Living and Writing in Mexico

Becoming a Writer

I went back to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to work and save my money,
planning to return and spend an entire year in San Miguel to
write and begin to “live.” Everyone said, “Write about what you
know.” But at eighteen what did I know? Nothing! I intended to
change that….

The plane ride home was a relief, my hangover was nearly gone, but it didn’t feel like coming home, it felt like I was goingaway. Not even the lights of Miami and Miami Beach, seen from
hundreds of feet up, could cheer me.

I lay in my own bed that night awake, and thinking. I had experienced something new,something foreign. There had been a different feel to the place I had gone, That San Miguel de Allende. I had nothing in common with the people that I had met, nothing. Yet I was drawn to them
and them to me. It was a mystery that was to draw me back. Back
to Mexico.

Overland Trip

Back in Florida I bought a car in order to drive to Mexico, and
have transportation while there. It was a 1955 Oldsmobile, a red
convertible with a white top. It was six years old when I bought
it in late 1961, and in good shape except for the top and the
paint. I had it repainted a beautiful, fire engine red and with a
new, brilliantly white vinyl top prepared to return to Mexico with
$2,000, a small fortune to me then, to last, I hoped, for at
least a year.

My first night on the rode I spent on a side street in
Tallahassee Florida, having driven all day. A drive through
Florida, like Texas, is not a trip but a career. It was chilly
sleeping in the car, but I had a blanket and made myself
comfortable in the back seat and dozed off.

About four in the morning my chattering teeth woke me up. It was
freezing! I climbed into the front seat and cranked up the car
and started the heater. The radio DJ told me it was 4:00 A.M. and
22 degrees in the capital city which did nothing for my shivers.
I hadn’t felt 22 degrees for at least six years when my mother
and I had moved from Pittsburgh to South Florida.

The heater was not making a dent in the freezing temperature in
the car and I pulled away from the parking space on the quiet
residential street that I had found and with my hands deep in the
sleeves of my only sweater steered the car toward the already
famous Route 66.

It wasn’t until a weak winter sun came up, and I was deep into
Alabama that I started to feel warm again. The highway was two
lane, the Interstate Highway Program had not gotten started yet,
and it was full of logging trucks. Lumbering along.

I drove all day enjoying my new freedom, not knowing what was
around the next bend in the road, and unconcerned about it.
Whatever came would be new and different, of that I was sure, and
I relished the adventure ahead.
I arrived in San Miguel without incident after the long drive
from South Florida, alone and eighteen. I thought nothing of it.
I drove into town with the top down and the toneau cover on,
straight to the store, the Nueva Alfonsina where Roselia worked.
It was a joyful reunion and I set off with instructions to find
myself an apartment. I found one with a parking area at the end
of Jesus Street, and was at once approached by a one-legged guy
on a homemade crutch offering to wash and wax the car. I accepted
at once being too tired to do it myself, and foolishly allowed
him to move the car one-block up the street to the shady park
(Parque Juarez). That was the last I saw of him until I was
summoned to the police station.

The police station was in City Hall right in the heart of
downtown San Miguel. In those days there probably weren’t more
than 20,000 people in the entire district. A crowd had gathered
to stare. At first I couldn’t figure out why, but I soon realized
that they were staring at my car. It was a beauty, but I wasn’t
used to the kind of attention it was getting. In South Florida it
was just and old car with a new paint job.

I was charged with allowing a cripple to drive my car without a license. The fine was $16, and had to be paid to let the crippled guy out of jail. I tried to convince the Presidente to leave him there, but the car was also under arrest. I had to pay the fine, and I drove home with my newly waxed car gleaming. Welcome to
Mexico….

San Miguel de Allende, Statue of hero Ignacio Allende

San Miguel de Allende, domes

Present Day
Many of the newer San Miguel residents, transplanted Liberals, have begun to complain about changes in San Miguel. I guess there’s always something to bitch about. People have to feel that they matter….

The latest is a proposed MacDonalds in the centro. Even though the golden arches and plate glass windows won’t be visible from the street, just a small sign above a door in a colonial façade, they have to gripe about it. Making spectacles of themselves, they march and protest, while the Mexicans point and laugh. Anti capitalists all….

They had the same reaction a couple of years ago when a Starbucks opened, right on the main square. But there it is, and they line up to buy expensive coffee with fancy names….

Personally any new business is welcome, chain store or not, they offer choices and oportunities to aquire or enjoy things previously unseen here in the Mexican provinces. They don’t know how good they have it compared to the old days when we had to travel 80-90 miles for Chinese food.

The Mexican authorities don’t quite know what to do about them. It won’t take them long to figure it out though. They took to dragging long haired American hippies in off the street and shaving their heads a few years back. And their not far from deporting a few of the more active protesters to make an example of them when they finally get tired of their antics. It is their country after all, and progress and prosperity after years of backwardness and poverty is always welcome.

The First Visit to San Miguel de Allende

I arrived in San Miguel in June of 1961, on a visit to my older
brother Bob who was working on his masters degree in fine arts
at the Instituto Allende. I, had just graduated from High school.

All the way from the airport in Mexico City he regaled
me with stories of his life in San Miguel. He even had a girl
picked out for me. (When we arrived I was truly fascinated with
the town, and the girl, and nothings changed these 50+ years later!)

When my brother Bob and I entered the dry goods store where my
future wife worked that day we were greeted by two girls and my
first thought was, “What was my brother thinking!” They were
plain ordinary girls, but then from the back of the shop came
Roselia. She was gorgeous! A petite brunette with a beautiful
smile, pearly white teeth, and large brown eyes. She laughed
easily and teased my brother playfully about his little brother.
I was enchanted.

We met the girls later that day when they got
off work and walked around the Jardin with them. They were trying
to learn English, they said, and my brother was their teacher,
the oldest line in the book. We soon separated from the other
girls and walked Roselia to her home a few blocks from the
main square. This became a nightly ritual for me, brother Bob bowing
out after the first night, a ritual that continued until we
married in June, 1964, three years almost to the day, later.

Our first date was to watch the “locos parade,” and their dancing
that took place after the parade in the colonia San Antonio.
They, the locos, stomped around a corral constructed of mezquite
branches in the dirt in front of the unfinished church (one tower
had not been finished in its more than 200 years of existence.

Later that day we went, holding hands, to the Angela Peralta
theater to see a movie, that was the movie house in those days.
The movie featured “Joselito,” a young Spanish singer, who sang
soprano songs for which I had no clue, but enjoyed immensely. I
wonder why?

One of the first Mexican men I met, in San Miguel, was Rafael
Agundis.

We met in the only fancy bar in town at the time, El Patio. Rafael could
speak a few words of English and he was playing guitar, not as a
professional entertainer, but as a patron who played to amuse himself
and his friends. In those days romantic songs, played by
trios, were all the rage in Mexico and Rafael was singing songs
for his absent beloved, who he kept referring to as his Elefanta,
his Elephant.

My Spanish was practically non existent then, but we became
friends and he and my fiance encouraged me to learn their
language to be able to communicate with these friendly, outgoing
people. That and I was getting tired of eating ham sandwiches,
which was all I could say!

During the day I was on my own in San Miguel, my brother in
classes and my girl-friend at work. I wandered around with a
Spanish-English dictionary clutched in my hand. Everywhere I went
the people were very open and friendly, trying to engage me in
conversation, while I struggled with my dictionary. No one spoke
English beyond a few words.

Mexico smelled of wood smoke then, everywhere you went including
Mexico City. The principal cooking fuel was either wood or
charcoal with some kerosene stoves too. Butane was only just
coming into use, but only the well-off could afford a gas stove.
Water heaters too were wood burning and taking a bath took some
advance planning. When the hot water and steam started shooting
skyward your bath was ready!

In my wanderings around town I encountered El Chorro, San Miguel’s
only water supply. A natural spring, above French Park where the
waters flowed freely from an underground spring and then ran freely
in ditches that wove in and out of the planted gardens there,
overflowing with flowers, down the hill and across the street to
the public wash tubs which were packed with women and children
from dawn to dark everyday (lots of people had no running water
in their homes). The water streamed down the street to
the park and spilled into tanks which in warm weather were full
of laughing children splashing contentedly, the run-off spilled
into the park and was channeled into the flower beds. Water also
ran in the gutters of nearly every street in town, day and night
there was so much of it.

My brother took me to my first Cantina the day after we arrived,
the Infierno, Hell. (Across the street was another little
hole-in-the-wall joint called La Gloria, Heaven.) The owner was a
large middle aged man, Pancho Perez, who loved to joke with his
patrons, and a favorite joke of his was to produce a rifle from
under the bar and force Gringos to drink their first straight
tequila. He needn’t have bothered because I was already
very curious and drank one as soon as it was offered and ordered
another. This put me “in” with the man and his other patrons
right from the start. (He later was one of my Godfathers at my
wedding. He provided a large zinc washtub full of grape flavored
Kool-Aide, spiked with grain alcohol, for the reception.)

During that first visit to San Miguel it became obvious to me
that several of the town’s upper class young women were throwing
themselves at my brother. My brother, as usual, was oblivious to
it all. He did, however, have sense enough to take me along to a
sit-down dinner he had been invited to. We arrived bearing flowers, our
first mistake because flowers to a Mexican woman means you’re
interested. The whole family was there, including a suitor of the
older daughter who fawned over her the entire evening. The youngest
girl glomed on to me and the middle “girl” was obviously interested
in Bob. We spent a pleasant evening being chatted up by the parents
as prospective sons-in-law, and when we got out of there we ran for
our lives back up to my brother’s mountain lair.

My eighteenth birthday happened to fall during that first visit
to San Miguel and there happened to be a dance that night in the
Patio Restaurant/bar, a twistathon. The only dance I ever
learned! Naturally I attended. The place was packed and I had
difficulty getting a drink from the waiter so I order two
tequilas as soon as I got his attention, and when those arrived
ordered two more, and so on. My celebration didn’t last long I
can tell you, and I don’t think I danced a single time. Istaggered
out only to have to stumbled up the mountain to where
my brother had an apartment. The hangover, my first, was brutal
and lasted all the way to Mexico City where my brother got me a
hotel room to lay down in for a few hours before I caught my
flight home to Florida.

I always count my San Miguel experience from the date of that
first visit. The effect of it was so profound and moving that I
never did get San Miguel out of my system.

San Miguel de Allende, Corner of Portal Allende

Present Day
Back when I graduated from High School I wanted to be a writer. Having written a few things over the years I thought I could do it, but I had no idea what to write about. The experts always said, “Write about what you know.” I knew about High school, but I damned sure didn’t want to write about that. Wanted to forget it.
That was when my brother invited me to visit him in Mexico where he was studying art. That was a start. When I got here it was obvious to me from the beginning that Mexico was just what I needed to begin “living”.
On my own, at eighteen, in a foreign country, not even speaking the language. So I began to live. I didn’t write much of anything for the next several years, concentrated as I was on the living, and the learning. The culture was totally foreign to me at first, but I began to get the hang of it being absorbed in it 24/7. The language came quickly too, the result of the aforementioned absorbtion. Marriage, and three kids were another result. So I had to make a living, working at a hundred different things we managed pretty well.
So after eight years while still making a living I began to write. In a magazine I learned about the “New Desktop Publishing” industry that was just beginning. Now, I read, you didn’t have to be a slave to a typewriter. You just typed your work once, and then made any corrections, additions, deletions quickly and easily. And then you printed it out for publication.
I enrolled in a school to learn how to use the computer they sold me, and aquired a word processing program along with my purchase.
That began my experience with computers, in late 1985. I bought PFS: First Publisher and a good dot matrix printer. My first project was a cookbook, “A Gringo Guide to a Mexican Kitchen.”. Every writer knows that after the Bible, cookbooks are the next best selling books.
My wife and I worked together compiling recipes of traditional Mexican food, and Spanish/English glossaries for fruits, vegetables, meats, cooking utensils, etc. By the spring of 1986 I had my first book ready for publication, and offered it for sale, on consignment, at a local book store. That was the beginning of my writing career.

Guanajuato, Portal Colonial

My cookbook sold pretty well, and I began my next project, “A Gringo guide to Living in San Miguel.” And so it has gone. Upgrading my work as I grew more experienced I began to make a name for myself, here in San Miguel. And 26 years later I’m still selling the cookbook with lots of additions, but I never had to retype it once!

The Early Years
Running out of pesos meant a trip to the “bean bank.” There was no regular bank in San Miguel in those days. It was on Mesones just after Colegio Street on the right hand side going up. The Hoyos Brothers Legumbre store. You could buy all kinds of lugumes in newspaper cones (everything was sold in hand rolled newspaper cones in those days, there were NO plastic bags back then) there, or cash a check, change dollars to pesos, even open an account and deposit money into it.
The store was nothing fancy, just bins containing beans, corn, lentils, etc. and bulging, burlap bags stacked around the walls. There always seemed to be a giant high-sided truck outside with sweat soaked men carrying heavy sacks on their backs into the rear of the store.
Ceasar, got the money out of the huge old safe that always stood open behind the counter, and counted it out. I preferred small bills and coins because no one in San Miguel could change the larger bills ($50 pesos). For a twenty dollar travelers check I got a fistful of money. Made you feel like Christmas.
(It worked very well until one of the brothers absconded with depositors money one night.)
Flush with money again I wandered into the Cucaracha Bar, alongside the jardin. The front room was full of gringos as it was already 1:00 P.M. The jukebox was jumping playing Glenn Miller tunes. I went on through into the back room to the stand-up saloon counter, and ordered a “Cuba Libre,” from Nico, and sat down along the wall. The only light in the back room was a small Bacardi shaded table lamp on the bar. The gringos were muted a little, and you could carry on a conversation with, “monkey,” “Venus,” or “feo” depending on which one was around. They were the local gringo hustlers. They could get you anything you needed. I mined them for information every chance I had.

San Miguel de Allende, Bajada de Salida a Queretaro

Freddy was there, I never heard him called anything else, in an argument with Chucho, the owner. Seems Freddy received one free drink a day, everyday, out of Chucho’s kindness, and having spent the previous week in jail was demanding his 7 free drinks!