A close-up view of changes to life on border

By Channing Turner
Cronkite News Service
Published Friday, April 8, 2011 10:35 AM CDT

As a young man, Edward Holler slipped easily through gaps in a U.S.-Mexico border fence behind his house to visit shops and friends on the Mexican side.

Now, reaching the other side can take more than two hours, and Holler said he doesn’t cross more than once every three months.

For almost 100 years, the Holler family homestead has stood just about 50 feet north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and for much of that time members enjoyed the perks of hopping easily across the ribbon of land separating Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora.

But life changed during the ’90s, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection replaced a chain-link border fence with a much larger, corrugated-metal fence.

“I couldn’t see Mexico anymore,â€