evieshka | Friends of Pedro

If you've ever crossed from North Carolina into South on I-95, you've seen it, with its odd collection of animal statues, brightly painted pastel shops, enormous sombrero towering in the sky like a beacon, and casually racist stereotypes. You've definitely seen the cringe-worthy billboards starting 150 miles in either direction. ("Pedro no shoot ze bull!" "You never sausage a place! You're always a weener at Pedro's!" - You know. Classy ads.)

Decades ago, it was a favorite tourist destination: a motor lodge with a geodesic dome covering a large pool, an arcade, a little fairground, fireworks and knick-knack shops, and a handful of restaurants catered to the weary motorist and their family. Now, it's little more than a grand tourist trap, somehow still breathing in spite of having been outgrown by society and outpaced by technology. South of the Border: a relic of the past.

As a hobbyist photographer and lover of all things vintage, I decided to stop there on a long drive down the east coast in the hopes of snapping a few pictures. Surely such a place couldn't exist much longer; it was just too much of what we'd call "granddad's racism". Jokingly playful, sure, but still unacceptable. No, I figured soon its doors would close and an outlet mall would take over, maybe leaving behind a few of those brightly-colored dinosaur statues as mementos of what had once been the gateway between the Carolinas.

It was mid-afternoon and blazing hot when I pulled my battered Ford into the parking lot of a shop identified as "MEXICO WEST" by the large letters blazoned above its windows. The asphalt of the lot and whitewashed walls of the building seemed to reflect the heat of the day, making it almost a relief when I escaped into the air-conditioned lobby of the shop. My relief was short-lived, however; I could smell something here that reminded me of gas station bathrooms - a musty, ammonia smell that could only be covered up with cleaning, never erased. There were two women working at the registers, both quite old, and a third, much younger, ambling around the store looking for some occupation.

There wasn't much to be had. Other than myself, there had been only a handful of cars in the lot. Many of them were likely just in the area to use the bathrooms across the way, leaving only three or four actual customers to wander the store. The place felt abandoned, and after taking a few photos of the interior of the shop, I decided to buy one of the mugs that so proudly proclaimed "S.O.B." in bright yellow letters.

As I queued to pay for my find, I noticed that the customer ahead of me seemed to know the cashiers. Their animated conversation slowed the process of checkout enough that my attention wandered, finally settling on the nametag of the cashier. Contrary to popular belief, it seemed, not all employees were named "Pedro" - the women had the distinction of being "Friends of Pedro".

I stood mulling this over - how off it sounded, really - with a bemused frown when the wandering employee - a sour-faced girl much younger than I had originally thought - stepped behind the counter and in a thickly southern accent, demanded more than offered to wrap my purchase for me.

I handed the mug over and returned to my scrutiny of the nametags, noting that the elder employee's name was 'Muriel', and that her conversation with the customer ahead of me had taken on a hushed quality.

"Here."

The sharpness of the word and the brown paper wrapped item shoved into my hands surprised me. I watched as she stumped off, but before I had time to process the exchange, Muriel had announced I owed their fine establishment ten and change. I assumed that there was a button on the register specifically for the mugs, or that they simply charged what they wanted. I was ready to be back on the road and in no mood to ask about the particulars of what was, I'm sure, an unenjoyable job. Ten and change sounded right enough.

It wasn't until I arrived home three days later and unwrapped my purchase for washing that I found the scrap of paper stuffed into the mug. In a shaky scrawl, it read, "Amy Martin 5/4/02 - Help me."

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I thought maybe it was a prank. A bored teenager on the clock who had been told to do something productive, and in the process of fulfilling the direction, had casually slipped a note into a customer's purchase. If I had been employed there, I'd be tempted...but the inclusion of her name and date of birth made it seem a little more than just a petty joke.

A search on the internet for 'Amy Martin' produced a photo of a smiling, bubbly teenager with black hair and dark, sparkling eyes. An Amber Alert had been issued for her five months prior when she had gone missing from the parking lot of the South of the Border motor lodge.

Though the teenager in the shop had shown no traces of the happiness that radiated from the one in the photograph, there was no doubt they were the same girl.