I was my dad's designated driver when I was 12. Now that I'm older, I understand his pain.

• My dad grew up on the US-Mexico border in a house on the banks of the Rio Grande.
• When I was about 12, my mom would send me with him when he went drinking so I could drive back.

On weekend afternoons, when my dad announced that he was going to visit his parents who lived in Madero, Texas, we knew he was going to the cantinas.

A working-class Mexican-American, my dad jokingly called beer life's "shock absorbers." Mom never saw the humor and always forced me to go with him.

I knew I was tossed into his truck as a kind of deterrent. But I ended up being his designated driver. Never mind that I was only 12 or 13, too young for a learner's permit, and so puny I barely reached the gas pedal.

He grew up on the US-Mexico border

My dad was born on the river in a house on the banks of the Rio Grande. He lived in company housing that was part of my grandfather's job as a "pompero," maintaining pumps that drew water from the river and into the network of levees and irrigation canals that turned our arid region on the US-Mexico border into an agricultural powerhouse. My dad labored in those fields as a child to help the family, and he'd tell me about the drops of pesticide that fell on his bare arms when crop dusters flew overhead as they worked.

He grew up a scrawny brown kid in the '50s, a time in South Texas when the downtown movie theaters were segregated, and at least one restaurant had a sign that read "No dogs and No Mexicans." The public pool, Crystal Waters, would only let in the kids like him on Sundays when it was going to be drained and cleaned at the end of the day.

I sat in his truck, waiting for him to come out from drinking

I spent my Sundays sitting in the cab of his Chevy F150, parked outside cantinas with the windows rolled down in the Texas heat. Or maybe that was just the cicadas. At that age, I had no idea what a privilege it was to feel bored with nothing to do except wait for my life to start. I sat in the truck, sweaty thighs stuck to the hot vinyl seat, studying each man who went in and out of the joint. My dad never invited me inside. And I knew better than to go in and interrupt. So I waited until he stumbled out and told me to get behind the wheel to drive us home.

Not that my dad offered much instruction other than tell me to "take the scenic route." He meant the unpaved back roads, avoiding the main streets of our hometown, best known as the birthplace of the Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.

I drove, fearful of the faded crosses on the sides of the road, markings where unlucky drivers had met their end. And when I drove along the levees, I felt a strange pull from the murky depths of the water flowing past, beckoning me to drive into it with a splash.

I don't know how I was able to relax and see, finally, the land. The vast fields were planted in rows that somehow hypnotized you with their precision. Groves of oranges and ruby-red grapefruits that we were known for. Sugarcane was burned at harvest and filled the sky with black ash that fell on the school playground miles away.

And just beyond the dash was the glorious, unobstructed view of Mexico. I seized up whenever I saw a plume of dust trailing a lone vehicle, which always turned out to be Migra in drab olive-colored Border Patrol vans. There are rusty-looking fences up now, and the Migra drive white Tahoes that blind under the merciless sun.

I learned so much about my dad without realizing it

It would be years before my dad told me about his life, the river, the cotton fields, and the cruel signs downtown. He dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army, where he first heard the word "spic." The racism continued to dog him when he worked as a telephone repairman for Southwestern Bell and dealt with irate customers who snarled, "Go back to your country!"

My dad must've been in his late 30s at the time of our drives, which seems so impossibly young to me now, with me in my 50s and him seven years gone. I want to believe that he wanted me to see our world. This was our country. Is. And how beautiful it could be despite the pain, labor, and overwork. And yet it's no wonder he reached for those shock absorbers to help him cope.