on their houses, the camp has a different feel. We have young people, and we didn't used to have so many. But they’re not the real party-hardy types. They have to get up the next morning at the crack of dawn and surf."

I reach out for another slice of cheese, the plate is empty. I remember I forgot lunch, remember I must be in San Diego tomorrow, feel the weight of going north once again. Trying to cover all that, I ask Chuck, “It’s one thing to be in Mexico as a vacation, it’s entirely different as a life. How has it been for you?” “It’s hard to explain. People say, ‘What do you do down there?’ We have our part-time jobs. Two mornings a week we work in San Diego.” (Wanda and Chuck clean up a shopping center for their son-in-law.) “ That takes care of two days. I have a day that I bicycle ride with some friends here, that’s another day. I get a little solar work every now and then.” (Chuck installs solar panels.) “But I’m always busy. I wish I had time to fish; there’s good fishing here.”

The world of hustle seems a long, long way from here. More to myself than anyone I muse, “Why isn’t the rest of Southern California living here?”

“A lot of folks won’t come right out and admit it,” Chuck says, “but they’re afraid of crossing the border. From the stories they’ve heard, they’re afraid. They’ll tell you all kinds of reasons why they can’t come, but after we’ve invited somebody about four times, and if we don’t smell bad or anything, we sense that people have a fear of coming. They won’t verbalize it; they come up with some excuse. I’ve got a good friend, he tells me, ‘I won’t bring my Chevy pickup. They’d follow me around and see that I’m in it.’ That’s his reason for not coming down.”

I nod vigorously, having experienced the same thing. For every ten people I invite to my homestead a hundred miles south of here, one shows up. ( The dog ate the homework of the other nine.) Moving on, I question, “If you had a tip sheet for a young couple moving in, what would be on it?”

Wanda has joined us, taking spousal position next to Chuck on the couch. She says, “Get a solar system, because that has been a godsend to me. To be able to walk into the house and turn on a switch without having to light a propane lantern. I’ve always been afraid of them, always afraid I wouldn’t light it right.”

Chuck adds to the list, “Get a dependable water system and a dependable lighting system, good enough so you can turn your back and expect them to work.”

Wanda pipes in, “Get to know where you can go to get little things that you need, like, they have a little pharmacy in La Mision that carries a good stock. And you can find almost anything you want in Cantamar, which is 10, 12 miles away.”

I feel a flash of envy. Here’s a couple who obviously like each other, and at a mature age they reshuffled the deck, moved out of their homestead, and made a happy life. It must have been fun. It must have felt risky. I ask Chuck, “That fall of ’91, what would have happened if you hadn’t been laid off? Would you have been happier working in L.A., or did this turn out to be a better deal?”

“I was never unhappy working up north. I made $60,000 a year for years and years. It’s a little bit of a shock to go from $60,000 to $20,000 — that’s about what our income is now. As far as our quality of life, I’m certain we’re just as happy as we were up there.”

“Sometimes we worry about some of the things the U.S. does," says Wanda, “afraid that Mexico is going to punish us for them. But then I think (the Mexicans] have lived with us long enough to know that we’re here because we think this is beautiful. I don’t feel like we’re going to be forced out because of them not wanting us here. It would take Angel selling this camp, and we couldn’t find another place.”

“That’s going to happen sooner or later. Do you have plans to find something more secure?”

“I have thoughts of a backup position,” admits Chuck, “but I don’t have anything in place. It would have to be near the toll road. We’re spoiled by the toll road. We’re 20 minutes to Ensenada or 30 minutes to Rosarito, and yet, we’re a separate community. I think the development going on around here is exciting. Other people think we’re on the brink of doom, believing there will be a big puff of smoke one day, and we’ll all go back to what we were before."

I’m still hanging onto the adventure part, the middle-aged pioneers pushing south. “What was it like when you moved down here full-time?”

“We just started bringing our stuff down and bringing our stuff down,” says Chuck, “and planning what we needed and fixing areas in the house that we were going to have to reinforce. Prior to moving down, we’d pretty well ignored the winter. This will be our third winter, and winter is a nice season here.”

It’s hard to believe it was that easy. leaving an American house, cable TV, the familiarity of one spot for a toy village and Angel. Wanting more I ask, “So you never had that ‘Oh God, what have we done’ feeling?”

“I did,” admits Wanda. “Right after we moved down here, he got a call, ‘Oh, we want you to come back up to LA. and work for a while.’ So he left me here. The two other people who lived in camp had gone on a trip to the States. He left me here with no car and no car phone. I was the only live human here. Let me tell you, that was not fun. 'That was in winter, and the wind blew. I felt like walking to the cantina and asking someone to take me hack to the States, but that passed. I’d walk the whole camp every day just to see if there was anybody here. He was gone a week. When he left he said he’d be back in two days. Two days went by and he didn’t come. About the fourth day I got a bottle of wine and went up to our bedroom. I drank that bottle of wine, and I sat there and I cried.”

Chuck and I count our toes.

I do a fellow male a favor and change the subject. “When people read this, the first thing they’re going to think is, ’How much is it going to cost me to do this?’ What is the yearly nut to live in Kilometer 74?”

Wanda answers. “If we just took our expenses that we incur here...”

“...include going up to the States for the weekend,” I interject, going shopping, going out to dinner and so forth — your regular life.”

“We like to go on trips,” says Wanda. “We could live here for a lot less.”

Our last child, Kim, went to college in 1983,” says Chuck. “I worked from 1982 until ’92, earned full income and only spent it on Wanda and me. Not everybody is that lucky. We got used to having a fair amount of money and only ourselves to spend it on. Self-indulgent is the word I want to say. We still haven’t gotten out of that lifestyle.

We spend, to live right here, probably $2000 a month. There are a lot of things we could do away with if we had to. I’m sure we could cut $500 off the top, but I think a couple would have a pretty austere life down here on less than $1500 a month.” Suddenly it’s time to go. I get up, thank my hosts, and ask a final question. “So, where do you see yourself in ten years?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea ” Chuck admits. “I’m 59 years old. I’ll probably be alive at 69, but where I will be depends on how good my health is. If I’m as healthy at 69 as I am at 59, then I’ll probably be doing the same things I’m doing now. But I may not enjoy the luxury. You have to deal with what you have to deal with. I’m not living ten years in the future.” Chuck presents a laugh. “Maybe three years in the future.”

The fire snaps. I open the front door and remark, “The drawback is no guarantees. You take your chances.”

“That’s it. People ask, ‘How long is this format going to stay in existence?’ Angel says, ‘As long as I’m here.’ He’s 70-some years old.”