“The street remembered everything. Once there was no street, only cotton fields. And before that, empty land with tall grass the height of a man’s waist. Once the Río Grande ran through what was later to become the street and overfilled its banks. There were floods and new arroyos formed. There were years of drought. Animals died without water and men and women found no shade. Brother killed brother and women bore children that were stillborn. Hermanos Indígenas were butchered by those who would colonize them. A wind blew through the road. Settlers came through here from Mexico City looking for gold, a new life. El Camino Real de la Tierra Adentro it was called. The Royal Road to the Interior Land. The road became a road of suffering and death. It was called La Jornada del Muerto. The vultures came and ate the carrion. The ancestors flew through the air in the form of crows and sometimes the sky was dark with the beating of their wings. Sunrises were blindingly beautiful, and the sunsets brought tears to a man’s eyes. The land was rich, pristine, full of promise. Land gave way to water. The oceans ruled and sturgeon and trout flourished and other, larger sea creatures…”

~an excerpt from Street of Too Many Stories