Courtship and Marriage

One did not go out on dates without a chaperone when I was in my teens, and in many families girls are still strictly supervised. In our northern ranching circles with close ties to the United States, women probably had an amount of authority and independence that they would not have had in most of the provinces. (Both my mother and I were brought up to ranch work as if we had been oldest sons.) But we also were expected to meet very proper expectations. There was never any question of girls and boys socializing off somewhere by themselves. We were always supposed to be in groups. Among our friends in the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso area, this meant tardeadas (afternoon dance parties, usually on Sundays) at the casinos (social clubs). They were supervised by eagle-eyed relatives like my Nino Lalo, who once forcibly took me off the dance floor when I was dancing with a charming rogue we were all crazy about.