Mexico was much different in 1962, but then again what wasn’t? I had never been there until that day in the Summer of 1962 when Gilbert Shelton recruited his girlfriend du jour and her bulletproof Land Rover for a road trip to Nuevo Laredo, about four hours and 240 miles from Austin. He bounced up our steps and asked Janis and I if we wanted to go along. Sure, what the hell?
Shelton’s pardner was Karen K. Kirkland, a Houston newspaper reporter and not the shy retiring type. Karen had been practicing equal rights for women since first grade and didn’t mind setting malingerers straight on the subject. She was attractive, funny and possessed of great verbal dexterity. Kirkland was quick to pick up on the vulnerable neighborhoods in a person’s psyche, knew how to use that information and was seldom accused of using an excess of caution. Formidable was an apt description of Karen K. Kirkland.
As I learned in later travels, border towns are not the real Mexico. Nuevo Laredo was a gaggle of little kids aggressively hawking shoelaces and Chiclets, an endless slew of tiny businessmen attaching themselves to any vehicle which passed, like remoras to a shark. If you were looking for something else---anything else, and that sometimes included their sisters---they could get if for you in a Mexican minute.
Nuevo Laredo was crowds in the streets, a jumble of restaurants and bars, a hundred souvenir shops selling the tackiest array of products south of NASCAR. Nuevo Laredo was your typical redlight district, the girls leaning on outside walls next to open windows where bulbs burned brightly over beds inside. Nuevo Laredo was a place where you parked your nice Land Rover only under the aegis of an unlicensed urchin who charged 50 cents an hour.
We hired our security detail and dipped into a nearby beer garden full of happy young Mexicans, who eyeballed the girls none too subtly. Karen K. Kirkland rolled her lovely eyes while Gilbert went to fetch Carta Blancas. It took about three minutes for one of the chinos locales to float a remark our way. “Specious asses!” hissed KKK. Uh, Karen---we’re not in Houston anymore. The hot chili pepper headed our way. He was not smiling.
And then, along came Gilbert, who hadn’t the slightest notion trouble was brewing. He passed the enemy table, shouting friendly banter in Spanish and totally disarmed the head specious ass by asking him to sit down and have a brew. The confused alborotador waved his hand and retreated. Janis looked over at me with a semi-smile. “Zorro rides again,” she muttered.
A Weighty Matter (Un materia peseda)
It was almost ten years later when I returned to Mexico, this time with my young bride, Harolyn Locklair. Raised in Miami, she spoke passable Spanish, which beat my two years of the high school stuff. We flew into Mexico City to scour the environs and see what wonders we could bring back to the Subterranean Circus. We stayed in a hotel in the Zona Rosa in the middle of town. The first night, about eleven, the jackhammers started pounding outside. Seems los trabajadores liked to work at night so as not to get in anyone’s way in the daytime. The smiling gerente at the hotel desk didn’t see why this should be a problem, but then again he wasn’t trying to sleep.
Next day, we took a bus to Puebla to look for onyx products. We found plenty in the marketplace. We looked around, checked the prices, examined the quality and bought a few dozen pipes and incense burners. If it had been any other time in my life, that would have been it, we’d bag it and be down the road. Unfortunately, thanks to my pal Rick Nihlen, I was mired in my Chess Phase, and the shop with the pipes had some beautiful onyx chess boards. Nice enough to be irresistable, matter of fact, and I glommed onto a few dozen. Do you know what an onyx chess board weighs, let alone all its little pieces? Okay, multiply that by about 30. The shop people put them into over a dozen boxes and dollied them down to the bus station. Optimism reigned.
“Sorry, senor,” said the uniformed generalissimo who presided over the bus station. “You have too many boxes. Not enough room.” Oh. How many can we take? “Uno.” WHAT? “Each bus, one.” So this would be like thirteen buses over a period of days at God knows what cost. Raising my voice and jumping up and down did no good. Harolyn reminded me that when in Rome, etc., thus we were left with but one option. Hire a cab and negotiate a decent rate for the 131-mile drive to Mexico City. Needless to say, the taxi crop in Puebla did not exactly resemble a fleet of swift phaetons. The shabby antiques had but one thing to offer: they were extremely available. We found a suitable prospect and began loading.
A Mexican policeman standing nearby slowly shook his head and tapped his nightstick gently in his hand. “No sir, no puedes hacer esto!” he frowned. Why not? Because it’s too heavy. The cop did have a point, the cab’s tires were flattening slightly and its rear end was only a few inches from the ground. The panicked driver, his fare-of-the-year in jeopardy, recruited another taxi pal. “Por tarifa especial!” he smiled. Apparently we were getting the special rate for silly Americans.
We took off for Mexico City, Harolyn in the front car, me in the back. Halfway there, her cab started smoking as the radiator gave up the ghost. We piled as much of our booty as possible in the front seat of the original cab, the rest in back and tootled on, happy in the knowledge we had a nice room waiting at the airport Holiday Inn. We got there after midnight.
“Sorry, Senor, we thought you were not coming and gave the room to someone else. No worry, though, we call and get you room downtown.” We stashed our onyx in a dozen airport lockers and got to our hotel by 2 a.m. After the catastrophes of the day, we were asleep in no time.
But not for long. About 5:30, Harolyn detected the faraway sounds of tinkling music. “I don’t hear anything, you must be dreaming,” I told her. Then I heard it myself---marching band music in the distance, and getting closer. I got out of bed and went to the window. Off by the city square, several groups of children in little uniforms were stomping along to the music. On each pass, another group would infiltrate and join the parade. It was like the boy scouts, the brownies, the firemen, the Daughters of the Mexican Revolution and the artisans of the Enchilada Guild all marching to the music. We found out later they were practicing before school and work for the massive Independence Day parade coming soon. Mexicans really like their parades and they absolutely love being in them.
Harolyn was sitting up in the bed by now and we both started to laugh. I mean, after a day when the Bus Nazi turns you down, one of your transports disintegrates and they sell your hotel room to total strangers, what else can you do? It was Mexico, love it or leave it. We gathered up all our earthlies and left.
Tamazunchale Dreamin’
By the mid-seventies, the lot of us were experienced south of the border travelers. We knew the ropes, the ins and outs of Mexican travel. We knew never to ask the locals for directions while driving because they wanted to be helpful and they would point you somewhere even if it was the wrong place. We knew that driving at night was scary, that every turn in the road might bring a herd of goats into your path, mischievous cows indignant about moving, dozens of sheep not acting very sheepish at all. We didn’t know one thing, though. We didn’t know that first car to blink its lights got dibs on the single-lane bridges.
Rick Nihlen was driving our cram-packed with merchandise Volkswagen bus toward the U.S. border one fine afternoon when we got to a bridge near the town of Tamazunchale. “Un solo carril!” the bridge sign demanded, one car at a time. In the distance, further from the bridge than we, a large, beat-up dumptruck was returning to the local quarry for another load of gravel. The driver flashed his lights but we, in our innocence, were a third of the way across before he got there. If you have had any experience whatsoever with Mexican truck drivers, you’ll know what happened next. The monster speeded up. “Move over as far as you can, Rick, he’s going to hit us,” I said.
Ahead of us on the bridge, the truck was barreling down on a vendor with a mobile fruit stand. The peddler took one look, dived into the river and fruit filled the air. We found some very attractive watermelon strewn across the windshield. Despite Rick’s best efforts, the rear end of our bus was sticking out a little too much and was sideswiped. Excited (and angry) Mexicans were running everywhere, stirred up by this unusual catastrophe. The fruit vendor slogged out of the river in reasonable condition.
There were only two cops in Tamazunchale, neither of which spoke English. They bade us come down to the station for a talk. Sitting on a desktop there was a local nino, about ten years old. He’d learned English at a mission school and would act as translator. I ranted and raved about the insane truck driver, completely unaware of the cherished light-blinking rule. The police chief casually announced that we would have to wait a few days until the circuit judge arrived to sort things out.
“WHAT?!?” No, I don’t think so, I told the boy. We’re getting a substitute rental and moving on. This news really got the chief riled up and he sputtered some information back to the kid. “What did he say?” I wanted to know.
“Chief say if you don’t stop hollering at him he put you in jail right now.” Oh. Well, we certainly don’t want to be in there with mother rapers and father stabbers, like Arlo. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor, as usual. The traveling judge took three days to get there, enough time to learn more than we ever wanted to know about beautiful Tamazunchale.
The first thing we discovered is that the best hotel in town had no air-conditioning in a city with average afternoon temperature of 95 degrees in June. Nice fans, though. We also learned there was one moviehouse in town and that now playing was an enticing little number called El Fantastico Mundo de los Jipis. That would be The Fantastic World of the Hippies at the Regal Cinemas in Gainesville if they had the nerve to show such art films. I found myself really liking the word “jipis,” which the Mexican dictionary defines as “scroungy, broke American kids looking for mushrooms.” About right.
We’re pleased to report that Tamazunchale justice wasn’t so bad after all. Rather enlightened, in fact. The judge decided that both drivers were at fault and neither owed the other anything. Both, however, had deprived the fruit vendor of his means to a living. Therefore, each miscreant would contribute an equal amount to the reconstruction of the fruit cart and replacement of its inventory.
Nobody complained. The smiling National Car Rental man presented us with another bus and we were on our way. The chief came over and shook hands with everybody, twice with Harolyn. The fruit peddler blessed us with the pineapple of friendship. The American fellow who ran the hotel delivered a case of water. Alas, the kid from the mission school was a temporary stowaway, but we dumped him off at the next pueblo. Harolyn felt real bad about it so she opened her shirt and flashed him on the way out of town. Always leave them smiling.
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| The nefarious Tamazunchale bridge. Un solo carril! |
That’s all, folks….
