Click on photos to enlarge.
Sam wondered about the photo I posted today. I think he feared that it was drying out as it appeared to be tan rather than green. Here are three more photos of it in sunlight. It is a pale green. And the container is the broken-off-at-the-waist sculpture that the kitties broke so I am using the bottom part of it as a planter. There were two–female and male–and they knocked them both off their perches at the front of my house.
Here are the planters.
For Cee’s FOTD
Innocents in Mexico
Chapter 19
Fireworks. In Mexico, they are the rule, not the exception. If you have two nights in a row without continuous explosions, you are lucky. Often given to exaggeration, here I need not bother. On the Sunday night which marked the beginning of our third week in San Miguel, the fireworks were especially long and loud. It might have been in honor of the movie crew who had begun filming on that day and who probably appreciated the all-night diversion as much as we did, or it may have been the conclusion of the horse show that had occurred that weekend. Or it may have just been a showy overzealous family display.
1:30 a.m. Fifteen retorts in rapid progression. Not the crisp splat of childhood firecrackers, but the solid ear-shattering report of gunfire––a giant’s shooting gallery. It was too hot to close the heavy bedroom door to the patio, too hot for covers. Bob lay awake itching mosquito bites, and when I went to the bathroom for ointment, there were four already buzzing against the mirror, in spite of the fact that all of the doors and windows were screened. I sprayed on bug spray, then rolled the tube of ointment for insect bites over my madly itching and swollen upper arms and feet. When I went back to bed, I covered us both with the sheet, protection against bloodsuckers. It was hard to imagine where mosquitos could breed in this dry windy expanse, but it had been raining a bit each afternoon and water was no doubt collecting somewhere.
I slept. I dreamed that I was back in the States, setting up an art show entitled “This Bud’s for You.” It was my friend Linda’s idea, and I had never thought it would work, so why was I the one setting up this show so dumb that there were only seven entries?
As I moved to the woods to meditate over this conundrum, I discovered a whole bank of pelicans drifting along the curving bank at the side of the road––row after row of pelicans. Then I remembered that pelicans could talk and were, indeed, good counselors. I should avail myself of their counsel while I was here in the States where I had health insurance, I thought, so I went from pelican to pelican asking which one wanted to talk to me until, still in the middle of my questioning of pelicans, two wise guy humans made fun of my efforts.
“Oh them,” said Bob. “Jerks. The one can’t stop talking about himself long enough to get lucky. Picked up a girl in a singles bar, stood on her doorstep so long talking, she gave up and went to bed. He didn’t even notice until she’d locked the door, turned out the porch light and was almost off to sleep.”
At 5 a.m., I was torn from my dream. Explosions ripped the air like someone beating on a tin roof with a sledge hammer—fifteen loud bangs in the first progression. I closed the window and stumbled to the bathroom to search for my earplugs, brought as protection against snores, not fireworks.
Born on the third of July, I had always considered fireworks to take the place of my personal totem, and I was so addicted to them that I would never have believed that there could be anything which could sour me on them; but there I was, cursing them after just two weeks in town. Sure, they were pretty spread against the night sky, but what fool set off cherry bombs (I later discovered them to be cohetes or bottle rockets) by the hundreds at 5 in the morning? With earplugs on, I could still hear them.
They sounded like someone buckling thin gauge metal siding or like giants farting down an echo chamber. Last night, there were marching bands, someone on a loudspeaker, strings of cars back and forth across the empty lot and fireworks drawing streaks of color over the black sky. We watched from our roof. They reminded me of what a friend with a brain tumor had once said—that it was like this every time she moved her hand—sparks in the air, flowing after it. Beautiful. But at 5 a.m., even through earplugs they sounded like fifteen metal doors slamming shut down the corridor in sequence. The cat slept on. Bob slept on. I moved down the balcony corridor. One way lead to the office, the other to the spiral staircase to the roof.
The sky turned cherry red over my left shoulder. Through the earplugs, I heard the sounds: someone banging cooking pans or caving in car doors with a baseball bat. My San Miguel alarm clock: firecrackers, then roosters, then church bells.
They were the beginnings of a normal day for the man who stood in the spare lot across the street watching the real spectacle: a fleshy woman from el Norte in a t-shirt and skull shorts climbing a spiral staircase to watch the sunrise from her roof.
For Chapter 20, g0 HERE.
Innocents in Mexico
Chapter 18: Rooftops
First of all, in Mexico, almost everyone has them: flat rooftops. They are reached by stairs or by wrought iron ladders attached to the side of the buildings or by tightly spiraled metal staircases. Many serve the purpose of a security system by serving as home for the family “roof dog.” These dogs, not as plentiful nor as vocal as in Oaxaca, nonetheless exist in San Miguel as well, where they live their entire lifetimes on the roof. When people pass by on the street, they bark. When fireworks go off and other roof dogs bark, they bark back. Should anyone attempt to climb onto the roof to gain access to the house, they bark louder.
Since we had rented by far the tallest house in the neighborhood, we got to look down on all of the other rooftops. We tended to go up on the roof at least once a day––usually to observe the sunset, or fireworks, or to just look at the incredible panorama of 360 degrees of blue sky dotted with white clotted clouds. These San Miguel skies astounded us. We had lived in the California redwoods for too long. We’d forgotten what it was like to see the horizon.
Other people seemed to use their roofs for other things. On each and every one, there was a stack of old lumber, twisted wire and bricks. On many were piles of curved clay roof tiles. From the tops of the brick columns at each side of the house and at intervals along the walls extended the bumpy heavy wires of rebar. Like particularly tough bristles, they sprouted from the tops of the houses in clusters, ready and waiting for the next story, to be added as the money appeared to build it. This was an ever-present activity in San Miguel. In no place where we’d stayed in the past weeks had we been freed from the sounds of construction. After men came home from work, they would go to the roof and add a few bricks. The pounding of their mallets to set the bricks extended far into the evening.
The other purpose of roofs seemed to be to store pop bottles. On most of the roofs spread below us were case after case of Coke bottles. Why they hadn’t cashed these in, we had no idea, since a considerable amount of the price of each bottle of coke or beer covered the price of the bottle. For a liter bottle of Corona, a third of the price was the bottle deposit. Perhaps this was their bank––hoarded Coke bottles on the roof. Perhaps they were waiting for the price of Coke bottles to go up––like the peso. Or perhaps they were waiting to cash them in to buy drinks for their next fiesta.
Other rooftops displayed geraniums in clay pots. We never saw them being enjoyed or tended to. They were just there. For our pleasure, perhaps, since no one else ever went to the rooftops except to shovel roof dog poop. One night, as we stood watching the sunset, we saw two women climb the stairs up to their own rooftop. So people did watch the sunset here, too, I thought, but for the half hour they were on the roof, they sat on chairs talking, their backs to the setting sun.
Aside from Coke bottles, geraniums and construction materials, rooftops were proper storage places for: old bicycles, extra flowerpots, broken and sound, shovels, pickup bed covers, folding chairs, half-used buckets of paint, old bed springs, rain barrels, extra tires and purloined shopping carts from Gigante which were upended and appeared to be used as some sort of kennel, although we never saw any animal inside. It was well into our second week in the house when I thought to go up on the roof during the day. It was then that I saw activity, for women had stung clotheslines in the bright late morning sun and were hanging clothes. From rooftop after rooftop, the bright flags of socks, undershorts, pants and shirts hung like fiesta decorations across half the rooftops within vision.
Photo of rooftop washing day by Gwendolyn Anderson on Unsplash
For Chapter 19. go HERE.
For Cee’s FOTD
This is a story about Sarah who was in the fertilized egg business. She had several hundred young pullets and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. She kept records and any rooster not performing went into the gumbo pot and was replaced. . . .
go HERE to read the rest of Sam’s very timely story!
This is a story about Sarah who was in the fertilized egg business. She had several hundred young pullets and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.
She kept records and any rooster not performing went into the gumbo pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time, so she bought some tiny bells and attached them to her roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so she could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now, she could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
Sarah’s favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen but, this morning she noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! When she went to investigate, she saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
To Sarah’s amazement, old Butch had…
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Tequila with Lime and Potato?
Innocents in Mexico
Chapter 17
For the next two days, there were almost gale force winds followed by torrential rains. Pots in the compound blew over, their tall plants having been blown like sails by the wind. The streamers which hung across the road came detached at one end and tangled around the telephone wires. We had invited our first guests over for dinner on the first day of strong winds. As the hour approached for their coming, I kept hoping that the winds would stop. Our dining room table and chairs were on the roofed but unwalled patio off the kitchen. I put out candles, but they blew out. Any time I moved out to clean or rearrange chairs, the heavy glass and metal door was caught by the wind and slammed shut. By five o’clock, Bob had agreed that the weather was not going to cooperate and we moved the furniture to the sides of the living room and moved the table and chairs into its center. I collected bougainvillea from the lush plants in the patio, a few branches of each color. I arranged them around the hors de ouvres and made bundles of forks, spoons and knives which I wrapped in napkins and tied with waxed linen, slipping a sprig of bougainvillea in each one. The day before, I had disinfected the fruit and vegetables, made the spaghetti sauce. That day, we had shopped for bread, driven out to the hacienda to check on the progress of the remodel of the house Ernesto wanted us to rent. We had checked out other areas as well. I still didn’t feel like it was my place. It was too cut off.
Ernesto was slated to arrive at our house at 7 p.m. Dirk, who had to pick up Maria at work, thought they’d be there by 7 p.m. At 6:55, Bob said, “You know, in one of our books about Mexico, it says that Mexicans are too polite to turn down your invitations to dinner, but that sometimes they just don’t show up.”
“It’s not even seven,” I told him. “Besides, Ernesto wouldn’t do that. And Dirk’s American––he wouldn’t either.”
Ernesto was almost on the dot, walking in the door with a bottle of tequila. “I want you to taste this, “ he said. I poured a shot glass full. “No, no. You have to drink it with a little grapefruit juice or orange juice. “
I poured mango juice on top of the tequila and drank it like a shot.
“See what it says on the label?” said Ernesto, “By appointment to the king. It just doesn’t say which king. Do you know how much it costs?
At the present rate, it was about $2 per bottle.
“If you want it to taste smooth, put a slice of potato in it and let it set. Then remove the potato and the tequila will be smooth.”
Dirk and Maria arrived a half hour or so later, Dirk hurried and flustered and apologizing. He had driven down our street before going to get Maria so he’d know where to go, but he couldn’t find the house. Either I’d not given him the address or he’d forgotten to write it down. He brought a bottle of red wine, but I gave him a rum and coke to tame him down.
“Is this it––are we the only guests?” he asked, surprised.
“You’re it. And we expected you to be late. We know about Mexican time.”
Dirk was aghast. They didn’t operate that way. Maria Antoinette was calm as usual. She had simply insisted they stop each person they saw on the road and ask where the foreigners were. They kept pointing them onward and saying, “Jim, Senor Jim,” which was the name of our landlord. Eventually, they’d found it. We’d taped a small note to the door and left the gate ajar.
The party was loose and fun. Dirk admitted that it was the first time they’d been invited out to dinner in someone’s home the entire time they’d lived there. They’d been invited to one fiesta with many people, but not to a private home. He seemed thrilled. Ernesto was warm and charming. He told us some of his stories over again. Everyone ate heartily, commenting on the food and taking seconds. “Do you have any more of those long vegetables?” asked Ernesto, and I went to the side table to get the asparagus.
Wine, tequila, rum and Corona were paid proper attention to by Ernesto, Dirk and me. Bob drank Coke light and Maria drank fruit juice. After dessert, Ernesto brought out his guitar and played trickily fingered Mexican and Spanish love ballads. “I took the crystal glass and broke it. With the shard, I opened my vein. I thought of my loved one, now vanished. I will never love again.” He mouthed the words in English as he strummed and picked, first slow, then fast in the Latin manner. Then he sang them in Spanish.
All of the songs were love songs––lush and full and romantic. Earlier, he’d mentioned his girlfriend and, horrified, I said that he should have brought her. I didn’t think to ask if he had someone he wanted to bring. “No, on Tuesday night it is her night to go out with friends,” he answered. “So I just didn’t tell her. She’s not beautiful or anything,” he explained.
We didn’t know what to make of this comment from Ernesto, who was always courteous and polite. He said it as though it was just another fact, but it revealed the other side of the coin from the romantic music––the practicality of having a girlfriend, even though she wasn’t beautiful as opposed to the second song he sang, “Into each life, there comes one love. Now that she’s left, I’ll never love again.”
Dirk told lots of jokes about breasts. I told them about Bob greeting strangers on the street with “Buenos nachos.” Ernesto laughed especially long, then told us that if he ever had said “Buenos nachas,” he was telling them that they had nice butts. I told them about the time in Minneapolis in the July heat when we had been leaving a restaurant. Bob had on shorts and as he walked out, a woman in her sixties was coming in. “Nice legs,” she commented to Bob as he held the door for her. Her husband, horrified, said, “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because he has nice legs. He does,” she said, standing her ground.
She was right, he did have the nicely muscled legs of a bicycle racer which lived on long after his bicycle racing days were over.
When they left at 11:30, Dirk again mentioned that this was a highlight in their life in Mexico. “I’m going to e-mail Richard and tell him all about it,” he said. He told Richard, an old friend and fellow dentist, everything. Richard had been the link between Ernesto and Dirk, having corresponded via e-mail with Ernesto for a year. Although they’d never met, they felt like old friends. Then Richard had sent a picture of Dirk and said he and Ernesto should meet. The second day when I’d met Ernesto in the library, he’d been slated to meet Dirk a half hour later. I’d stayed on and so witnessed their meeting. Richard, they told me, had a half million dollars he wanted to invest in Mexico. When he came, they would throw a huge fiesta and we would come.
“Do you know enough people to throw a huge fiesta?” I asked Ernesto.
He laughed, “If you throw a fiesta, the people will come.”
For Chapter 18, go HERE.
For Cee’s FOTD
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 