Businesses are like weeds in these parts.
They pop up. And then they are gone.
I discovered a great luxury when I moved into my house just over four years ago. On the other side of the block was a hardware store. Small, certainly. But Sergio had most of what I needed for repairs around the house. Even better, he was open on Sundays.
A stopper in one of my kitchen sinks failed to live up to its name. The rubber portion at the bottom had suffered far too many informal disassemblies. But, that was not a big problem. Sergio could help me.
Or so I thought. When I walked around the corner, everything that looked like hardware was gone from his store. Including the counters.
Instead, a young family was moving in a food preparation table and a refrigerator. My deductive reason usually rescues me whenever that many clues are dumped on my plate. A new restaurant had arrived in the neighborhood.
I was hoping for something exotic. We have German and Italian food in town. Maybe it would be a Hungarian restaurant redolent with smoked paprika.
Nope. When I asked the young woman who was toting in fresh vegetables, she proudly declared she cooked the best tacos in town.
I was polite. But I wanted to point out the last thing our neighborhood needed was another taco stand.
From where I was standing, I could count four other Mexican cuisine restaurants within three blocks. And that does not include OXXO, which serves up something that some might call food. It reminded me of all the beach shops in San Patricio lined up one after the other that sell the same merchandise at the same price and with the same customer service.
I have a friend who decided during Holy Week he would rent out umbrellas on the beach. He was positive he was going to get rich. But he needed money to buy the umbrellas -- and some tables -- and food to serve to his renters. It sounded good.
Of course, he asked if he could borrow the capital from me. When I asked him to explain his business plan, he just stared at me. So, I approached it another way. How much did he need to charge per hour to recover his capital investment and to return a profit for himself.
No matter how we ran the numbers, I was not going to get repaid and he was not going to make a profit. And that is exactly what happened.
I thought of him as I stood there watching the hopeful young couple pull together what was going to be their dream restaurant. I knew the other nearby restaurants barely make their way on our street. And I felt a bit sorry for them.
I need not have. Their tables were full the first few nights as I strode by on my walk. And then the trade died off. Undoubtedly, leaving the new owners pondering the question every restaurateur asks: "Where did everyone go?"
Or, in the end: "Where did all our money go?"
Running a business in a tourist town is a rough way to make a living. The best I can offer is my custom.
And for a guy who is forbidden from eating tortillas, that may not be good enough before the wind blows the seeds off of this particular dandelion.
The tapping at the front door was soft but incessant.
Was it Poe's raven with nevermore promises? An early visit from the Spirit of Christmas Past stopping by to Marley up my morning? Or maybe Emily Dickinson"s coachman inquiring if I needed a lift?
I have a general rule at the house. I do not open the front door unless I am expecting someone. I tend to follow a "by appointment only" philosophy.
Whenever I violate it, I am always confronted by a stranger requesting payment for work around the house that I do not need, or by a line of mothers with babies each carrying a laminated prescription list almost a decade old, or a bevy of Jehovah's Witnesses intent on converting my obviously-languishing soul.
The wiser course is for me to ignore the knocking and lend my attention to the tasks at hand. Because, as a homeowner, there are always plenty of "tasks at hand."
I broke my rule this morning. But only because I was heading out the door on what Felipe calls my Bataan Death March. I told myself, if I purposely exited, conversation could be avoided.
When I strode out the doorway, I was a bit taken aback by four young middle class Mexicans. Probably in their 20s. Three men. One woman. Dressed in some sort of matching outfits. White polo shirts. Ocher pants. They could have been missionaries repurposed by John Waters into a 1990s version of The Book of Mormon.
The young woman commented that I must be on my way to exercise. My workout look may not be as stylish as Omar's, but it is practical. The smell of my shirt could have been a clue.
I know better than to do what I did next. I had effectively escaped their clutches, but I turned around and asked what they were doing. I may as well have asked: "May I give you a lot of money to buy whatever it is you are selling?
Each of them whipped open the booklets they were carrying. I anticipated I would be staring into the ever-engrossing pages of a Watchtower. But I was wrong.
Instead, I was gazing into a portrait of my future as worm fodder.
All sorts of goods roll past my house each day touted by some enterprising soul. Fruits. Vegetables. Cleaning products. Magic elixirs. Furniture. But, this is the first time I had encountered a coffin sales team.
My experience is that Mexicans have a far more realistic approach to death than do most northerners. Up north, death gets shunted into the dark corners of cancer wards or relegated to the conversation ghetto of barely-whispered words. I have a friend who will not allow the word to be said in his presence.
For Mexico, death is part of the circle of everyone's life. We are born. We die. It echoes through day/night of the dead and at the multiple funeral parlors here with their casket window-shopping.
So, why not sell them door-to-door?
I have two Mexican friends in their 60s who have picked out their own coffins and store them in their bedrooms. Being practical folk, they use them to store towels and linens. An un-hope chest.
The first time I saw a waiting-to-be-used casket, I was startled. Until I heard the explanation.
The practice is not restricted to Mexico. A few weeks ago, I read an article in The Economist that local officials in Chinese villages send out thugs to remove purchased coffins from the homes of their elderly comrades. The coffins are then smashed and burned.
The purpose of this pre-grave robbery is to convince the elderly to give up the notion of being buried in the earth. The Communist Party wants them to accept the efficiency of cremation. Such are the ways of traditions in a totalitarian state.
And that is in a country where almost 50% of corpses are already cremated. I find it hard to believe that Mexico's citizens would ever countenance an increase in its relatively low rate of cremation. Especially by government diktat. Those coffins provide the best first step in Mexico's reverence of the passion of death.
You will undoubtedly be shocked that I did not buy my coffin right there on the street this morning. I do tend toward impulse purchases. And what to do with my body upon my death has been running through my thoughts this past week.
Maybe I could just be stuffed in my prospective clothes dryer and buried underneath the soon-to-be-repaired terrace floor.
Or I could just wait for Emily Dickinson's coach driver to make a home delivery.
In September, big news came to San Patricio.
The village is getting its first traffic signal (you light up my life). Actually, two traffic signals (imagine bumping into you here). Both on Highway 200 through town. The first at the corner with Álvaro Obregón -- less delicately called "Whorehouse Street." The second at the intersection with Lopez Mateos -- the main street into San Patricio's business district.
And the first signal is just one brick short of a wall. The poles were installed yesterday with their naggingly-commanding red-yellow-green hectoring.
But the colors are still aspirational. If I have calculated correctly, there is no electrical power, yet. When that happens, what was once a free flow of traffic will be disrupted.
Anything new always causes the usual suspects to mount their orange crates. It is just another version of the open-closed debate that internationally haunts our political lives.
The Openites love any change that rolls down the calle. You want to mix peanut butter with orange peel and habanero peppers? Good for you. Let's all do that.
The Closedians don't much cotton to anything that was not done by their great-great-great-great grandmothers. Would Moctezuma have approved of a traffic signal? I don't think so. And who is going to think about the children?
The debate really does not matter. It is simply an opportunity for the cheerleaders and grumblers to show off their chops. The signal is there. And will soon be operating. As will the second.
The more interesting question is what is going to happen when the switch is flipped. People who grew up here (and those of us who have inculcated the driving culture) are not accustomed to even looking for traffic signals in these parts. There are a few stop signs, but none are obeyed.
None, that is, except by northerners who keep an eye out for behavioral conformity. And therein lies the potential problem.
I do not know how universal the phenomenon is, but in The States studies have shown that whenever stop signs or traffic signals are installed at a formerly-uncontrolled intersections, traffic accidents increase exponentially.
The reason is simple, people assume that other drivers will see the signal and obey it. If drivers are not accustomed to the presence of a signal at the intersection, they will often not see it and accidentally bump into someone who not unreasonably thought other drivers would obey what The Authorities had decreed them to do.
Driving in Mexico is not so much a skill as it is an art form. Choreography, to be specific. I love watching anyone do something well. And Mexicans are experts at making the seemingly-unworkable work. Admittedly, it is far more Alvin Ailey than Swan Lake, but it is a wonder to behold.
The local choreography, which is almost always based on custom rather than something chimeral like objective regulations, has its own rhythm. And that beat can be thrown off whenever Mexican tourists roll in from Guadalajara or northern visitors venture forth.
To the uninitiated, the two soon-to-be-controlled intersections are chaos. I myself have commented several times I am amazed there are not more accidents.
There are accidents, but usually when someone tries to apply Tapitio, American, or Canadian rules or customs to the dance. Usually, stopping when a cautious person would stop -- if they were not involved in a pas de deux.
The ballet will now have a director with a harsh hand. And the dancers will need to learn that free-style will not work at those two intersections.
And, for all of us, this is merely a reminder. Not everyone will see the lights as a code. And maybe not even guidelines. I will need to abandon one more strand of my libertarian love for Mexico.
Be careful out there.
I have weaned Omar from treating the balcony in my house as if it were a whorehouse set in a Fellini film.
And I have inadvertently introduced him to the world of the-lost-favorite-piece-of-clothing. When I brought the laundry home last week, he asked me if I had seen his black exercise shorts. They had gone missing.
He claimed they were in his laundry bag, but they were not returned with the bundle of fresh-smelling, folded clothes. Not only were they his favorites, they had cost about $100 (US).
I told that story to an acquaintance I met through Facebook. She has been visiting Melaque in five-month stints for the past 30-odd years, and is quite passionate in her obsession with Mexico.
When I got to the part of the story where I told Omar there were several options for lost clothes (inefficiency, inattention, or theft), she recoiled in horror and spent the next five minutes lecturing me in a monologue that would have done Harold Pinter proud.
The nub of her argument was that I must be the party at fault. Most likely, I failed to take the shorts to the laundry and I am now searching for someone to blame. In her 30-some years of coming to Mexico, she knew the people far better than I do.
In her telling, Mexicans are hard-working efficient people who are great respecters of other people's property. And, because they do not have a materialistic side, they would never consider stealing anything from anyone. She supported her hypothesis with a cascade of anecdotes.
To not put a fine point on it, she was totally miffed at me. And, of course, the discussion-stopping "racist" raised its head at least two times.
I am never quite certain how to re-enter the orbit of a conversation that has wandered so far afield of its original narrative. The most obvious was to bring up the weather or how lovely the flowers are this time of year.
It reminded me of that moment in The Crown when Jackie Kennedy met the queen for tea to apologize for some incredibly boorish behavior. Claire Foy, as Queen Elizabeth, related what she should have done.
What I should've said was that I didn't do very much in Ghana.I got on a plane and I went.And the only reason I went was because I felt utterly useless in comparison to you.And I was trying to compete.And if anything, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude.But I didn't.I just sat there.
Because I do not have the noble instincts of a British monarch, I did neither of those things. Biding my peace may have been the greater virtue.
I do not see people as exclusively saints or sinners. In fact, I do my best to see the people I encounter as individuals -- with their own set of needs and peculiarities. The group-identity politics of the left and right is always an impediment to venture past corrosive stereotypes.
And that was the point of my Omar anecdote. I was making no generalized statement about Mexicans. I gave my laundry bags to a young woman who works at the laundry. Somehow, an item in the mix went missing before the bundle was placed in my hands.
One of the risks of using a public laundry is just that. Other people are seldom as careful with our property as we are. Economists refer to it as the Tragedy of the Commons. For me, it has been true wherever I have lived. Oregon. Texas. Colorado. California. Washington, Greece. England. And, now, Mexico.
Because I am who I am, I tend to believe there is nothing more nefarious going on other than a failure to pay attention to detail. The young women who run the machines are simultaneously tending to the needs of their two or three very young children. Unlike what Linda Lomax would tell us, attention does not always have to be paid.
My exchange with the long-term Melaque visitor brought home once again how all of us tend to not listen to what other people are actually telling us. By assuming bad motives, the words take on a bit of malignity. In this case, "racist."
I am not preaching. If I were, I would be a hypocrite because I am constantly guilty of ferreting out subtext during conversations. As a result, I often miss an interesting point or a clever turn of phrase. When that happens, I am poorer for it.
I can easily fix the wandering laundry. All I need is a stackable washer-dryer combination. (Something that will fit in the criminally-small utility space of my house. It is hard to believe that a woman designed it.)
As for listening and learning, the solution is just as simple. We are all moral agents. In every circumstance, we can choose to do the right thing or the wrong.
It is just like laundry. Getting rid of stains requires a bit of attention.
Here's wishing you a complete laundry bundle.
They say it is impossible to do more than one task each day in Mexico.
But, they also say falling in love is wonderful -- and they got that wrong. It turns out they were just as incorrect about daily chores in my country.
I am getting ready for a series of trips starting the middle of this month running through April that will take me to three or four (maybe even five) continents. That means I need to tend to some recurring matters. Mainly, financial.
So, here was my plan. I needed to drive to Manzanillo for a dental appointment -- a simple cleaning. While there, I was going to pick up some groceries and household supplies, drop off my dry cleaning, deposit money in my telephone-internet and cellular telephone accounts. And then stop in Cihuatlán to deposit money on my electric account. Eight stops. Multiple tasks.
What could go wrong?
As it turns out, not really anything.
First stop. La Comer. No financial trip is complete without finances. The store has an HSBC ATM that will allow me to withdraw $500 (US) worth of pesos.(Most ATMs have a 6,000 peso limit) Today that was about $9,900. Enough to do what I needed to do. I thought.
With cash in hand, I picked up some vegetables, spices, tea, and hummus (everything that I could buy in San Patricio, but, hey, I was already there). No problems.
Second stop. Walmart. Walmart carries a variety of cherry tomatoes I like. I would never drive to Manzanillo solely to buy them. But, I was there. A couple of cans of soup helped justify the stop.
When I first moved to Mexico, I made a weekly trip to Manzanillo to pick up my mail. When I discovered I was simply wasting money, I rented a Mexican mail box. My need for trips to Manzanillo has diminished to a couple times each year.
Except for chores like stop three. Telmex.
Telmex provides my land line (that I never use) and my internet (that I use world without end). I pay my monthly bill in person, usually, at my local Kiosko. But Kiosko will not accept advance payments and the credit union near my house that once did, no longer does.
So, I drive to Manzanillo. Usually, there is no one in line. That was not true today. But the line moved quickly, and when I walked out, my account was $3,000 (Mx) richer. That will hold me for a few months.
Fourth stop. Sam's Club. With the exception of a few exotic items (like imported cheese), almost everything at Sam's Club is available in San Patricio. The difference is size. My house is essentially a small hotel. We go through cleansers, bleach, Windex, and Pledge like a bed and breakfast -- with a much smaller revenue stream.
Fifth stop. Telcel. My cellular telephone service is one of my lifelines. With the advent of smartphones, I use my mobile connection far more often than my laptop. If I could figure out an efficient way to compose my essays on my telephone, I would drop my landline internet service.
I left $3,000 (Mx) to cover me roaming bill for the next few months.
Sixth stop. My primary reason for driving to Manzanillo -- my dentist. I have a standing appointment for cleaning every six months. This visit was fortuitous.
Earlier in the year, I had broken a tooth cap in Peru. Three dentists made temporary stopgaps. Maybe three months ago, my dentist in Manzanillo tried a more permanent solution. But it loosened.
I asked her if she could repair it. This is Mexico. Of course, she said yes, and did. She also noticed one of my teeth had been chipped. That was an easy fix.
Because Mexican health care is so reasonably-priced, you will not be surprised that the full cost for almost two hours in the chair was $2,000 (Mx) -- about $101 (US). Less money than Telcel or Telmex received.
Seventh stop. Dry cleaner. A shirt and pair of pajamas. Ready tomorrow. $145 (Mx). About $7 (US).
Mission accomplished. Seven stops in three hours.
Yes. Yes. I hear you in the back row. What about my stop in Cihuatlán to deposit funds in my electricity account?
If you have been adding up the pesos I spent, you will already know the answer. I was going to deposit $6,000 (Mx), but I no longer had that many pesos in my wallet.
Cihuatlán is close enough for me to tap an ATM tomorrow or later in the week and drive the few miles to the power office. I do not fly from Mexico for just over a week.
I am now sitting by the ocean listening to the waves and some soft jazz. And it is with a certain sense of hubris that I aver "they," once again, are wrong.
It is possible to accomplish a northern-sized to-do list in Mexico. Sometimes.
Wasn't it Prometheus who said: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"?
I may find out. There is still one task to accomplish.
Beauty and functionality are uneasy partners.
As I discovered with my Moravian star light fixtures (you don't light up my life).
After renting in Mexico for almost six years, I decided this area of Mexico was going to be my permanent home. And, if it was to be, I needed -- a permanent home.
So, I started shopping around with only some vague notions of what I wanted in a house. I must have looked at close to 30 houses without finding anything that remotely interested me.
Well, there was the house that had first drawn me to Barra de Navidad, but it had passed from being a dream house to a bother. And there was another house I really liked, but I failed to win the bidding process.
I had almost given up looking when I spotted some photographs of an elegant-lined house I had not seen in my wanderings. I set an appointment with Ale, my realtor, and met her in an area of town I did not know existed.
The moment I walked into the courtyard, I was enthralled. The house had everything I wanted -- even though I had been uncertain what it was. Contemporary. Modern. Mexican.
I had spent 15 minutes looking through the house. When I returned to the courtyard, I glanced up and saw what it was that had attracted me to the place. Its lines. Its flat planes created a sense of order and peace. Luis Barragán would have approved.
Within weeks, the house was mine.
I do not recall when we had our first rain after I moved in. It must have been only a few days. With the rain came leaks. Two major leaks.
The former owner who was also the architect-builder of the house, told me she was aware of the leaks and had arranged for the contractor to repair them. At her expense.
The problem was easy to diagnose. Most roofs here are flat. Flat surfaces are conducive to collecting rain water. And if water collects, it will find the most convenient way to drain. That often leads to leaks inside the house.
But this was not just a roof. It was a terrace designed for living space. And it would soon become my exercise track.
The usual solutions are to increase the grade of the roof to facilitate drainage and to apply one of the globular sealers seen on most Mexican roofs. Neither would work on the terrace without reducing its appearance and purpose.
So, the contractor replaced several rows of tile in the hope of finding the weak sisters. I talked with the young man who was laying the new tiles. He did not seem to be very happy. I suspect there was a pay issue.
The fix did not work. It simply moved the leaks.
I had a second contractor try another solution. Same result. Leaks, but in a new place.
That contractor suggested a drastic revision. Pull up all the tiles, change the grade to the opposite side of the terrace, and install pipes to drain into the courtyard.
It was a non-starter as an idea. The terrace would be useless as a walking track and the Barragánesque lines that attracted me to the house would be ruined.
I have now had two additional contractors look at the terrace. I pointed out that the current leaks appear to be coming from spots where the mortar has pulled away from the tiles in the area of the original repair. The contractors agreed the mortar probably was inferior -- a parting shot of spite from the original contractor.
One of the contractors and I agreed on a proposed plan of repair. It would entail a lot of work and be expensive, but it sounded like a good solution.
And then nothing happened. I sent several email and left telephone messages. No response.
It was the same drill with the other contractor. Approved proposal. And then nothing.
Both of the contractors are Mexican, but they regularly work on building projects with northerners. If they were too busy to do the work, I would think they would simply tell me. But this may be another expectation based on faulty understanding of culture.
A friend works regularly with the second contractor. I am going to try to get the three of us together to get this project on the road -- or the roof. Each rainstorm this summer and autumn has been a reminder that Robert Frost was correct. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." Or roof.
I have enlisted to be the steward of this house and its lines. Somehow, I need to find a compatible marriage between beauty and its elusive mate functionality.
"I didn't come here to be liked."
It was pure Frank Burns on the burden of leadership.
Radar responded: "You certainly came to the right place."
That is probably my favorite MASH line -- in a rather crowded field. Like most of Larry Gelbart's writing, it perfectly skewers the human condition, and makes us laugh at our own short-comings.
I thought of that exchange at church today. We were studying Acts with its steady progression of Christianity as a faith that would spread from Jerusalem to Samaria, Judea, and the rest of the world just as Jesus had directed.
But there was a potential stumbling block in the early leadership. Peter, who had become one of the principal leaders in the Jerusalem church still saw his faith as an extension of the faith of his youth -- Judaism. To him, what he believed and preached was a Jewish sect. It was and still is. He was correct.
He also saw it as a faith that was primarily for the Jewish people, and that faith was to be exercised in the Temple in Jerusalem. That, of course, elided the core of Jesus's directive -- that The Way was for all of the world.
To get Peter on board, God sent a vision, where a sheet filled with unclean animals (according to the Levitical dietary code). The animals were offered as food to a peckish Peter. Three times he refused the food because it violated his culture and its religious rules.
God then startled Peter by declaring: "Stop treating as unclean what God has made clean." To drive the point home, Peter then is directed to meet with a Roman military officer, a gentile he would have not dealt with before his three-sheet conversation, and converts the officer and his family to the faith.
Thus, was born the evangelical push to preach Christianity amongst the gentiles.
I have always enjoyed reading about Peter. He is one of the most human and accessible people in The Bible. And, in his refusal to eat the unclean food, I fully understood the smugness he must have felt by refusing to eat, thus passing God's test. Not knowing he was flunking what God's will was.
I grew up in a faith that was larded with rules designed to prove one's sanctification. No alcohol. No tobacco. No dancing. No movies. No cards. No dice. (My grandmother removed the dice from her Monopoly game. When the grand-kids would play it, she gave them a spinner from an Uncle Wiggly game.)
The intent was to separate us from the world. A world whose evil would overwhelm us if we had too much contact with it.
It turned me into an 8-year old Frank Burns -- or even a Javert. I knew the rules and that they were good. So, when my friends acted in their own worst interests, I was there to help them find the fold. I ratted them out to the authorities.
I acted not out of a sense of grace, but in a miasma of self-righteousness. I was probably 13 when I first started asking in our lists of "don'ts" where the "dos" were. Feeding the hungry. Giving drink to the thirsty. Welcoming the stranger. Clothing the naked. Visiting the sick and the prisoners.
All of a sudden, a religion of rules morphed into a faith of hope. And today I was reminded that we need to keep our eyes open to God's world.
Oddly enough, I did that on my walk home this morning. It is three miles between my house and church. Because I am usually in Walk Mode when I make the journey, I do not notice much around me. Today I did.
When I visit the states of Guanajuato and Michoacán in September, my chief joy is driving around the countryside in A.E. Housman fashion. I do not find cherry blossoms. Instead, I am blessed with wide swaths of color. Primarily wild cosmos. Orange. Pink. But vivid enough to imagine I had been painted into a Pissaro.
I have always missed the lack of flower fields around here. Until my walk home.
True, we do not have the type of Brobdingnagian displays that grace the highlands. But this is the tropics. And flowers are everywhere.
Some large, but mostly tiny. What the self-righteous may call weeds. What the hopeful see as thirsty souls. And almost all of them with a brief lifespan.
I have no sheet of unclean animals to offer you, but I just may slay a bit more of the Frank Burns that haunts my soul.
Enjoy the grace notes.
