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Tags: Guanajuato, History, Mexico, San Miguel de Allende, travel
The Early Years – Becoming a Writer
7 Dec
The Early Years – Becoming a Writer
Copyright William J. Conaway, 2012
Jaime Morris
Sitting in the jardin early one morning, Jim and I watched a large black man ride an extra large horse past the parroquia, and up Correo Street.
We found out that his name was Jim “Jaime” Morris, and that he had a string of horses that he rented. We talked it over and decided to try it out. Neither of us had ridden much, but we had always wanted to, growing up as we had with the “Lone Ranger,” and all the other western heroes on TV and in the movies.
We found his “ranch” on the hill overlooking the San Juan de Dios church. He told us that he was from Chicago, a retired cop, and yes he would rent us horses and teach us some of the finer points of horseback riding.
During the following days, he taught us how to mount properly and the use of the reins. We learned how to make a horse back up, and by a little more pressure with the reins to make them rear up on their hind legs. Well, I thought that was great stuff, and did it over and over again. ‘Til one day I pulled back a little too hard, and the horse went over backwards! Luckily he landed on his side, and I was not crushed to death underneath him. Needless to say that was the last time I reared a horse.
In our conversations with Jaime, we learned he had come to San Miguel to establish a community of black folks in town, followers of the Bahia Faith. He showed us his hillside he had all staked out into small lots that he was planning to sell to them. We even watched him interview a group that had come to see what he was offering.
( Listed on Wikipedia: The Bahá’í Faith ( /bəˈhaɪ/)[1] is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá’u’lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind.)
Unfortunately for Jaime the city fathers, along with the Catholic church ganged up on him and he had to drop his plans (or be stoned to death).
We learned to ride pretty well, and didn’t have to pay as Jaime enjoyed being able to speak English with someone once in a while. We helped herd his goats, sheep, and horses down the hill to the creek that flowed there (now a partially open sewer with a hodge podge of venders squatting on top of the covered part).
Years later, my friend Jim used his riding talents as an extra, in Spain, working on a spaghetti western.
It’ll Do – It Takes Some Thought to Run for State Representative
5 Dec
It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway,1989
Episode 16 – It Takes Some Thought to Run for State Representative
We were sitting around one day talking about good old Tommy Thompson and how he was out of a job again.
“Isn’t Senator Flogg due to step down this year?” asked Sully. It was true: Senator Flogg had been having some trouble with the press and it wasn’t exactly a secret that he had been promoting a Florida real estate deal, which had got him some property down there. Representative Boyd Ferrel would naturally step up to take the Senate seat, but that would leave Boyd’s seat open.
“You don’t have to be very smart to be a State Representative,”: Orville reminded everyone.
“That’s one thing you can’t be,” said J.C.
Everyone admits that Tommy Thompson was the best quarterback that Cherryville ever had, but that was quite a few years ago, and life goes on.
Tommy has worked at just about every job anyone could manufacture for him. Lots of people have bought insurance policies, used cars, stocks or futures from him that didn’t really want. Whatever it was though, people could tell that Tommy didn’t have the heart for it. He should have been a coach, but he could never get his Teacher’s Certificate.
Orville went on, “I don’t think Tommy would be any worse than your average Representative. I don’t see how he could possibly do anyone any harm, and since everyone in the county knows Tommy, he could probably get the job.”
Then Sully brought up the sad fact that you couldn’t run any kind of campaign without money, and he didn’t think Tommy had any. But if you didn’t have buttons and bumper-stickers and such no-one would take you seriously. He had a point.
Most of the afternoon was taken up considering exactly how we could help Tommy Thompson in his forthcoming campaign. We agreed, most of us, that is, that the only thing he needed to win was money, and so the consideration came down to how we could get some for him. We crossed off a Benefit Goat Roping, a Benefit Beer Bust at the Fair Grounds, and The First Annual Invitational Great Tortoise-Trot–they were the only ideas we had.
Orville suggested a Wet T-shirt contest, but after we discussed it we decided there wasn’t enough good material in town to make it very interesting.
One thing about the It’ll Do, you just had to wait awhile and some one will come through the door. So we got some more suggestions. Fletch Flecher thought maybe someone could sit a flag pole for two or three weeks, but no-one volunteered to do it. There was the idea of raffling off a woman, and Gordon said he would talk to the bar-maid at the “Barn”, who would probably help out for a good cause–but that was just talk.
Vera made more sense than anyone, but that’s not unusual, when she said before we went off half-cocked perhaps someone should ask Tommy’s wife, Mary Sue, what she thought? You notice, Vera didn’t say anything about asking Tommy. Vera said she would pick up Mavis and the two of them would drive out and talk with Mary Sue.
This was fine with the rest of us, because we had started to seriously consider the problem, and there were some interesting possibilities coming to light. Vera–God Bless her–didn’t have the type of sense of humor which would allow her to appreciate some of the things we were thinking.
To tell the truth, we couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t either too dangerous, like having a Demolition Derby on Main street, or too illegal.
The idea of building a Viking ship, sailing it from here down the river and up to Scandinavia came up. Having people pledge so much a nautical mile would have been legal, if anyone would actually go through with it. Nobody wanted too. Thad came in from his farm with about eight gallons of honey in his truck and Orville suggested to him that the best hing you could do with honey was to make Mead. You could home-brew some powerful stuff with honey. Orville said mead was what the old Vikings drank.
By the time Vera got back we had pretty well decided on it.
There’s an old quarry north of town that is almost like an amphitheater, a pretty place. In the quarry there’s always some water standing; deep enough for perch, clear as a bell. We would put on a revival there, and the water would be handy for baptisms.
Now, what we would do is to make up about ten five-gallon jugs of mead. We could get the honey donated, we wouldn’t call this drink by its right name, we would call it Nectar, and sell it for fifty-cents the jigger. We wouldn’t even need a percentage from the collection plate.
Vera said that she and Mavis had talked with Tommy–Mary Sue was getting her hair done–and Tommy wasn’t sure he was the right man for the job. He was giving serious consideration to taking over the Florida business from Flogg, when Flogg retired….
It’ll Do – LOVE STORY OF MAVIS McEWN
3 Dec
It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway, 1989
Chapter 16 – LOVE STORY OF MAVIS McEWN
“I’m not the best person to be telling this,” said J.C. “But I guess I know Mavis about as well as anyone here. She’s my friend”.
No-one would have thought it—after all, Mavis is somewhere on the long side of forty. If you haven’t been dumb enough to fall in love before that age, its no time to start and Lord knows, not with him.
Who was he? Well, Sully didn’t know, nor any of the rest of us either. He had come into the It’ll Do several times and we under- stood that he was out of Kansas City looking over places for a new Wal-Mart.
Every time I saw him his shoes were shined and he wore a coat and tie. He had a city hair-cut, and he was polite in a way that had nothing to do with being polite. How he attracted Mavis, I don’t know, but it wasn’t by reciting poetry.
“Now, Mavis doesn’t have any money to speak of, at least not that I could tell. She looks all right, but nothing that you’d send a snap-shot to all your friends about”.
The feeling in the It’ll Do was, it was love on her part—we all knew exactly what HE was interested in.
“I want to describe Mavis, because you don’t know her. Perhaps you should: she’s one of the best people in Cherryville. She is a librarianand looks like one. Except she smiles a lot and there’s nothing phony about it”.
“She makes everyone at the bar feel a little better when she comes in. She showed up in Cherryville about fifteen years ago. She had her Teaching Certificate but got a job in the county library instead. I wasn’t in town at the time, but I know she took over the library and made a popular place of it. When I got back in town she had some of the retirees reading right along with the kids. I don’t read much myself”.
“She doesn’t dress like an old maid school teacher, everything is well packaged. She wears her hair long, and always smells nice. She’s like when the leaves are turning and the wind is coming from the north”.
“What did she see in this gopher from Kansas City?”
He was driving one of those four-banger foreign sports cars that, I’ll admit, looked pretty slick. The car was the best thing about him. He was a good five years younger than Mavis.
They came into the It’ll Do together and he went over and shoveled some quarters into the juke box. Sully should have been happy about that—it doesn’t get played that often. Then the dude slides and greases around, inviting Mavis to come out and dance.
Hardly anyone dances at the It’ll Do except, maybe when there’s some occasion and everyone has had a little too much and there’s an urge to jump around with someone else. There’s, this ass who thinks he is cutting some figure when all he is really doing is embarrassing everyone—Mavis included. She, being the Lady she is, acts as if she didn’t notice the dead silence that came over the people of the It’ll Do.
The music was going and the dude was singing along with it. She just slid into one of the booths and sat there until finally the guy gives up and goes over to join her.
I would very much like to tell you that I went over and bashed his head in, or even that Orville did. Or Sully—but he wouldn’t because he likes a quiet, family, sort of place.
Mavis McEwn would have had her head on a little straighter if the County hadn’t come in and changed the Library into a Computer/ Communications Center and took away most of the books and replaced them with what-all, Mavis changed. Even though she stayed on at the Carnegie Library as the new Computer Communication Center Coordinator, everyone could see that she was fit to be tied.
I was looking down into my glass of beer and brooding, thinking that this was no cause for her to take up with some dude who didn’t know how to pour piss out of a boot; no-one—and sure as hell not me—was going to sit around and see her get hurt.
Orville was looking into his beer and he didn’t look very friendly either. Sully had cleaned all the glasses around the bar a couple of times.
Normally Old Man Williams wouldn’t get up off his bar stool unless maybe it was for a fire, but he went over to where Mavis was sitting (the dude was up again, waltzing around the little dance floor alone with a beer in his hand). Now, Old Man Williams weighs the better part of four-hundred pounds. When he goes somehere you’d best be out of his way.
When I saw him going across the room I thought maybe he was going to go sit on the dude. I wanted him to. If you knew Old Man Williams, you’d know he never has much to say. So, naturally, I didn’t think he was going over there to talk. He kneeled down beside Mavis. It was quite a sight.
“Mavis, dear, there is not much left for me in my old age but to share my wisdom, with those I truly admire. I’ve come to know and love you through the years. I’ve seen your goodness. How you’ve inspired the children and the old folks. You’re a torch that lights Cherryville with a kindness and an appreciation for the best within us.”
Well you could have heard a pin drop then because the music had stopped and nobody had ever heard Old Man Williams talk so much before.
“Mavis,” he continued, “I going to beat this son-of-a-bitch to a rag picker’s pulp right here, or would you prefer that I take him out in the back to do it?”
Mavis breathed what we took to be a sigh of relief, and gave Old Man Williams a kiss on the cheek.
The last we saw of the dude was his back-side going out the door. Old Man Williams couldn’t pay for a drink that night. Nor all the next week—and they weren’t all drinks on The House, either.
It’ll Do – Hogs is Hogs
30 Nov
It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway, 1989
Episode 14 – Hogs is Hogs
Hogs aren’t something to be taken lightly in Cherryville. We have too many of them and a good part of our revenue comes from them. They may not give Cherryville a very good smell but they pay the bills.
Some of the local boosters decided to have a greased pig festival. There were others who said that it was cruel and moved to stop it. Personally, I didn’t see anything cruel about a buch of folks slithering around trying to catch a greased pig–if anything it would be worse on the people than on the hog.
Of the regulars in the It’ll Do, only Alice Mae was against it. But when Alice Mae was against something it had an impact.
“Don’t you think we have enough cruelty without tormenting one of God’s creatures, Sully?” she asked.
Sully didn’t have an answer for this. Nor did anyone else at the bar, but I don’t think anyone felt that what she said made any sense. It couldn’t be any more ridiculous than picking a Home-coming Queen, and was probably less cruel.
This is how Vera and Sully almost broke up, because Vera took up for Alice Mae, and Sully couldn’t see any sense to it. Sully is anything, if he isn’t smart. So he says, “Why don’t we have a Pig Beauty Contest?”
It was a good idea–maybe better than the time we tried to start the Union Navy. We have plenty of pigs in Cherryville–and it just makes sense that some of them are more beautiful than others. Doesn’t it?
Sully was wearing that sliding grin that he gets once in a while, but he was right on the beauty contest. Why not?
Now, everyone got into the spirit of it and those that didn’t have any hogs were supplied one by Thad, who had plenty. Some of them were pretty too.
The city council thought it was a good idea, and the Chamber of Commerce put up three prizes from some of the local merchants. The radio picked it up and made a big thing of it.
Now, Sully started this. You might say it was his fault. If people hadn’t started naming these pigs after people it probably would have gone all right, but it didn’t.
The Governor was “honored” by one of the ugliest pigs you ever saw. That was all right. Reverend Thame’s wife also got an ugly one. “Rosemary” was really an ugly pig. It just went on building.
Mavis from the library, tried to put a stop to it. “Why don’t we,” Mavis said over her dark beer, “just have a people beauty contest, rather than hogs, they can fight back.”
We elected to go with the hogs.
Vera had this puppy that she was really fond of, and she entered it. It wasn’t fair, of course, because everyone knows a puppy is better looking than a hog. When Sully protested, Vera threatened something terrible and he didn’t say anything more about it. Then Old Man Williams said, “No.” and Vera backed off.
The fair grounds were not in use so the contest was held there. We had a good crowd of people and pigs. We had to take all of this seriously because about twelve kids had entered their pigs, and we couldn’t very well tell them that the whole thing was only bar-talk.
Would you believe it?–Senator Flogg was there expecting to award the prizes. Mrs. Seltz from the Chamber was there, and Pettybone from the Mayor’s Office. There were about twenty-five hogs of various sizes, each with an owner or renter.
When it came down to the judging, it didn’t take very long. If you like hogs, there were some really fine ones there. Yet, only one could win. So they drew straws, in secret, behind the stands.
The winner belonged to Alice Mae and she named it “Elvin”.
The real Elvin sticks pretty close to Cherryville these days, here is a story he told at the bar one day:
When he was a young man he left his farm home and went West. The funny thing was, he had a twin brother, Edwin, who left home about the same time. There were seven other kids in the family, and it wasn’t like they were abandoning their parents–I expect they were glad, in a way, to see them go.
Elvin went up to Oregon and found some work logging. Then he drifted back to Montana and tried to figure out how to stay on a horse and do something useful. He admitted that he wasn’t very successful at that. He tried Arkansas, working in a saw-mill. By that time he was twenty or so. He hadn’t been back to see his folks or his brothers and sisters in about three years. He hadn’t seen his twin brother either.
Right down next to the Bus Station there’s an all-night cafe. Now, how Elvin ended up in Cherryville is somewhat of a mystery–even to him. He was just drifting, he said. One night in November, he thought it was, Elvin stopped in there for a bowl of good hot chili. Who came in the door and sat down on the next stool? Uh-huh, Edward.
“Hi, brother. Those darn busses will give you hemorrhoids, don’t you know?”
“Yeah well, I’ve been on quite a few, been lucky so far”. “This chili is pretty good, though”.
“You talked to home?”
“Nope”.
“Me, neither,” Edward said. “Be seeing you, I expect.”
He never did.
We figure that Elvin has the strength of two. So does he, at times. He’s President of our Chamber of Commerce. If he had a mind to, he could be our next State Representative–but I don’t think he wants to get that far from Cherryville. I’ll tell you one thing though–if we have anything to say about it, he will be our next Mayor.
It’ll Do – Sully’s Place
28 Nov
It’ll Do
Copyright William J. Conaway, 1989
Episode 13 – SULLY’S PLACE
I was sitting at the long oak bar of the It’ll Do sipping on a Bud. I was waiting for someone who wanted to shoot some pool, when this girl came in. She looked just old enough to order (although I’ve known Sully to make some exceptions for under-agers when they had one of his regulars with them). She was pretty, all right. J.C. and I were talking about something-or-other. We both turned around a little to get a better look at her, naturally. She was really a looker—in a clean sort of way. Her hair was black and cut short. J.C. and I weren’t the only ones looking, Sully was too. We all enjoyed a good look as she glided across the room. She slid up on one of the bar stools about mid-way betweenJ.C. and me.
“My name’s Orville,” I said. “Care to shoot a game of pool?”
“No thank you Orville. Could you tell me where to find the boss?”
“That’s him behind the bar,” I said, more than a little disappointedly.
Sully’s not a letch, he couldn’t get away with it in Cherryville. He might have been just a little more susceptible what with Vera out of town. At least, he seemed friendlier than he usually was with strangers.
I could tell you what they said back-and-forth, but it was just get acquainted talk. Her name was Jane. His was Jerome Sullivan, but just call me Sully; all my friends do.
About that time J.C. said he thought he’d go over and make her welcome. He were back in a few minutes. Jane asked for a couple of minutes alone with Sully. What I guess she didn’t know was that the It’ll Do is a quiet bar, a family bar, sort of…
“Mr. Sullivan, I’m looking for a job”.
“Well, you could try `The Barn’ just outside of town”.
“I was there last night”.
Her normal smile turned into a frown. It didn’t make Jane look any less pretty, though.
“It doesn’t have the—what do you call it? The right atmosphere. Not for me, it’s pretty rowdy. The manager out there! I don’t think he is a very classy man”. Mr. Sullivan, this is such a NICE bar, really it is. I could tell right away.”
“Jane, we’ve never ever needed a bar-maid here”.
“Never?”
“Un uh. Not much call for one in a place like the It’ll Do. This is a pretty quiet place, you know”.
J.C. turned back to me and whispered, “I’ll bet you five that Sully hires her”.
“Are you smoking some of that funny tobacco, J.C.? Sully doesn’t need any bar-maid. Besides, Vera would probably cut him off for a month for hiring her without her say-so”.
“J.C., I’m a hell of a lot older than you, and I can read people as well as you can read a comic book. It’s a bet”.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Jane said. “I really do need this job. I can work the booths. Full-time or evenings, if you want me to”.
“I’m really sorry, Jane, but I can’t use you,” Sully said.
When Sully hired Jane it did brighten up the place considerably. She was one hell of better person to look at than Sully that’s for sure. I’m not saying anything against Vera, but Jane was a good fifteen years younger.
Business did pick up some. Jane got all the normal passes you’d expect, regulars and salesmen, even some of the town folk who didn’t normally stop into the It’ll Do. She didn’t go out with anybody (we would have known about that) and she didn’t make any big fuss about the passes either. She just kept on being a nice, clean, sweet girl. Of course Sully didn’t have her dress up in any of those fancy costumes like they do in other places.
Sully seemed pleased to have her around. People sitting in the booths used to have to get up and serve themselves. When Jane started serving them, there seemed to be a lot more people sitting over there. It wasn’t the service so much as it was Jane. Ladies seemed to like her just fine. When the booths were empty, she would go back behind the
bar and help Sully with the clean-up work. Sully liked that, I could tell.
I kept on thinking on what would happen when Vera got home. That didn’t turn out to be the problem, no, sir.
One day, about a week after Jane came to work, a stranger came in. He went over and sat down in one of the booths. When a stranger comes in we’re polite but wary. The regulars check him out. This fellow dressed in smart fashion. About thirty-five, I’d say, with long hair for this part of the country. He was wearing a tie. Jane went over to take his order.
“Sully,” she said later, “I know that man from somewhere”.
“Is he giving you any trouble?” Sully asked.
“Oh, no. I just know him from someplace”.
“Well, if he does, just come over and tell me”.
Jane gave him a big smile and nodded a few times. A few minutes later I went over and asked this stranger if he’d care to shoot some pool, he accepted. Instead of lagging for the break, I told to go ahead and shoot first. This is just plain good strategy—it bound him to play a second game, giving me the break. I’m not a shark. I shoot good pool, that’s all. I don’t, as a matter of principle, pull my shots. Sometimes one game with me is enough for some people. So why not let him take the break? Why not? He ran the table on me. I might as well have been out baling hay, for all it mattered.
One thing I did notice about this fellow was, not only was he one hell of a shooter, but he sort of swished as he moved around the table, positioning his shots. I swear—he waggled his ass four or five times before and after every shot. You get the picture? That damn well didn’t keep him from taking the first game and my five dollars.
I went up for two more beers from Sully and overheard:
“Sully, how long has it been since you’ve given the It’ll Do a face-lift? It’s none of my business, I know, but, it’s getting a little dingy,” Jane was saying.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Sully said looking around the place.
“What made me think of it was I remember who that man is. The one shooting pool with Orville. He’s the decorator who redid the Park Place over in Wichita not long ago. I was working there. He improved that place about four-hundred percent. He might have some ideas for you”.
Well that confirmed it for me; about Delbert, I mean…an interior decorator. Sully called him over to the bar before I could get back to start the second game.
They talked for quite some time, until the regulars started drifting in. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because I was over at the table practicing shots. They talked so long that two farmers came over and claimed the table out from under me.
The next day the deer head was down, the beer signs were off the walls. Tim Foley was busy at work dismantling the horse-shoe booths. Delbert was doing some supervising, parading around the room looking this way and that. The day after, the juke box was taken out. It went on from there. Sully even closed the It’ll Do, for repairs.
When he opened up a week later all the regulars came back. It was terrible. As if your favorite bird dog had turned into a toad.
We knew who the culprit was. He was the fellow in the fancy sports jacket and shiny shoes who was jumping all of us. Pointing out this or that and taking credit for all of it. Thank God Sully didn’t, no-one would’ve ever talked to him again.
First, the pool table was gone. A good sized dancing floor was where it used to be. Some big speakers were hanging on the wall sending out so much music a body couldn’t talk. The oak bar was now padded plastic. Above it were wooden glass holders that held the glasses upside-down. Carpet was on the floor. It wasn’t even regular carpet. It was pieces of carpet in different colors cut to fit any-which-a-way curves. The ceiling was about seven feet overhead and had all these little colored lights poking out here and there. Seating? I’ll tell you. There were little round tables with ice cream parlor chairs around them.
The bar stools had been changed to things with chrome tubing and clear Plexiglas. Maybe a body could perch on one of them—I didn’t know. On the wall opposite to the bar was this painting. All different colors in circles, triangles and squares.
I had a double dark beer while standing up between two of those chrome things. Mavis actually got up on one. She ordered a double dark too. I imagine just about everyone ordered the same while sitting in those dumb ice cream chairs. They were served by Jane. She was wearing a halter top and short-shorts. Well, she was a looker, all right.
Sully was smiling. There was a twitch to it. “What do you all think?”
J.C. tried to bang his beer glass down on the bar, but it just thudded.
“Where in the hell is the God-damned pool table, Sully?” J.C. strangled”.
As we were all leaving we saw some men taking down the “It’ll Do” sign. There, in their truck, was a brand new one. It had colored lights and neon both, it read: “Sully’s Place”.
Well, you know what happened. We ended up hanging around in this dump on the other side of town. It had a pool table, even though it was as ratty, as the bar was.
Vera finally got home a few days later. We got the rest of what happened from her. She came in the front door and nearly fainted. Shocked or not, she didn’t turn mad. When Vera gets mad it’s something. Then Jane came out of the Ladies Room and Vera saw her. THEN it was something.
While she was working Sully over, the bank called to say that Sully had charged a bunch of materials. If he wanted a loan, they said, he would have to check with his partner, McGinty first.
Sully had to call McGinty and he drove over. One good look around the place and he told Sully he was dissolving their partnership. Just as soon as he could get his cousin, the lawyer, to draw up papers. Vera said she was going back to visit her sister again.
During the day a lot of curious people came in Sully’s Place to see what was what. Word spreads around Cherryville faster than your bad check will get to the bank. Before it got dark a strange thing happened. You wouldn’t think there were so many weird people living in a small town like this one. There are, they all started coming in until the bar looked like some of those you read about. It must have been a sight.
Sully started taking his own medicine, double dark’s. He normally wouldn’t do this. He was losing his senses fast. Finally he just put a bottle of bourbon on the bar and was pouring him self straight shots into a beer mug. One of the normal people in town must have come in and seen it.
The next you knew, Toot swings in the door and goes over to the bar. He lifted Sully’s head from the bar counter and tried to explain to him he was under arrest. For serving liquor contrary to State Law.
Vera, bless her heart, didn’t get on the bus. She stayed home so she could bail Sully out the next day. That left Jane to run the bar. Vera didn’t want to see Jane very much, so that was fine with her.
About noon the next day Sully returned to the scene of the crime. Jane, Delbert and the money from the till was gone. they had pulled a fast one. They were last seen arm-in-arm, boarding a bus headed west.
It took almost a month to put the It’ll Do back together again. One thing, Sully insisted on personally pulling down the “Sully’s Place” sign—and cut an ankle stomping on it.
Living and Writing in Mexico 