By Joyce Holdread
PREVIEW Columnist
David held the xeroxed copy firmly down over the “tails” side of the quarter. With a red crayon, he rubbed lightly all along the round rim and over the spread-winged eagle. There. The official “stamp” was complete with the national symbol of the United States of America. He executed a few more copies just in case.
We’d spent nearly six months teaching in the monastery school. Now we prepared to drive back up to the border over a long weekend to renew our visas. A six-month stay was the maximum for “tourists.” Several of our ex-pat friends in San Miguel, as well as Father Francisco, had told us we should be armed with several copies of our driver’s license colored, clipped, pasted on thick card stock and laminated. David’s eagle “stamp” was his finishing touch. In Mexico, a stamp was the insignia of everything official.