THOMAS LARSON

Finding yourself in jail or prison for the first time unlatches a simple conundrum: You can’t know what you’re about to face because, had you known, you might have avoided the crime or, at least, taken more care not to get caught while committing it. Lock-up sucks. When you don’t do as you’re told (by guard and race boss alike), you suffer. Aren’t you supposed to suffer your punishment? Yes, but like anything, there are degrees: It’s up to you, son, how difficult your time here’s going to be. It’ll be easy—say, easier—if you cooperate. With whom? With the deputies, the correctional officers (CO’s), and the other prisoners, an array of aliens you would never trust on the outside, let alone on the inside of a holding cell or penitentiary.

Consider this man’s wretched tale, the first time he was put into the San Diego Central Jail. It began during his arraignment. A substance abuser, the man was already in a treatment program when he was charged with a felony. He believed the judge would release him back to the treatment program. But instead, the judge set his bail at $100,000 (which the man couldn’t post) and directed deputies to lock him up.

1.

It’s an August mid-afternoon in El Cajon. It’s 100 degrees, and the sane people are in the shade, keeping still. Not Mike Davis. For an hour, the most famous social historian of southern California has been walking me through Bostonia, a two-square mile enclave just north of El Cajon, where he grew up in the ’50s and ’60s. With hat and sunglasses, I’m burning up; head and eyes uncovered, Davis beads a lone ball of sweat. Having lived in Los Angeles, London, New York, and Hawaii, he has once again settled in San Diego. Though he’s fidgety about being back, he seems at home in East County, especially since he’s been writing about the place that made him. The author of City of Quartz and other books about L.A.’s past and future woes has, with two local authors, just written a new book, Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See. It’s a history of local sleaze, in "the most corrupt city on the West Coast," beginning with His Highness of Corruption, Alonzo Horton, and ending with Her Majesty of Folly, Susan Golding.

It may be the ultimate irony of the conflict with Iraq that to glimpse the difficult home lives of our soldiers, their spouses, and their children, America needs a foreign war. And, even as those lives arise from obscurity, we have heard about of the front-line fighters much more than the base-bound families, especially the youngest, many of whom are poor and do, on occasion, go hungry. Proof of their need is how high the compassion index shot up this spring in San Diego. A half-dozen outreach groups and food drives were organized, among them Operation Homefront and Navy Wives Food Locker, to assist families. Some groups, however, are always on watch. One such is Military Outreach Ministries, sponsored by the county’s 33 Presbyterian churches and the Presbytery of San Diego. Begun in the early 1960s as Military Parish Visitors, the original band of volunteer women visited military bases, in times of war and peace, to ask wives about their needs. Today, the Ministries—its name now forms the acronym MOM.—runs bi-weekly food supplements and weekly bread drives to women and their children, who are surviving on an enlisted man’s salary.

Bienvenidos

In April 2001, 15-year-old Reina was leaving her home in Tenancingo, a high-plateau town west of Mexico City. She was happier than she’d been in a while, traveling north to Tijuana, in the company of Arturo López-Rojas. At 32, Arturo was nicely dressed, heavy, and short, barely five feet tall; Reina, with a pretty round face, was shorter by several inches. Arturo was taking her to the border crossing at San Diego to get her into the United States; he would then deliver her to her new job as a housekeeper, maybe with children to watch; he also vowed that once she had established herself, they would marry. This bundle of offerings excited Reina. She knew of other girls who’d made the trip to California, who were cleaning grand houses with grassy yards and swimming pools and sending money to their loved ones in Tenancingo—dollars instead of pesos.