San Miguel de Allende
Becoming a Writer – The Early Years, Wolfman Jack
One evening in the Jardin, my fiance was in a rambunctious mood
and she “picked up” another eighteen year old Gringo for her
sixteen year old sister. (All she had to do was crook her finger
at him and he came running). His name was James and he was
from a small town in Texas. He’d come to Mexico to write,
sounds familiar, hunh. (He wasn’t interested in a sixteen year
old).
We became friends, and he became an addition to our
Cucaracha crowd. Jim found the company amiable enough,
and particularly enjoyed the free, late-night drinking and juke
box listening.
Jim turned us on to the Wolfman Jack radio show, which was being
broadcast from Villa Cuna, Coahuila. It was the strongest radio
station in the world before Mexico and the U.S. signed a radio
treaty between them limiting the strength of radio station signals,
and could be heard, at night, all over North America. Jim,
El Chivo, and I would take my convertible to Celaya every
night to listen to the Wolfman, listen to rock and roll, drink beer, and
eat the locally famous tortas they served in Celaya before
driving back. It was the only way to hear good rock and roll in
Mexico then.
After I’d been around for awhile, that summer of 1962, in San
Miguel, I decided to throw a party in my new one-room apartment
on Codo Street which cost me only $16 U.S. a month. It had a
patio with a tiny empty room in one corner for a kitchen, I
guess, a bathroom in the other corner, and a large bedroom on the
opposite side of the patio. It had very little furniture, but it
had a fireplace. Coming from south Florida it was a welcome
novelty. The weather was warm, but Jim and I built a fire anyway.
We invited everyone we knew and in a galvanized wash tub mixed a
punch of bottled orange juice, canned pineapple juice, lime
juice, and a quart of 96 percent pure, sugar cane alcohol that
cost about 25 cents. A really good, inexpensive drink with a
wallop. We had a blue enameled ladle and paper cups. No food.
I had brought a small, portable record player and some rock
records down with me, and the party was a huge success. The rock
and roll you heard in Mexico in those days was mostly Mexican
rerecordings of American songs in Spanish. The Mexicans hated
them as much as we gringos did. So when passers by on the street
heard real U.S. rock and roll being played they came right in and
joined the party. The only trouble was we didn’t know half of the
people there, but from then on they knew us which was more
important to our integration into the community after all.
It was here that we met the Hernandez brothers. Antonio and
Javier were weavers. They made their living weaving serapes on
huge, homemade looms, working 10-12 hours a day, six days a week.
Their nights were spent looking for parties. Especially parties
given by Americans, who had the money to buy the best food and
liquor. They’d just walk in like they owned the place, and begin
earnest conversations, in Spanish, with the nearest couples. The
hosts were usually fooled into thinking that they had come with
that couple and leave them alone.
So, in order to save some money Jim and I joined them on weekends
crashing parties all over town.
About that time I bought a pistol and began carrying it on my
carousings. Not because I needed it, but because I wanted to. One
day I was in the Infierno bar minding my own business, having a
beer and in stormed the cops. There was about six of them, and at
rifle point lined the Mexican patrons up against the wall and
began searching them. I figured my pistol was going to be taken
away from me, but when I stood up to join the others at the wall
the boys in blue apologized for the inconvenience and told me that
I could remain seated. Finding no weapons they backed out of the
bar and went on to the next one. I was amazed and took my pistol
out of my waistband and waved it at the now vacant door. All the
Mexicans cheered me loudly, and I became a celebrity.
On our way home from our carousing, at about two or three A.M.,
we would invariably stop by La Muerte’s taco stand which he set
up every night under a huge old tree, next to the Convent of La
Concepcion. There we learned about Mexican food, chili sauces,
hot peppers, and about Mexican men’s manner of good natured joking….
(Jim eventually drifted back to San Miguel via a cab driving job
in San Francisco, and a mystery he managed to get published,
around 1984. But he had to go back to San Francisco and his cab
driving when he cussed out his agent on the phone, and his publisher
refused his second book.)
Calle de Mesones
Living and Writing in Mexico 