Category Archives: Books

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 12

8 Replies

Although I can’t find any of the photos I took in San Miguel, the background of this retablo I made while living there shows a shot of the courtyard of the hacienda where Ernesto wanted us to live.

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 12

 

  The next day, I awakened early.  We were unsure whether Theresa, the housekeeper, came at 8 or 11.  Susan had told us one time, Steve the other.  I sat in the office in the balcony across from the master bedroom, watching Bob sleep as I started my laptop.  The sounds of the neighborhood flew in over the tall wall that I could just see over there on the second story of the house.

            When Theresa did not come by 11, we decided she was not coming, but we left one door ajar for her, just in case.  She had the key to the compound, but not the house.  We walked to the main road and caught a taxi to the Biblioteca, where we were to meet Ernesto and Dirk to go on a tour of the hacienda and Ernesto’s new school.  Everyone was on time and in fact, everyone had arrived early and gone somewhere to wait, mistakably expecting everyone else to be on Mexican time.  When I told Ernesto we had rented a house, he seemed crestfallen. 

            “Why would you want to rent a house for a month?”  he asked.  “You could be staying at the hacienda for $16 a night.” 

            We explained that we loved the house and that we needed space and privacy to work. 

            “At the hacienda, you could ride horses and use the kitchen,” he answered, still looking disappointed. 

            The tour took much longer than either we or Dirk had anticipated.  Dirk had brought his wife, Maria Antoinette, who was with us as we started out viewing the hacienda.  Everything seemed to be in a state of flux there.  In one large library , a computer stood on a table  and paintings were stacked ten deep against the walls.  They had been taken from the walls, said Ernesto, and replaced by other paintings.  The pool table had been taken from one room and sat, covered, in another.  Piles of mattresses lay in corridors or the corners of rooms.  In the kitchen, something bubbled on the stove:  a pot of beans and a succulent smelling joint that Ernesto insisted was being cooked as dogfood for the dogs.  A large room adjoining the kitchen was available for fiestas, explained  Ernesto.  We saw no one.  Eventually, a distinguished looking older man walked into one of the bedrooms we were inspecting.  He was introduced to us as the Don and he shook our hands politely, but did not seem too pleased to have us there.  In a rapid exchange, Ernesto seemed to be asking him how much it was to stay there.  It turned out that it was $16 per person, so at $960 a month,  it would have been more expensive for us to stay there than in the house we were in.  The Don left and we moved  through arched courtyards and gardens, and ruins partially intact left for atmosphere.  We saw a huge pool, apparently long drained, which Ernesto insisted was still functional, but too expensive to maintain.  They would convert it to solar and then refill it, he said.  But come.  This was the small pool.  Come see the large one.  I started  to feel like we were wandering on a private unauthorized tour through San Simeon prior to its restoration.  Below the “large” pool was a two-story house presently going through restoration.  The views from the patio––of rolling hills and green fields–– were breathtaking.  At one time the hacienda spread as far as the eye could see.  This was before the revolution.  Ernesto’s school was situated in the Armory, where troops used to guard gold and silver shipments, but first we must see this house.  We might want to rent it, he told us. 

            The house seemed to be partially occupied.  There were clothes and toiletries in the bathroom, food and pans in the kitchen.  Half-packed boxes lined the stairway.  Ernesto told us that the people had moved out, but it looked more like they were in the process of moving out.  As usual, there were many mysteries in the world as presented by Ernesto.

            Dirk, worried now that he would not get Maria Antoinette to work on time, asked when we would see the school.  He had expected this to take two hours, he said, and it had been that long already without seeing the school.  We must drive to the school, said Ernesto.  Slowly, since the road is bad.  We would drive most of the way and then walk, but first we must have some refreshment. 

            We pulled over in front of a tiny adobe casa by the side of the main road.  A bus drew up, disgorging schoolchildren home from school.  They scattered like wild kittens.  One small girl entered the courtyard we were entering.  We tried to crowd into a tiny shop, but there was not room for more than three.  Bob and Dirk went in to order Coronas for Dirk, Ernesto and me, juice for Maria Antoinette, Coke Light for Bob.  The Senora who lived in the small house behind the shop and who was the shopkeeper found chairs for all of us and we pulled them into a circle in the bare dirt courtyard.  A huge mesquite tree cast shade over half the yard.  The small girl picked a flower from it and handed it to Maria Antoinette.  If unfurled, it would resemble an hibiscus flower, but its petals were pulled down into a bell.  It was variegated tangerine, gold and orange––the exact colors of Maria Antoinette’s blouse and hair and skin.  We sat in the courtyard and told stories.  Bob, who was given to introspection before speaking, did not fare well against the talkative Dirk and Ernesto.  Maria Antoinette, who was originally from Mexico City but who could, she told us, now pass for a native of San Miguel, entered the house and fell into conversation with the Senora, who eventually pulled up a chair and joined us.  Dirk speculated on what Bob might be thinking, and Bob admitted he was anxious to see the schoo––what we all came here for.  Dirk again expressed worry that Maria would be late to work, teaching English at a private school, but Ernesto insisted we all have a second Corona.  In the end, he and Dirk had another Corona.  I  was already feeling the need for a siesta after one beer.  The hot sun and the lulling effect of far off echoes from the broad landscape had  made me content but sleepy. 

            We were very lucky, said Dirk, to be seeing the real life of Mexico.  Not many tourists saw  what we had seen today, he told us.  Not feeling like a tourist, and feeling like this is how I always traveled or lived in the countries where I have visited, nonetheless, I agreed.  Eventually, we drove on a bit, then parked under a tree after removing several large rocks from the road.  Ernesto unlocked the gate in the tall compound wall.  Towers rose above us––where armed soldiers once guarded the shipments of precious metal.  To our left was a huge bank of blue, glittering in the sunlight.  Next to it was a mound of goldish red, another of white.  They were like a rubbish dump where all of the refuse had been sorted by color.  As we got closer, I saw  that they were mountains of glass.  One was deep cobalt blue––like the color of Mexican blown glass tumblers.  The next drift was broken Pepsi bottles––clear for the most part, but here and there we could see the blue and red of the logo.  Mounds on the other side of the compound were of raw semiprecious stones still in their matrix.  One was of opals, the other chalcedony––what Bob and I knew as poppy and picture jasper.

             We went  first into the room where Ernesto had set up lapidary equipment.  The good equipment was in Texas, he said.  Most of this equipment was used or gerrymandered, but 20 or more stations had been set up. 

            Maria Antoinette sat down on a couch at the entrance and promptly fell asleep.  Ernesto  turned on a fan and directed it toward her and we left her to dream.  He showed us the faceting  tool and the opal grinder.  He showed us the ghastly clay fountain which he sought to mass produce.  It was a wet bar, a fountain and a lamp.  He could sell it very cheap, he said.  He showed us several wax sculptures that they would cast in bronze.  One was by a Swiss lady who wanted to study there, he told us.  His plan was to set up a mobile home park in the center of the compound, where people could come from the States for lapidary and casting workshops much cheaper than those in the States.  They would have school for poor and crippled children, as well.  They would feed them lunch, Ernesto explained.  We moved into another building.  In it were mounds of pot metal molded trinkets––cats, dogs, women, crosses, flowers, every conceivable shape.  Piles of circular molds covered a table.  He pressed the “on” switch on the machine used to melt pot metal. He wanted show us how quickly  this could be done.  He pounded talc onto the molds, fit the two pieces together, and put them up against the snout of the pot where the metal was being heated.  Poof, that quickly the mold was filled and placed to cool.  Then another and another.  You could do twenty in one minute if they were all prepared, he told us.  When he peeled the mold apart, we saw a circular chain of trinkets––perhaps thirty or more––ready to be separated, tumbled and gilt or silver plated. 

            Hanging from the ceiling was a large toy plane––perhaps five or six feet long.  It looked like it had been constructed from old soda cans or recycled tin siding, but Ernesto said it was very expensive.  Strapped to its bottom was an infrared camera.  It was a remote-controlled plane  (the predecessor to the now-ubiquitous drone) which he could send up to locate water and minerals, he told us. 

            Next, we moved to a side compound filled with slab cutters and diamond saws.  Most were rusty, but all functioned, he told us.  Earlier, there was a flood and all were underwater, but they may all be made to work. 

            Bob suggested that more than a resident artist, Ernesto perhaps needed a production manager.  Whereas Ernesto insisted the school would be open in two weeks, it looked more like two years to us, and it looked more like a sweatshop than a school, although Ernesto insisted the money would go to the kids with only enough going to the “school” to keep it functional.  When I questioned Ernesto about the artistic side of things––most of these designs were just being mass produced and were less than esthetically pleasing––at their best pure kitsch––Ernesto insisted they would also do their own designs.  That would be where Bob came into the picture, he insisted, but I could feel Bob’s interest fading.  Years ago, before he himself had built diamond saws and slabbers and drills and worked with stone, perhaps it would have been challenging, but at this stage it felt like going backwards, not forward.

            I asked Ernesto what his goal was.  He said that the metal and gem crafts of Mexico for generations had been centered elsewhere, in towns where they had been passed down in families, from father to son.  He wanted to open up the crafts to everyone and to establish San Miguel as a center where people could set up their own studios and establish their own crafts.  This was the beginning part only.  The school had first to support itself to enable the students to go on and become independent.

            When Ernesto talked like this, I believed him.  He told us he had sold his Mother’s house in New Orleans to enable him to buy two factories and  two mines.  This was where the tools and the raw minerals had come from.  The glass was from a glass factory which he rented out space to here in the armory, but they hadn’t paid rent for a year, so he had locked them out .  That is where the glass came from.  They would use it to make enamel. 

            “How many people have been working on this school?”  I asked him. 

            “One,” he told me, and pointed to himself.  “Sometimes two.” 

            Although the don had offered him lodgings in the hacienda, Ernesto said, he had a very nice apartment and girlfriend in San Miguel, where he preferred to stay, but when I went in search of a bathroom, I saw in a back secluded corner of the workshop a cot covered by a tarpaulin.  On the tarp were several piles of neatly folded clothes.  By the side of the bed was a refrigerator wrapped in chain with a padlock. 

            Later, I confided to Bob that I wondered if Ernesto was indeed living in the armory.  Bob admitted  that he wondered the same thing.

            Dirk, who was a retired dentist and lapidarist, confided to me that he was tempted to stay in Mexico and get involved in Ernesto’s project.  It was the first thing that had peaked his interest and made him want to get active again in years, he said.

            Sweat shop or school?  Mass production or art studio?  Visionary or Con Artist?  Who could know?  But Ernesto continued to intrigue us with his tall dreams and his big stories.  How did people discover the truth about each other?  One part of me wanted to believe in his dream, but intuition told me we were being gently conned.  Well, manana.  We would wait and see.

See Chapter 13 HERE.

Chapters 1-11 can be found in earlier blogs published in the past two weeks.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 11

16 Replies

 

Innocents in Mexico

 

Chapter 11

            That night, we moved in.  At $600 a month, it was twice the price of the other apartment we liked, but it was worth it.  The rent included the three times weekly services of Theresa, who lived only two doors away.  She was gentle and Susan said she was shy, but we did not find her to be so.  Did she speak English?  No.  Good.  We needed to be encouraged to learn Spanish more quickly. 

            When we arrived at “our” house, Stucco Steve Kelsoe, the friend who had been housesitting the house, was still there.  He understood we were coming tomorrow, he told Susan, but she assured him she told him today.  She left and we talked to Steve about the house, which he designed and built for Jim, the owner, who was  visiting  Disneyland with his girlfriend.  We raved about the house and he told us more about it over a Corona.  How he reduced costs by building the sides of the house right at the property line, so the exterior walls were also the back and part of the side compound walls.  (We later grew to regret this fact.)  He had also done the planting.  He pointed out the ruins we had passed as we entered the lot and that they had preserved, he told us.  A few hours later, he ran up to check his e-mail and to send a letter, then switched off the computer.  The phone rang immediately.  It was our credit card phone provider, who had been trying to call for two hours, but the phone was busy thanks to Stucco Steve.  Robert, our agent, explained to me the intricacies of how to make phone calls so they appeared on our credit card and not Jim’s phone bill.

            Eventually, he left, and we went out to sit on our patio.  The garden was beautiful––the plants exactly the ones I would have chosen.  Bearcat moved easily and inquisitively around the courtyard, padded upstairs one stairway, around the U of the loft and back down the other stairway.  We could hear the click of his claws on the polished wood of the stairway.  He was completely peaceful for the first  time since leaving home two weeks earlier.  He knew we were home for awhile. 

            “Are you pleased with the house?”  I asked Bob as we rocked in the twin wooden rocking chairs which were the sole furniture in the sala (other than two twin beds covered with Guatemalan throws and pillows which served as twin sofas against the walls)

            “I’m pleased with everything.”  He answered. 

            Earlier, we had gone to Gigante and purchased basic necessities.  When I awakened  from a deep sleep after a late afternoon nap, the air was still hot, but the fans blew cool air down onto the bed.  Bob was below, still in the rocking chair. 

            “We missed the sunset,” I said.  “Have you eaten?”

            He had had a peanut butter sandwich.  I had an avocado and onion and cheese sandwich made on wonderful  Mexican bread.  Then I had another.  We sat up late, just  looking out at the courtyard.  Bob read the English phonebook and the San Miguel guide while I read  a book from the large box of books I’d brought along.  When we turned off the lights to go upstairs to bed, moonlight streamed down from glass bricks in the ceiling.  As we fell asleep, the dog who lived on the roof next to us joined a choir of roof dogs.  Bearcat stirred by our feet, but did not run under the bed.  We all felt contented here, relaxed and safe.

(Look at previous days’ blogs for Chapters 1-10. See Chapter 12 HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 10

12 Replies

 

San Miguel Sunset from the Roof of the House We Chose to Rent

Innocents in Mexico

Find Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE
Chapter 4 HERE  Chapter 5  HERE  Chapter 6 HERE Chapter 7 HERE  Chapter 8 HERE  and Chapter 9 HERE,

Chapter 10

            On our sixth day of searching, we found three houses we wanted to rent.  One had the advantage of being blocks from the jardin and a block from the market.  It was stark and small, but we could fix it up.  There were many patios, but I would have to supply the plants.  If we were renting for a year or two, it would be worth fixing up, but not for a month.  As we left, Bob toed aside a large, dead cockroach. 

            The second apartment was in an area above the Biblioteca which we had not seen before.  The man who owned the house was a large-scale metalsmith and would share his tools and space with Bob.  The apartment was charming––decorated with flair.  It had one bedroom, kitchen and bath with a small sitting room on the ground floor.  He, his wife and children and assorted art students lived above.  We were free to use any of his studio space as well.  He was so anxious to rent to us that he said he would do anything to please us.  He came down $200 from his original offer when we had done nothing but ask him the price again.  The $300 a month covered utilities, and he would pay half of our parking nearby.  We were sure we would take this place, but we had first, as a courtesy to Susan, to go see the house she had been trying to get us in to see for three days.  We went back to see Clello’s house by the mercado, found yet another dead cockroach under the sink, then returned the key and told her we had decided to take a different house. 

            We then remembered that we had forgotten to tell the metalsmith that we had a cat.  It was no problem, he told us, when we called to tell him.  He would do anything to get us to take the apartment. 

            “But first” we said, “we must go to see one other house.”

            We went to La Conexion, Susan’s internet business, and she loaded us into her van.  On the passenger side door were vivid purple scribbles.

            “My kids did that.  It’s not graffiti,” she told us. 

            Her van looked like ours––lived in.  Crayons littered the backseat floorboards, a Eudora instruction booklet lay on the dashboard.  I piled my San Miguel guidebook, book of notes and phone numbers, Spanish dictionary and town map on top of it. 

            We went a different route to the house than the first time––when we had seen the neighborhood but couldn’t get in to see the house.  It was in a Mexican neighborhood a short way out of town.  From the road in front of the house, we could see the half-unoccupied shopping mall whose only prosperous inhabitant seemed to be the huge grocery/notions store named Gigante.  The road was dirt, the field to its right littered with plastic bottles and paper bags.  At first, I thought it was a dump, but it was just the refuse which was the normal byproduct of being so close to a market.  The neighborhood looked less bleak this time.  On the  long road that ran past the house were two metalworking shops, which interested us both.  Susan opened the gate to the courtyard and we stepped in.  It was a beautiful modern stucco house constructed in the Mexican style, using Mexican methods and materials––two stories with a rooftop patio.  Two second story patios served as roofs for two ground floor patios which  flanked the house.  A brick pathway vee’d and then joined as it approached the house.  Around us were bougainvilleas in various shades of purple, burgundy, wine, rose, orange and gold.  A 15’ long wall of organpipe cacti stretched far up into the air, running parallel to the side wall, but well out from it.  A mesquite tree spread over the central courtyard and the walls of a small ruin which they had left intact and which contained a quirky artist’s shrine.  As we stepped into the house, we saw  first of all a huge picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe which dominated the 30’ high back wall .  On closer inspection, we saw  that it was a beaded curtain meant to hang in a doorway.  Ceiling fans above it sent air currents which caused it to gently sway in minute waves out from the wall and back.  The effect was an underwater effect––or one of heat waves in the road in front of you when driving through a desert.  The house was spectacular.  One large central room opened to the 30’ high ceiling.  To the right was an open kitchen which led to the right front patio, where the glass top dining room table and chairs were.  To the left were the guest bedroom and bath, which sported the only inner door in the house.  In front of us, two open stairways formed a V leading up to the office on the right and the master bedroom/bath on the left.  Both were bounded by just an open balcony railing overlooking the main living space.  Most walls were whitewashed adobe brick, but a few walls were kept unpainted.  The vent over the stove was covered with vivid yellow tile and the cement floors were painted an aged terracotta, blue or yellow, then waxed.  Rugs added warmth to the floors.  As we moved through the house, the image of the Virgin de Guadalupe was repeated over and over on glasses in the kitchen, in small shrines and in a tiled tray on the patio.  An autographed picture of Beaver and Wally Cleaver sat on the stand beside the desk.  To its left was a small shrine to the Rolling Stones.  Elsewhere in the house were pictures of the Swami Yogananda, a print of Remedios Varo, whose work we had earlier seen in Ziwok, a wall devoted to Bob Dylan (We had included all of Bob Dylan’s tapes in our limited cache of tapes brought along to Mexico.)  On the open clothes rod at the end of the master bathroom were sedate Hawaiian and batik shirts that could have been Bob’s.  On the shelves were shorts and loose pants that look like the ones packed in his bag back at the hotel.  When we saw a picture of Jim, the owner, he had long light hair, like Bob, and was of a similar stature and size. 

            I loved the house.  I looked at Bob.  He loved the house.  Prior to this we had looked at no fewer than 10 houses and apartments, and had only agreed about these last two.  We took the house.  Sadly, I called the metalsmith to break the bad news about not taking his apartment.  He was very disappointed, I could tell.  I promised to tell anyone I met about his place.

 

See Chapter 11 HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 9

8 Replies

Treading the Sidewalks of San Miguel

Find Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE
Chapter 4 HERE  Chapter 5  HERE  Chapter 6 HERE Chapter 7 HERE  Chapter 8 HERE.                                                                                         

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 9

 

            I was trying to write a letter home for our friends to circulate among themselves. I knew that many had already traveled to Mexico and so they would be most interested in the people we had met. Who were the people we had met in San Miguel?  I began to list them. The first was the woman who gave us her map, but who severely dealt with each child who tried to sell her a cloth doll or old woman who held out her hand for coins.  There was the man who explained to me that I must sign my name to the list of people waiting to see the insurance officer at Lloyd’s, then return at 1 to wait for her.  There was Yvonne, the receptionist at Lloyd’s who spoke flawless Spanish and equally flawless English.  When I asked her whether she was Mexican or North American, it turned out  that like me, she was born and raised in South Dakota. 

            The morning of our first day in San Miguel, we met Ernesto, the Mexican gentleman who told us he had 5,000 acres in Baja near Bahia de Concepcion , who split his life between Key West and San Miguel and who spent his life, it seemed, meeting people at the Biblioteca or in the Jardin. Most importantly, so far, he was the one who introduced us to the Posada de los Monjes.

            We met him at various times for an hour or so and during these times he brought a tray of small cut stones and asked us to choose one as a gift, then showed us an opal from the mine he said he has outside of town.  “I am not trying to sell you this,” he said, but I wondered.  “One day I will take you to the mine. I will show you.”

            Later, over margaritas and Coronas, he told us fantastic stories of the millionaire who had given over part of his hacienda for a school where Ernesto would teach lapidary to poor children, of the man who offered him full use of his yacht to use, charter or live in if he would just arrange for permits to berth it in Mexico and let him use it a few weeks a year.  But when he had approached a friend in government to ask him to expedite the permission to berth the yacht in Mexico, the friend had been disdainful.  “Are you a yachtsman? “ he asked.  “What do you know about boats?  You are a man of the city.  What do you want of a boat?”  So Ernesto had regretfully turned down his other friend’s offer.  As we walked down the street with Ernesto, he begged our pardon and crossed the street to talk to an old man.  When he returned to us, he told us that the old man had 7 ranchos and no sons.  He wanted to give one rancho to Ernesto. 

            “Every time I see him, he asks me if I will have one of his ranchos.” 

            “Why don’t you take it?” I asked him.

            “I am no rancher,” sighed Ernesto.  “Do you want a ranch?”

            “I am no rancher either,” I told him.  “I just got rid of a ranch.” 

            I started to explain to him that I was a rancher’s daughter who had inherited part of his ranch, but Ernesto was not the least interested in who I was or in my stories.  He wanted to tell me his. 

            He wanted to tell me about the time in Bahia de Concepcion when a young man came to him and asked to buy $1,000 worth of land.  Ernesto didn’t want to sell his land, so he asked an elderly friend, who had beach property adjoining his, if he wanted to sell the young man beach property. 

            “Have him choose his land,” said the old man.  So Ernesto took the young man to the beach and he chose a small piece of land. 

            “But I have only $l,000,” said the young man. 

            When they took the old man the money, he said, “This young man wants my land? “

            “Yes,” said Ernesto.

            “And he is a friend of yours?”

            “Yes,“ said Ernesto.

            “Then the land is a gift.  I do not want his money.”

            Then, as Ernesto told it, the young man spent the $1,000 to put up palapas and buy hammocks.  The people who came with boats stayed in the palapas while they fished and then another man started flying in fishermen to fish.  In two years, the young man owned a boat and an airplane and to this day was a wealthy man.  Every time he saw Ernesto, he stood on the table and shouted his praise and thanked him for contributing to his great wealth.

            Ernesto was full of such stories.  He had inherited a mansion from his Mother in New Orleans, but he hated New Orleans. He once had owned 15,000 beach front acres in Baja, near Mulege, but the government had nationalized all but 5,000 acres, which he still owned.  Later, he admitted he had given the land to his daughter and ex-wife.

            “All of it,” he told us, making outward brushing movements with his hands. 

            Ernesto was a pilot, a lapidarist, an opal mine owner.  He brought us a “Town and Country” magazine which sported an article on the homes of Canadian expatriate artists  in San Miguel.  The woman artist with the horses and the huge house and the art collection was his friend, he said.

            Once he was married, but his wife just wanted him as a chauffeur, he told us.  And he cooked for her.  He did all the cooking.  Finally, when she became an alcoholic, he divorced her.  Then he had a girlfriend who dreamed of driving across Canada. 

            “Take me to Canada,” she said to Ernesto.

            “And I almost did,” said Ernesto.  “Then I thought, I had one wife who wanted me to drive her.  I don’t want to drive anymore.”  So he said no and sold the car.

            “Do you still have the same girlfriend?” I asked.

            “No,” huffed Ernesto, making the same brush-away movements with his hands.

            In two days he would take us to the hacienda, he said, and introduce us to his patron, who had given over a part of the hacienda for an art school for the poor.  He had said that we might rent a room in the hacienda, said Ernesto, for not very much.  For $18 a night, he said.  We would take Dirk with us. 

            Dirk was the man with the house that Ernesto wanted us to see.  He had had open heart surgery just two months before, and we feared for his health as he rushed around, moving as fast as he talked.  Dirk had as many stories as Ernesto.  At eighty, he had a Mexican wife who appeared to be in her forties.  He had children in their fifties and a stepson in high school in Miami. Like Ernesto, he was a pilot and a lapidarist.  He rushed to our hotel to pick us up to come see his house.  He parked a block away and ran uphill to get us, then back down to the car.  Panting, he told us about the points of interest along the way as we circumnavigated the roads around the city.  That hotel belonged to Cantinflas, he told us.  This house on 15 acres belonged to a rich Swiss couple.  See how their property was like a park?  This studio was of a Canadian painter.  See how large her studio was?  Behind that wall was a swimming pool and tennis court.  Here was the shortcut to Gigante, the huge shopping mall.  Here was his route to the bus.  We hurried into the house for a quick run-through before rushing back to town to pick up his wife.  He had gotten the times wrong.  He should have told us he would pick us up at 7:15 instead of 6:15. Then he could have picked up his wife on the way.  She insisted on working to give meaning to her life.  He should have put his foot down because it was really a bother to take her and pick her up, but it made her happy.  She was a big town girl.  To her, San Miguel was a village. 

            He rushed us into his house, through the rooms.  This computer he would take with him to Miami, but we could use the computer table.  This cat came with the house, but must stay outside as it was not declawed.  It ate one scoop of dry cat food in the morning and one at seven at night.  He always placed the food here, on this bench.  But the cat stayed always outside.  This was their patio.  Here were the orchids he told us about.  They had a gardener, which we might keep for $4 a week, but they had fired the maid.  His wife was Mexican, and liked to do things herself. I rather liked the house, but Bob told me privately that he found it too small. We decided, however, to tell this to Ernesto instead of Dirk, hoping to let him down easier as he seemed to have such hopes that we would like it.

            Then we rushed back to the car and back to town.  This was the mirador  (scenic overlook) he said, but we didn’t stop.  This was the other mirador, he said, a few minutes later.  As we sped by, I caught a glimpse of a beautiful panoramic view of the city.  Again, he grew short of breath and I asked if this was healthy for him to rush so much.  “Oh, that was eighteen months ago,” he said.  “I’m all right, now.”  Earlier, he had shown me his identification card, for some reason, but covered his picture with his thumb.  “The picture was taken right after my surgery.” he said.  “I looked awful.”  “I’ve lost 14 kilos since the surgery, but I’ve gained some of it back again.” 

            We met Susan, a Colorado girl with a Texas accent.  The married mother of three small children, she ran an internet exchange and mailbox business as well as a real estate business on the side.  She told us of the rich German woman who had set up a maternity hospital in a poor section of San Miguel––of how she was now so famous that her story was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

            When I asked Susan about the fantastic sculptures we had seen along the road between El Paso and San Miguel, she told us that the government had built them.  She was disapproving.  There were so many in poverty, and they built sculpture.  It made me regret my shallowness in delighting at their beauty, yet I couldn’t help it.  I loved the beauty of Mexico and sought it out while people who were undoubtedly my betters dealt with the pregnant mothers and worried about the poor.

            Did art serve a purpose in the world?  Bob thought so, and I did, too, in the abstract.  But did art feed the soul enough to atone for the hunger of the poor?  Philosophers more able than I had dealt with the matter, but I knew I would have to deal with it on a more personal level in order to live with myself.  Once all of this business of moving was over, I would need to consider this.

Find Chapter 10 HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 8

11 Replies

We passed under this arch to get from the Plaza Principal to our hotel.

ind Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE  Chapter 4 HERE  Chapter 5  HERE  Chapter 6 HERE Chapter 7 HERE

 

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 8

          Today we met several interesting people and reconnected with the young woman we’d met our first morning in the bank.  All of these connections led to houses to look at. Clello, the woman who owned the shop where we posted an ad for a house, sent us first to look at an apartment, which was nice but much too small.  Then she sent us to a house.  Its entrance proved to be too low for the van, but she assured us we could park at her sister’s hotel a half block away.  We went to the hotel and found what the fee would be, then ambled through the artisan’s market and the food market, which were a stone’s throw from the house we considered renting.
            It was interesting that all of the homes of foreigners seem to be decorated in the best colonial or traditional Mexican style with massive furniture and folk art, whereas the Mexican owned houses and apartments were furnished with western furniture.  Having looked at pictures in the windows of several (closed) real estate offices, we found this house plain in comparison with the pictures of houses that resembled movie sets with lush gardens, art, rugs and furniture.  Today Bob was off to immigration and I was to meet Ernesto to look at still another house.  Then I would make more calls and visit hopefully open real estate offices, renew our car insurance, collect our e-mail, send e-mail.  Bob thought we could get out of our present hotel (which in the states would have been called a motel) by tonight, but I didn’t think so.  He also thought he was going to meet me back there at noon, but I thought he was naive about the length of lines he would encounter at immigration.
            The night before, we had eaten at Ziwok, a delightful restaurant operated by Juan Pablo, a half Mexican/Spanish, half Swedish man with a passion for Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo.  The front room of his perfectly decorated cafe was devoted to Frida––her self-portraits, photographs and a massive shrine assembled in a niche along one wall.  Basket chandeliers and neatly potted plants accented  the walls, which were beautifully faux painted in light and dark terracotta.  Tablecloths, cloth napkins and napkin rings were all in yellow and green.  The back room was a dark green and was totally devoted to the work of Remedios Varo, a French surrealist who moved to Mexico during the second world war.  Frida, who thought one female surrealist was enough in Mexico, saw her as a rival and hated her,  Juan Pablo told us.  Along with Varo’s exquisite bizarre prints he had displayed his own work: elaborate constructions of parts of animal skeletons, plants, sea life, seeds––any natural object he could find––which he had assembled into fantasy animals and covered with sand cemented in place with cyanoacrylate glue.  The effect was surreal, but although the assemblage animals seemed to come out of a nightmare  (a winged frog, a blowfish with snout, legs and an armadillo tail) they were curiously believable, thanks to his meticulous craftsmanship.
            After a close inspection of the art in both rooms, we went back to our table and watched him in his small open kitchen, cooking our meal in four woks.  Bob had tempura shrimp and vegetables, I had vegetables and rice.  Our plates arrived, along with a cruet of mango sauce and another of ginger.  The food was as different and delicious as the decor.  Prior to leaving, we had spent a half hour or so poring over his book of the work of Remedios Varo and listened to the story of first her life, then his. Every detail here was perfect and immaculate, down to the decoupaged menus and the hand-fashioned box of matches he gave me as we left.
            This night at Ziwok was another flower plucked from the bouquet of San Miguel.  We had found a new favorite restaurant––our most recent favorite having been the outside terrace where we had breakfasted that morning on frittata of eggs, potato and bacon with black bean sauce, fresh baked rolls with butter and jam or a delicious white cheese, pepper and avocado sauce in oil.  Every restaurant  we had  been to here we had wanted to go back to, but there was always a new one to try and we always liked it better than the last.  I had been amazed that in our hour in the restaurant, we were the only customers, but someone had told us that in San Miguel, there were 7,000 restaurant seats and on any given night, an average of 500 diners to fill them.  With odds like this, the restaurant market was a competitive one.  We didn’t think we would find one we liked better than Ziwok, but part of the pleasure was variety, so we would try others on our list before returning.  As we left, a young couple and child made their way to the back room.  “More customers,” I said.  “No, they are my friends,” he said.  “She plays the accordion in Mama Mia’s.”  It was another restaurant that would come to be a favorite.
            Apartment hunting continued to fill our days.  Meanwhile, we were piling up hotel bills at the rate of $100 every two days.  We began to think we might be ahead just getting a $1000 apartment.  At this rate, our hotel bills would mount up to the difference, anyway.  A few days before, we had run into Lisa, our former acquaintance from the bank, while checking out a bulletin board in a small cafe.  She was sitting with the owner of the cafe.
            “Wine?”  he urged, “Something to eat?”  When we said no, we had just eaten, he insisted, “It’s free.”  A large table in the back room was spread with food.  People moved around it, filling their plates.  A few more people moved around the small room, examining paintings on the wall.
            “It’s an opening.  See the woman with the large flower in her hair?  She is the painter.”
            When he urged wine on us once more, I asked for white and we sat down to talk.  Bob, impatient to read the bulletin board and be on to apartment hunting, seemed a bit exasperated.  At this rate we would never find an apartment, he insisted, but in the end, this is how we found one.  Lisa’s friend Pancho, the owner of the bar attached to the gallery, insisted that we must see Susan, the woman who ran a mail agency and internet service, at the front of the cafe and gallery.  “She knows many good apartments.  She knows everyone,” he told us. We sat and talked for a short time while I finished my wine.  The waiter urged more wine on Lisa.  “He’s trying to get me drunk so I’ll be a bad girl,” she laughed.
            The next day, we called Susan and made an appointment to meet her later in the day.  She took us in her car to see the house of a friend, but the inhabitant did not answer the door.  Then we went on to see a house which she assured us was a steal at $85,000.  Although we were not in the market to buy a house, Bob was sold by the huge studio.  I didn’t like the location or the house.  The owner had built it in an area quite far from town––an area chosen because it was far from the foreign enclave, where people might find objection to the large jewelry production studio which was attached.  Here, 15 employees made jewelry which she wholesaled in the States.  Because she had built her house in a poorer neighborhood, she had no problem finding workers who could actually walk to her studio to work for four dollars a day.  As we went into her patio, a huge Doberman rushed up.  All of the doors and windows were locked, even though the house was surrounded by a tall wall.  I didn’t think I would like to live in a house this luxurious in comparison with the neighborhood around it.  If real estate was location, location, location, then this seemed to be a poor choice for real estate investment.  Susan assured us that in 5 years this house will have tripled in value, but the spirit of the house seemed wrong to me.
            Later in the day, we went to see the house of Dirk, the man I’d met through Ernesto.  He had plans to spend a year in the States, and wanted to rent us his house.  It was in an enclave of extremely large and expensive homes, but it was equally as far out from the center.  I liked the house, which was esthetically more pleasant than the last house, with arched brick ceilings and tile more to my taste.  It was surrounded by patios and plants and had a large rooftop patio where Bob could work, but now that he had seen the house with the large studio, nothing could rival it.  He found this house too small.
            When we had moved to Central California from L.A. fourteen years ago, it had taken us a year of driving back and forth each weekend to find the right house;  but we had neither the time nor the energy to do so now.  The double task of finding a place to live for a month and a place to return to for a year was wearing us down.  I just wanted to try to get into the swing of life here––to see what it would be like to live and work in San Miguel.  But all we were doing was business–– like at home.  Visas, permits, money changing, setting up accounts, looking for houses, finding internet servers, finding personal mailboxes––these details ate up our days.  Bob had predicted that the annoying minutiae of dealing with the details of living would follow us here, and he was right, but I hoped that after this interim period we could settle into a simpler life.

See Chapter 9 HERE.

 

Innocents in Mexico: Chapter 6: A Rude Awakening and a Savior

6 Replies

 

The Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel

Find Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE  Chapter 4 HERE  Chapter 5  HERE.

Chapter 6: A Rude Awakening and a Savior

            The next morning, we were awakened by the tooting of a horn outside our window.  I opened the door and looked out.  Resolutely and with a fine sense of rhythm, a woman was honking her horn for someone in the room next to us.  Undaunted by my stares, she continued to honk.  Bob slept on as I fastened Bearcat’s leash and attempted to take him for a walk.  I had forgotten that walks are a nighttime thing for cats––the later the better.  He resisted and I gave in.  By eleven, we were off to find a bank, a real estate agent and a really good map of San Miguel.  Unfortunately, all of these items proved to be easier to find than was a parking spot.  As we traversed still another circuitous route trying to find a parking space, Bob questioned whether we wanted to rent an apartment here, even for a week or a month.  He cursed the tiny cobblestone streets, the lack of signs.  The jardin area seemed to be all there was to San Miguel, he complained, and there wasn’t much to it.  “Did you like Oaxaca for the first few days we were there?” I asked. “Or Bali?” He admitted that he hadn’t, yet he had ended up wanting to live both places after a week or so of getting to know them.

Bob finally left me off at the tourist office, promising to join me there.  After 15 minutes, when he still hadn’t appeared, I moved off to a bench in the park, where I could sit in the shade while keeping an eye peeled on the door of the tourist agency.  On the bench sat an American woman who shared her experiences of living in both San Miguel and Guanajuato.  Fresh from a three-month course in Spanish, she chatted with the senor who sat down on my right.  Did he live in San Miguel?  Did he prefer it over Guanajuato?  Why?  Because it was warmer in San Miguel.  Because there was more to do.  I was thrilled that I understood most of what they were saying.

Bob joined us, still not too excited to be sitting on a park bench in such a difficult town.  We went to the bank.  Our time to pay for our tourist visas had nearly run out.  The custom at the El Paso crossing seemed to be to go to any bank in Mexico to pay for the visa which was issued by immigration in Juarez.  Since we had never managed to get to any banks while they were open for the three days it took us to drive to San Miguel, it was a pressing need for us to pay the fee and thereby amend our status as illegal aliens.  Unfortunately, when Bob had presented his visa to apply for the car permit at the customshouse south of Juarez, the woman had detached the carbon copy of his visa application and now, without it, the bank could not accept payment.  But the carbon copy was at the customs office south of Juarez, I argued, to no avail.  A Xerox copy would not do.  I paid for my visa, whose papers were intact, and went back to the waiting area where customers waited for the numbers on their pop-out tags to be called, like customers at a bakery or ice cream store.  Bob was deep in conversation with Lisa, a tanned woman who gave him advice on rental houses, classes and the arts community.  As her number was called, we moved to the front of the bank and I told him the bad news.  In front of the bank was another tanned American lady in straw brimmed hat and a stylish tan linen dress.“No,” she said firmly to the small girl who proffered a brightly dressed cloth doll for sale.

Bob and I were trying to figure out the route to Gigante––a huge market situated somewhere off our limited tourist map.  The bank manager had insisted that we must go to immigration and that this was where it was––in an office over Gigante.  A pelting monsoon rain had descended while we were in the bank and we stood under a broad overhang, waiting for it to calm down.  “Do you live in San Miguel?” I asked the stylish lady.  Yes, she did, and yes, she knew the way to Gigante.  To illustrate, she pulled out a vastly superior map to ours, then told us where the biblioteca was where we could purchase both this map and the definitive guide to San Miguel.  Her name was Kim, she was from Alameda, just an hour and a half from our California home, and she now lived in San Miguel.  “Well, here, have my map,” she said, after a few minutes of talking.  When I protested, she insisted.  When I offered to pay, she refused.  It was her gift.  She handed us a card, then moved off into the now abating rain.

At the Biblioteca, we bought books and guides and maps and cards and chatted to the man running the gift shop––another expatriate American who gave advice on apartments, cars (don’t keep them) concerts (go to them) and all of the glories of San Miguel.  Although the library itself was closed, its restaurant had been recommended to us by Kim, and we ate a nice lunch while eavesdropping on the other expatriate Americans who sat at the tables around us.  Small children skipped into the restaurant from the library singing “Happy Birthday to you” in Spanish-inflected English.  Someone shushed them, to no avail, and they ran out giggling loudly.        Outside the door of the restaurant, in the hall to the library, was a pay phone, where I stood trying to figure out the intricacies of a phone with a card slot and four buttons with indecipherable pictographs.  I finally called the number given on the first rental ad on my list.  The woman spoke English but didn’t know if she wanted an artist renting her house, which was immaculate, she said.  Maybe he could paint in the garage.  Would he spill paint on the floor?  A meticulous house sounded as uninviting as the $1,000 rent, so I explained we were perhaps not the right renters for her.  As I hung up the phone and prepared to make my next call, I saw a man sitting very near by with a phone card in his hand.  Was he waiting to make a call?  Yes.  Would he like to go in front of me?  He protested that he could wait, but when I said I was going to make a number of calls, he agreed that he’d like to make just one fast one.

He in fact made one very long call.  I stood shamelessly near, trying to encourage him to hurry, but he chatted on.  He was talking to a man that his friend Richard had told him he must meet.  Yes, he would meet him in the library on Monday.  He had a picture of him, so he would recognize him.  This phone call came to have all the ear markings of a blind date.  After five or ten minutes, he ambled his call to a close and handed over the phone, then stood talking to Bob, as unabashedly listening to my call as I had his.  “Are you looking for a house to rent?” he asked Bob.  He knew of a house, which he seemed to be describing to Bob as I tried out my laughable Spanish on yet another homeowner.

“Are they speaking Spanish?” He asked, as he heard my garbled string of Spanish tape phrases.

“Yes,” I admitted. “Do you speak Spanish?”

He did, and offered to interpret.  I happily handed over the phone.

Toward the end of the phone call, my telephone card ran out and he was cut off.  When I tried to call back with another card, he discouraged me.  “You don’t want to live there,” he said.  “It’s at the end of a very dusty road.  It’s too far from the center.  What you need to do is find a room near the center so you can park your car and answer all the ads in the newspapers for a week to find the right house.“

He told us his name, which was Ernesto.  He told us about the art school where he taught art to poor kids.  He told us about art happenings and poetry happenings and music.  He told us of a different hotel where we should stay and of a house nearby that was coming up to rent.  In the end, he took us himself to the Posada de los Monjes, an historic  hotel that was a converted convent, and translated with the front desk, insisting on the room with the best view.  As we moved through the front of the building through wooden doors hundreds of years old, the full glory of four floors of terraced stone opening onto a cobbled courtyard where we could park our van was revealed.  Broad terraces with crenelated walls jutted out from some of the rooms and wide outside corridors joined them.

We climbed higher and higher until we came to the room chosen for us––a bit small but with a beautiful tiled bathroom with stone shower.  Coming out of the room, we moved out to the private patio bigger than the room.  Below us stretched the entire panorama of San Miguel.  Breathtaking.  The church, the tile roofs, the jagged skyline and yellow hills.  The rooftop gardens and trees jutting up from courtyards.  We were so high that little rose higher above us than our own roof.  We had a 300-degree view and all of it was beautiful.  Never mind the steps.  We could have all of this for barely more than our motel room which was nice and roomy but viewless and near traffic noise.

Do you want to see the room with two beds, asked Ernesto?  It’s bigger, but also $10 more a night.  We’d see it, we said, but the cheaper room would probably do.  I must admit, I dreaded the confinement of the smaller room, but knew we’d probably not spend much time there anyway, and could just spend that time on the most glorious patio on earth.  But, we went to see the room, which was bigger, with its own living room, better views from the room itself, but no patio.  Or at least we thought so until we ascended the stairs outside the room to the patio on top of the room that had even a better view than the room before it––this one a full 360-degrees!

The view was well worth the extra ten dollars a night.  In ten years, we would not miss the money, but we’d never forget the view.  We took the room. We would move in the next day! Ernesto took us to the art institute––not his, but the one near the center.  In the end, he offered Bob a job at his art school.  No salary, but a job just the same.  He could use the facilities free in return for any amount of time he wanted to teach.  Then, meeting a friend he knew on the street, he faded back into the life of San Miguel.  He had made a date with Bob to meet Monday to see about showing us the house that his friend had just built.

The importance of meeting Ernesto?  Bob had gone from wanting to move on to wanting to rent a house in just hours.

“How do you like that?” he said.  “In San Miguel less than 24 hours and I’ve already been offered a job teaching art.”

Right then and there, we went to Mailboxes Etc. and rented a mailbox for three months.  The proprietor of this establishment introduced herself as Annie and she told us the intricacies of sending mail and packages into and out of Mexico.  What to do.  What not to do.  How to send tax papers, magazines, bills, packages.  Another stranger popping up to solve our severest problems.  Like magic.

That night, we peeked into courtyard after courtyard looking for the right restaurant.  Bob, who had formerly hated Mexican food, picked a Mexican restaurant, pronounced his meal delicious  and paid the musician to serenade us with a rendition of “Rancho Grande” that rivaled any Oaxacan version we’d ever heard.

“The thing about San Miguel,” he explained, “is that a good deal of it is hidden.  You don’t see it by casual observation.  You have to look farther,”  That night he stayed up hours later than usual, poring over guide books and maps.  Bearcat curled on my bed as I sat at my laptop.

“Tomorrow you get to go to your new home,” Bob told him.  “You get to go from being an under-bed cat to a roof cat.”

See Chapter 7 HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 5: Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Finally, San Miguel!!!!!

17 Replies

Street Scene, Guanajuato

Find Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE  Chapter 4 HERE

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 5: Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Finally, San Miguel!!!!

            The next morning, a few more hours of driving through the desert brought us to Zacatecas.  There everything began to look more prosperous, with trees in evidence and large trucks bringing more to plant, their roots balled in white canvas.  Square adobe houses rose up in diagonal terraces, some painted bright basic colors.  Here, as in other towns we’d passed, bright and huge modern sculptures sprouted out of cement plazas with lights installed at the base for night viewing.  Hundreds of black plastic water reservoirs on the tops of houses appeared to be some new Christo installation.  New buildings in all stages of completion were everywhere.  There was a sense of style here, but no imitation of any North American, Italian, Spanish or any other style.  It was a style all their own––clean, adventurous, purely modern Mexico.  We were in too much of a hurry to stop to see who was responsible for any of the large sculptures.  Perhaps on our next trip.
            Between Zacatecas and Aguascalientes, the desert gave way to grasslands and crops.  Long white irrigation tubes paralleled the highway.  We made out corn, grapes, some white-flowered crops–– onions, garlic, or perhaps just flowers.  We passed a truck fluffy with kale.
            In Aguascalientes, we seemed to drive in circles following the “Mexico” signs.  When they gave out, we drove on in what seemed to be a logical direction.  A taxi driver told us to turn left and we again seemed to be going in a circle before finding the signs.  They again deserted us, but after a half hour or so of driving hopefully toward Leon, we again found the signs and made our way out of Aguascalientes past yet another colossal orange geometric sculpture.
            The country once more turned to sand, this time interspersed with low trees and some crops.  In the distance, a colossal black bull stood silhouetted against the clouds.  Billboard or sculpture?  To our left, the fields were verdant green, to our right, pale tan, as though it were a different season on each side of the road.  We passed the bull.  It was a billboard advertising Magno Osborne in vivid orange and white letters.  We passed a Green Angel truck––about the fifth one we’d seen since entering Mexico.  A sort of governmental AAA, they patrolled the roads to help vehicles in distress.  You paid for the gas, tires or parts, but not the repairs.  A sign told us we were 445 miles from Mexico City––a place we had no plans to ever drive to.
            Nearing Leon, everything became more prosperous.  Guardrails and trees lined the toll road.  Corrugated metal sheds replaced the adobe corrals, and cement fenceposts stretched for miles along the road, strung together by three neatly spaced strands of barbed wire.  Red and white antennas rose like stelae high into the sky.  High line wires, like modern installation sculpture, passed electricity along fourteen thick cables strung high up in the sky on the most modern of poles.  More large factories appeared, as did numerous monstrous billboards.  A man and two small girls in bright handwoven skirts waited in the median to cross the southbound two lanes which were solid with cars.  Green fields stood out against the fall colors predominant on the landscape, though it was only May.
            On the road through Silao, we somehow got diverted through the town.  Streets became narrower and narrower, signs vanished, and we went in circles, trying to avoid dead ends.  Finally, I resorted to asking directions from the window of our car.
            “Donde Esta Guanajuato?” I asked, then failed to understand any of the directions given by men on street corners.  Finally, a patient man with his family in the car motioned for us to follow him and led us out of town onto the Guanajuato road. “Muchas Gracias!” I repeated twice as we pulled up beside him in the double lane.  What was lacking in road sign efficiency was made up for by the extreme courtesy of the citizens of Mexico.
            We passed a huge GM plant surrounded by acres of cars and trucks ready to head north.  The plant was the size of a shopping mall––vivid yellow and blue.  We passed jacaranda trees, palms, cypress and willow.  For the first time, I noticed eucalyptus.  There was a lushness here not experienced farther north, where vegetation was of the desert variety.  We passed a large metal sculpture––the facial outlines of a man who resembled Groucho Marx, with leaves for eyebrows.
            Reluctantly, we drove through Guanajuato without stopping.  Bright blue and orange houses climbed the hills.  By the roadside, vendors sold coconuts with holes chopped in their tops and a lime plugging the opening. The country was more interesting, with mesas and small jagged mountains jutting up against the skyline.  Stone, brick and adobe casas sprinkled the landscape.  They were larger than the houses farther north, with distance between them.  There were pigs in the road, then cattle.  Horses were tethered very close to the road, eating the grass growing out of the side of the blacktop.  We passed a donkey lying dead, half on the road, half off.  Her colt stood by her, trying to nudge her over to nurse.
            Our van climbed up the road to San Miguel de Allende, bringing us  to our final destination in plenty of time to hit the oficina de turismo , which our guide book assured us stayed open until seven.  With only the vague and limited map in our Berkeley Budget Travel Guide, however, we got hopelessly lost in the winding, hilly, cobblestone streets.  Time and time again we wound into areas that had become too narrow, steep or circuitous for our Dodge Van.  Bob got frustrated and said he was glad we hadn’t rented out our house in Boulder Creek yet.  He was already sick of San Miguel.
            We finally parked on a narrow street on a very high hill and walked down to what we hoped was the Plaza Principal.  The tourist office did not seem to be where they had said it would be on the map, and we wandered aimlessly, guide book in hand.  By the time we finally found it, it was closed.  Seasoned residents observed us kindly, but with some humor, I think.  Finally, we found a travel agent and threw ourselves on her mercy.  She suggested a motel which was, she said, moderate in price, where we could park our car––an oddity in this city of narrow, winding cobblestone alleys.  An hour later, having circled the whole town twice, small street by small street, I again threw myself on the mercy of a man behind the counter of a small shop, and he and his wife drew me a map.  “Estoy perdida,” (I am lost) I explained, to their complete delight.  Our Spanish tapes had finally paid off.
            With a good deal of more unnecessary winding, we found the hotel, which turned out to cost $98 a night.  Since we considered this amount to be more than moderate, we started checking out hotels at random.  The next, which appeared modest to us, was $109 a night.
            When I asked his advice, the manager of the $109 hotel got on the phone and located a motel with parking space for $38 a night.  An hour or so later, after much searching, we found it more or less where he had promised it would be.  It was lovely, with fireplace, tiled bath, TV, bottled water––all the amenities.  We unloaded our luggage and installed Bearcat under yet another strange bed.
            Finding the Plaza Principal again proved to be another hair-raising experience, as we wound higher and higher on smaller and smaller roads––finally ending up at a castle-like casa with barely enough room to turn around in a space bounded by the castle walls on one side, a sheer drop-off on the other.  We finally found the plaza, and an Italian restaurant with Peruvian music.  Bob was happy.  When we returned to our room, Bear was eventually coerced out from under the bed with tinned salmon and was happy once we’d turned out the lights and flipped on the tube.  “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds” was on in English with Spanish subtitles––a movie I’d been wanting to see again complete with Spanish lessons.  Now I was happy, too.

Find Chapter 6 HERE.

And… for FOWC prompt of destination!!!

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 4: On the Road to Rio Grande

17 Replies

Find Chapter 1 HERE  Chapter 2 HERE   Chapter 3 HERE


Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 4: On the Road to Rio Grande

        The next morning, we were finally on the road after driving back into central Chihuahua to cash dollars for pesos and to gas up and buy ice.  It was easier than yesterday, in rush hour traffic.  A night’s rest later, we were finally visaed, permitted, pesoed, petroled, iced up  and on the road to San Miguel.
        We drove hundreds of kilometers through desert scrub. Men with scarves tied over their hats to shield them from the relentless sun waved orange flags to slow us down as they oiled the other side of the toll road.  It was almost as expensive to drive here as in Europe, with all the frequent tolls.  On the second day of driving, we spent more on tolls than we had on our room the night before.  Now and then I would see some interesting sight I would have loved to have investigated, but Bob preferred to travel fast and  promised trips to the Copper Canyon and other off-road excursions on some future trip.  It had been such an ordeal getting away for this expedition that I decided not to make side trips yet another obstacle keeping us from San Miguel de Allende.  This time, we would do it his way, and perhaps the next time, too, but one day I would see Copper Canyon.
        After being stopped twice by the policia federal, Bob finally believed that he had to slow down in areas where slow speeds were posted.  In both cases, the officers spoke no English and our attempts at Spanish out of a dictionary encouraged them to give up.  The first policia saved face by escorting us back to the toll road he insisted we should take, although I was fairly sure that the camino libre (free road) led to the same place. The second time we were stopped, it was by policemen in two separate police cars going in the opposite direction, who first waved  us down  and then  turned in the road to follow us and wave us over.  Bob told me to get out the bribes which we had been told were the best way to deal with the police in a system where the collecting of the mordida  was taken into account when figuring the salary of policemen,  but in both cases of dealing with la policia  we were too inept to know how to offer them and they eventually gave up gracefully, pointing us once again in the direction of the correct road.  (We have since changed our minds about the offering of mordidas, but at the time we were innocents in Mexico, just following the advice of friends.)
        Hours later, we were on the free road which was two-way, bumpy and under construction. For the past 20 kilometers, we had been driving through deeply-rutted dirt while oncoming traffic maneuvered over a narrow strip of raised but even tarmac.  Sandwiched between 18 wheelers, our van slowed to a speed where I could actually make out the leaf patterns on shrubs and low trees.  I thought I made out manzanita, mimosa and perhaps a variety of pinion.  One delicate poppy-like flower appeared to be cotton. 
            The brilliant red sand on either side of the road drifted in places into small dunes. It was densely covered with rabbit brush and the other trees I thought I’d identified.  In the distance, the sky was dark and I made out three separate funnel clouds, all of which seem to be moving toward us. I watched the funnels uneasily, remembering the last time I saw such a sight.  Eventually, they united and broadened and seemed to break their cord with the higher heavens, but they continued to blow toward us.  At our slow pace, I wondered if they would catch us.  Then another funnel cloud––taller and thinner––formed farther ahead of us and to the right.  I forgot to watch it, concentrating on a more immediate danger as Bob got competitive with the bus trying to pass us and swung out in front of the semi we had been following.  I closed my eyes, then returned to the desert plant guide, knowing that all of the backseat driving comments I’d made earlier had done no more good than this one would have.  When I thought to look back to where the funnel had been, it had dispersed.  We had passed the semi, the bus had passed us, and the blacktop surface had been regained. 
        When we got to the next town, dozens of speed bumps did what neither a nagging wife nor la policia could do, and Bob proceeded on for a while at the correct speed limit through town, in search of a casa de cambio. Gas and tolls had eaten up the entire $150 I had cashed into pesos that morning.  It may have been cheap to retire in Mexico, but it sure wasn’t cheap to drive there!
        Here and there along our route, huge factories or assembly plants lined the road, finished or in stages of completion––Wrangler, Coca-Cola, car plants.  Now and then a huge modern sculpture dwarfed us, but we didn’t stop to read the inscription.  Next to these gigantic modern buildings were the near ruins of lines of conjoined adobe motel-like dwellings.  Then, across the street, were lines of similar dwellings, but brand new and two-storied in a faux Tyrolean half-timbered style most bizarre in this setting.
        KFC, Burger King and Dairy Queen competed with but did not in any way outnumber the burrito and tamale carts which stood beside the road.  In one small town, men in white shirts stood in the road and flagged us down, then motioned us over.  We noticed before actually leaving the road that they were trying to lure us into a lot filled with cart vendors.  We were hurrying to try to cash dollars for pesos, and we drove on without sampling their wares.          
        This deep into Mexico, I could no longer remember what I expected it to be like. It was surprising to me that not once in over 1,000 miles did we pass any car with North Americans in it.  Nor did we encounter any Americans or other foreigners in any of the towns we passed through.  Few people spoke English, even in banks, but in spite of this, no one looked upon us as an oddity.  We just were.  Like the funnel clouds and the circling white plastic bag in the middle of the street, we passed through but affected them little.  This was exactly the way I wanted it to be, now that I thought about it.  It was what I was looking for––some place that was purely itself, different from what I knew.  I longed again to be a stranger and to have the unexpected around every corner. 
        The terrain in the northwestern region I found to be not so different from the Mohave:  rabbit brush, mesquite, willows, cholla, prickly pear and willow trees.  But unlike the litter-conscious United States and because the dumps tended to be located near the main road, here there was lots of refuse outside every town.  As we drew near each dumping ground, thousands of plastic bags snagged on every fence, shrub and stone, littering the desert like some exotic flower display. Everywhere, huge chunks of concrete lay piled alongside the road––destroyed buildings or landfill––who knew?
        Frequent signs warned of livestock in the roads; and occasionally, livestock actually did appear there, as if to validate the signs.  As we drove farther south, there were fewer signs but more livestock on the roads––even the broadest and fanciest toll road between Aguascalientes and Leon.  On this road, for the first time, the four-lane divided highways came complete with median boundaries, curbs, gutters, shoulders, and a woman who hurried to herd her goats off the left-hand lane of the road as semis, cars and pickups whizzed by. 
        Our last toll having wiped us out of pesos, We drove into Rio Grande to find a casa de cambio. Since a parking place seemed to be an impossibility, Bob let me off in the crowded streets, promising to try to find me again.  When I came out of the cubicle, the sidewalks were crowded and a small parade was making its way down the street.  A policeman stopped traffic in all directions as high-school-aged students waved flags from cars.  They seemed to be celebrating some sports victory, or an election.  Banners on cars announced names.  On one car, a young girl rode on the hood, an older woman running out to position a folded blanket under her.  As she moved to adjust it, the girl cringed, as though her legs crossed out to the side of her were sore, or burned or maybe just cramped.  She wore a shiny halter and tight metallic spandex bell bottoms––hardly the clothes of a homecoming queen.  Other teenagers threw candy from car windows and one piece sailed right toward me.  I picked it up, and it seemed to me that it was a sign, welcoming me to Mexico.  It was Tomy’s––my favorite Mexican hard candy.  In ten minutes or so, the parade had passed and in ten more I spotted the tall rack on top of our van coming toward me in the line of cars making its way down the street.
        We drove on to the outskirts of Rio Grande, where we found a motel nicer and cheaper than the one the night before.  This night it was monsoon rains rather than windstorms that greeted us, settling the dust and raising the fresh smell of wet earth.  We had rejected our first room in favor of one where we could park next to the window of our room.  Once we got in bed, we could see why they had tried to put us in the room toward the back.  All night long, the huge trucks whizzed by twenty feet from our open window.  Nearer at hand was the sound of Bearcat beginning his frenzied cat box scratchings.  Half way through the night, I got up and searched through my bag to find ear plugs, which I was sure I’d packed.  I finally found them. 
        Hours later, I awoke to the glare of lights switched on by Bob, who stood at the window inspecting our van.  I glanced at my watch.  4 am.  Even through earplugs, I could hear that the car alarm was going off, so I slipped on jeans under my nightshirt and went out with Bob to see what was going on.  The boy in the office was coming out to investigate, but all was well.  I switched off the alarm.
        Feeling brave, Bearcat left the room as we did, stepping out into the rain-freshened cool night air with his ears and tail up, his nose twitching inquisitively.  I fastened his leash to the ring on his halter and we went for a stroll.  We walked for some time in the direction he wanted to go, at the speed he wanted to go, but I censored his movements when he jumped to the top of a small wall and tugged on the leash to jump over.  Taking him in my arms, I carried him back to bed.  This time, I put the litter box in the shower before inserting my ear plugs, and so both Bob and I got a few more hours of sleep. 

 

Judy’s Note: It’s maddening that I know I have photos of this entire trip and our period in San Miguel. I’ve been through three big boxes of letters and photos and memorabilia looking for them, to no avail. I’m afraid they are on some obsolete computer or media storage disk or tape or electronic device and that I’ll never be able to retrieve them. The result is that I will probably eventually run out of solutions for showing a photo with each chapter. 

Chapter 5 is HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 3: Night 1 in Mexico: Chihuahua

15 Replies

Find Chapter 1 HERE and Chapter 2 HERE

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 3: Night 1 in Mexico: Chihuahua

           Heading out of Chihuahua in the twilight, a bit worried about where to safely park for the night, we suddenly saw a dark curtain in front of us.  It was dust being raised from gale-force winds blowing perpendicular to the road, almost obscuring sight and making me worry for the duffel bags full of art supplies on the roof.  We’d already lost Bob’s big stretched canvas somewhere in the Mohave Desert, and replacing all those oil paints in Mexico would be expensive, I imagined.  The wind got fiercer and the sky got darker.  At one intersection, a small dog ran circles, chasing scurrying plastic bags.  The oncoming traffic was stopped for the light, as we were, and few cars were passing through the intersection.  He executed his ballet oblivious to the danger.  A begging couple stood as their two small daughters crouched on the median strip, watching the dog with no apparent concern.  Then the lights changed and we drove carefully past the still circling dog, off into the rushing gray maelstrom.
             Finally, on the outskirts of town, Bob spotted a motel sign and we gave up our plans to sleep in the van.  For $17 American, we had compound walls to park our fully loaded van in, a tile-floored room, slightly smelly but relatively clean.  Dirt had blown in under the door to make small dunes on the floor and the room was so hot and evil smelling that we had to open windows to let in more sand and dust.  Working all night, the small air conditioner failed to cool anything that wasn’t standing directly in front of it.  Bob pulled the van up so we could see it from the window.  We put Bob Dylan on the tape player and pulled out the ice chest to make our own cold dinner.  Spiced brandy and 7-Up for me, early bed for Bob.
            Bearcat, however, had other plans.  He was a handsome cat––steel gray with short hair, chartreuse eyes and both the physical prowess and vocal abilities of his Blue Burmese mom.  All of this trip, however, he had spent silent and quiet under the air mattress.  At night we’d pull him out, his claws attaching firmly to carpet all the way out.  Then we’d take him off to some strange room or house where he’d relax only after we were in bed, when he could jump up with us and snuggle into the blankets.  This trip had been like an alien abduction for him.
            In Flagstaff, he’d spent two days hiding in our daughter’s closet, coming out only at night to explore the house after their 5 dogs, two cats and monkey had been moved to various rooms behind shut doors.
           When we visited our friend Carey in Tucson, we’d tied Bearcat up in a yard with shade but had forgotten about the hawks circling overhead, until Carey had mentioned them.  When we went hurriedly out to investigate, Bear had managed to slip under a tarp that covered the air conditioner and seemed happier there than in the garage where we locked him in for the night.  He’d sulked all day the next day as we drove on to Alamogordo, never once coming out from under the air mattress to talk to us for a bit. He’d been happiest at the house of a friend in Alamogordo where he got the run of the house with no other animals to compete with.  When I took him out in the yard on a leash at night, he had explored with both interest and caution.  I’d followed him around––the only successful way to walk with a cat on a leash.
            Now he was experiencing his first night in Mexico.  All night long, the cat scratched feverishly in his litter tray, then would jump up and rub against me, biting my toes, waking me up no fewer than six times during the night.  Then he’d jump down from the bed and I’d hear feverish scratching from the direction of the litter box. The next morning, there were only two tiny gray turds buried in the box, but litter confettied the bathroom floor, competing in mass with the sand grit on the bedroom floor.  The plastic liner was completely shredded and pulled away from under the elastic brace which held in tight at the top of the tray.  Only then did it occur to me that they had put catnip in the litter to attract cats to it.  Our cat had been high all night after resting all day.  Unfortunately, our schedule had to be the reverse.  After just one night of trying to sleep through his herbal ecstasies, we decided we might have to find a substitute litter at the soonest opportunity.

Find Chapter 4 HERE.

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 1, Leaving the Familiar

27 Replies

Bob, 2001

At the moment, every surface in my office/living room/dining room is covered with stacks of papers.  I’ve been plowing through files and old folders looking for additional stories to include in a book about my first few years of living in Mexico, but in doing so, I unearthed an earlier book, also unpublished, about our initial trip down to San Miguel to investigate it as a possible place to live for a year. So, I spent most of the morning and afternoon reading the entire book with the result that I’ve decided that maybe it makes sense to publish that book first, since it will better introduce readers to Bob and to the background of my move to Mexico.  With that in mind, I’d like your help in reading two or three of the beginning chapters to see if they hold your interest. They are a bit longer than earlier “possibles” that I’ve shared with you over the past week or so, but I guess that will be a test of whether this book is going to hold your interest.  Remember, as this story begins, the year is 2001 and so the information about our Mexican experience is 22 years old.  Please let me know whether you feel it is still relevant and interesting. That said, here is the possible first chapter of:

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 1,  Leaving the Familiar

(Jan1-May 3, 2001)

How we came to decide to move to Mexico is unclear.  Bob claims I tricked him into it by first suggesting a two-week trip.  By the time he had agreed, the trip had grown to two months.  Then, the next thing he knew, I was telling people that we were renting out our house and moving to Mexico for a year, where we would live off the rent we were collecting from our house. But it was Bob, in fact, who suggested that if we left for a year we’d be coming home during the worst weather of the year––which led to our decision to move to Mexico for a year and a half.

The transition from the redwoods of central California to the central mountains of Mexico was not as simple as the decision to move there.  We had intended to return from Christmas with my 91-year -old mother in Wyoming, to spend a month packing our personal stuff out of the house and getting it rented out, then to leave by February 1. But a week or so prior to leaving for Wyoming, I found that I needed major surgery.  Since the recovery period was six weeks, that would delay our leaving by a month if we scheduled the surgery as soon as we got home in January, so we put off our leaving day to March 1.  If I packed just one thing at a time and left Bob to lift the boxes once they were filled, I should be able to do the packing even with stitches in.

The day I got home from surgery, my mother went into the hospital in Wyoming.  I’d been told not to ride in cars, climb stairs or lift for a week, then to take it easy for another month at the least.  My mother and sister insisted I not come, my mother even saying that it was too hard to visit over the phone when I called, due to the oxygen.  She liked to be left alone when she was sick, even had them put a “no visiting” sign on her door.  She would be going home soon, they all said.  But within a week, my mother had passed away.  Since she had known no one in the Wyoming town where she had moved a few years before to be near my sister, we decided to hold her memorial service in July in South Dakota, where an all-town reunion would be going on in the town where we all grew up.  My brother-in-law accompanied my mother’s body to Tucson, where she would be buried with my dad.  Both of my folks were not big on funerals.  My mom would have approved.  I put all of my efforts into planning her memorial long-distance.  Bob and I would drive up from San Miguel the last weekend in June for the memorial.

Now, along with healing, I mourned the loss of my Mother. For days, I worked on art projects which reflected her life story, and after my second day home from the hospital, I worked for two hours at a time packing books, then rested two hours, watching every video movie my friends could dig up to encourage me to get the rest I needed.  I began to get a bit agoraphobic, which was helped along by the fact that I wasn’t supposed to ride in cars.  On the night that my Mom died, Bob and I went for our first walk since my surgery.  It was nine o’clock at night as we walked up the road near our house to the top of the mountain.  The stars were vivid in this sky away from city lights as we discussed the afterlife.  There was something about the irrevocable ending of a life which pushed us in our resolve to put off no longer the next stage of changes in our lives.

Even though we planned to rent the house fully furnished, the packing proved to be a much larger job than we’d expected.  My mother had left us her car and any furniture or art we wanted.  My sister insisted that to send it would incur no loss to her or my other sister, since it would come out of the part of the estate the majority of which would go for taxes, anyway, so we decided to store our own furniture and rent our house with my mother’s.  This meant also changing all the art and decorations in the house, since her color scheme was different.  For a month, I’d packed books, which Bob would then carry to one studio or another to store.  Then I tackled the kitchen, leaving what I considered to be bare bones.  We were beginning to feel like we’d make our new departure date of April 1, but the date should have been a tip-off.  When they heard we’d be leaving, we suddenly had friends and relatives popping in with great regularity.  With each group of friends, we took the time to talk and play, to go to the beach and out to dinner.

One of the reasons we were moving to Mexico was to get our life back and to reprioritize after 14 years of running our lives around the demands of a business. We had felt rushed, pressured, buried under the minutiae of the details of bookkeeping, scheduling, mailing, travelling to art shows, setting up our booth, tearing it down, keeping track of the thousands of details involved in not only making art but selling it through craft shows. Every vacation we’d taken to visit family had been scheduled to coincide with our show schedule.  Most of our friends were artists, which was great, but we spent more time discussing the business of art than art itself.  We wanted off the bandwagon.  We wanted the time to talk and experience life without pressure. But now the business of moving was taking over our lives.  How to get all the loose ends taken care of.  How would we pay our bills?  Collect outstanding debts?  We had lamps to mail off to customers and galleries, files to sort out.  What to take, what to store, what to throw away?  I had twenty-five years of writing files:  poetry, stories, unfinished novels, movie scripts.  Bob had the same.  We had business files, tax files, personal correspondence files.  All of this needed to be sorted and dealt with.  One studio rapidly filled up to the ceiling with boxes of books, extra kitchen supplies, clothes and art. Then another one filled up with furniture, extra studio supplies from my jewelry studio, which we’d reconverted into a bedroom, writing files, tools and more tchotchkes.

When a woman who came to see if she wanted to be our property manager saw what we considered to be our stripped-down house, she said, “I’d clear out all this clutter.  Get it down to the minimum.”  That was what we thought we’d done!

Into this chaos drove my friend Patty, who’d volunteered to drive my mom’s car from Wyoming to California for us.  She stayed a few days and we took time off from packing to see the sights and talk.  Then came other friends.  We did the same.  When people heard we were leaving, they called to schedule dinners.  We went.  We were now worried about the April 1 leaving date.  With our departure date just two weeks off, Bob received a call from his sister.  His mom had gone into the hospital and wasn’t expected to live.  He flew to Michigan. After ten days, less than two months after we’d lost my mom, his mom passed away.

The day he flew off to Michigan, the first of our ads to sell vehicles appeared. We were selling a Blazer, a Mazda MX3, an ancient motor home, a trailer and a fork lift.  For the entire time Bob was gone, every bit of my time was spent jump-starting them, cleaning them, having them smog-checked, answering phone calls, showing vehicles and placing new ads.  Finally, when Bob got home, we parked the cars one at a time on the street.  The first time we did this, we got a ticket for parking a for sale vehicle on a county road.  Then we found a wide place that was evidently private land, but visible from the highway.  Within the month, we’d sold all of the vehicles but the travel trailer we had converted into a trailer to move our our big lamps, jewelry, ikebana vases, tents, cases and other display items to shows in. This we kept to store our unsold display items in.

With May fast approaching, Bob finally said he was beginning to feel we’d never leave.  In addition, he was starting to have reservations about whether he wanted to leave all his tools and studios.  What if we got to Mexico and didn’t like it?  We’d have rented our house out and would have no place to go.  In the end, we sealed up the house, paid a friend to deal with our bills and mail, packed up our cat that we had been unable to find a new temporary home for, packed up a few clothes, a lot of books and art supplies, and headed out for Mexico on May 3, 2001—only 4 months later than we had initially planned on starting out, but we were finally on the road. On the way, we would visit Bob’s son, daughter and grandkids in Flagstaff Arizona, his friend Carey in Tucson and my friend Judy in Alamogordo.  Then we would be free, unscheduled, with no timeline.  On our way to Mexico.

Go HERE to read Chapter 2