Rags to Riches

                                    Rags to Riches

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            Remember, a few weeks ago I stayed in the sleaziest hotel in Chacala? Lovely town. Ugly hotel experience.

            This week, thanks to the generosity of Kathy and Richard, I am in the most Posh hotel in Cancun, which says a lot! Cancun is “Tourist Mecca”, jaw-dropping beauty.

            My friends also invited Leo. Leo entered our lives as our gardener. Now he’s our friend. It is our bonus that he also gardens.

            Kathy said that this is the Ultimate Blowout Vacation, making use of time-share points they had to use or lose. I said, Wow, and Thanks.

            To get to Cancun from Guadalajara, we chose “Wingflap Air,” cheap with no frills. The plane was powered by dogs running a treadmill in the belly of the plane. The treadmill connected by rubber band to the prop in the nose. The dogs set off a yowl when the pilot released the rabbits. Rabbits ran. Dogs chased. Plane lifted into the air.

            When we got within sight of Cancun, the pilot pushed a button to drop the exhausted rabbits to the ground, may they rest in peace. The dogs settled down to a feast of doggy biscuits. We coasted to a landing.

            Once we picked up baggage, we made a huge mistake. We separated. Kathy and Richard took a shuttle to the hotel to check in. Leo and I shuttled to rent a car.

            The mistake? We did not think to have a copy of the hotel registration. Security is tight at this resort. We tried to phone Kathy. Her phone shuttled us to voice-mail.

            Ever-resourceful Leo got in touch with his inner lawyer and negotiated our way through three security check points before we could drive up to the lobby. Leo is a pro—he hardly broke a sweat. Me, I freaked, considered spending the week in another low-rent hotel. Silly me.

            Ah, the lobby! The grounds! The buildings! The greenery! The pools! The coconut palms! The fountains! The statuary! The turquoise sea! Words fail me.

            The rooms! Yes, the rooms. We made our way to Building 14, Unit 345. At the elegant carved wooden double doors, none of our keycards opened sesame. Kathy released her phone from airplane mode to call the lobby. A man arrived to fix our door lock. He called another man. Five men and forty minutes later, we entered our palatial suite.

            My room alone is an entire suite with every possible amenity. We each have a suite within the larger suite, if you can imagine. In the center we have a huge kitchen (which we will never use), a dining room and living room, all enormous. Each room faces the sea with a lovely balcony. Each room has a bathroom. A Jacuzzi tub sits in a nook on the balcony off the living room. Are you getting the picture?

In addition to the furnished kitchen, we each have our own coffee pot, microwave and stocked fridge. Each bath is stocked with toiletries to serve every need. Except soap. Somebody forgot to leave us soap. Toothbrushes, tooth paste, razors, loofahs, shoe rags, hair products galore, but no soap.

            But we were hungry, have not eaten all day. Dark descended. We left to find one of the several restaurants. I’ll tell you, when it comes to negotiations, Kathy and Leo make an unbeatable team. Kathy talked our way into seats in a reservations-only restaurant.

            We feasted. Such cuisine. Every bite delicious. Impeccable service. Our every desire satisfied before our brains had a notion there might be a lurking desire. Every bite elicited embarrassing mmmmm noises.

            When we returned to our rooms, we had soap. Which was nice. Because that might have registered as the most satisfying shower I’ve ever had.

            But this is not reality. This is not Mexico. This is a Disneyland sort of place.

            In the beginning, we felt a bit out of our element, not quite comfortable. Now we recognize this experience as a retreat, a week for each of us to feel petted and pampered.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 11, 2019

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Tempus Fugit

            Tempus Fugit

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            Time flies and the older I get, the faster it fugits. As I contemplate yet another birthday, that mean ol’ tempus is fugiting at the speed of light.

            To add injury to insult, this weekend we will set the clocks ahead in Mexico. I know, you up north are already over the shock of change.  In a few days I will struggle to remember what time it really is, whatever that means, since “time” is but an arbitrary measure.

            Before I wax too philosophical, let me change directions and note that my snowbird friends are flying north at jet speed.

            Crin left for Victoria last Sunday. Julie flew back to Minneapolis yesterday. Jim leaves for Missouri next Sunday. John and Carol are heading out in another two weeks. Pat and Nancie have been gone for three weeks. Kathy and Richard leave again the end of April.

            Like kiwi birds or emus, Lani and I will be left, summer-time flightless birds. Oops, Lani plans to sprout wings in May and fly north for an extended period of time. Woe is me, alone and abandoned.

            Try as I might, I am unable to squeeze out even a crocodile tear since Saturday four of us are sneaking off to Cancun for a week of fun in the eastern sun. At last, I will get to see the Caribbean, unexplored territory. Happy Birthday to me.

            When my friends go north, they leave a hole in my soul and a hole in my daily life. We don’t do all things as a group but our paths criss-cross with frequency. Just this week I had lunch with two different friends. Plus, one afternoon six of us women drove up the mountain to Restaurante Don Luis for a three hour meal that was more laughter than food.

            Judging by stories I am told, the original folks who built these homes we now inhabit, had common ground. They were travelers with campers and RVs, were retired military, and liked to party hearty. Oh, we here are so different!

            The other night, sitting on my patio, Julie and I agreed, our present conglomeration of residents, whom I have come to love so quickly, have absolutely nothing in common. We come from quirkily diverse backgrounds. At times we act on one another like sandpaper. Whatever our roughness, we smooth it out. We share food, borrow ladders and trade plants.

            We are all mature enough to know to look inside our own guts first when we have a problem with another person.

Time. Time is a great helper, a revealer, more often than not, replacing petty snarls and sniffs with understanding and respect. Sandpaper or time, we interact with varying and shifting degrees of tolerance, acceptance and downright liking.

Perhaps it is no accident we were each drawn to be here at this time in life; perhaps there is a strange, unknowable, purpose in grinding our rough edges. Or not.

One by one, we arrived to fill the empty houses. I came to visit my cousin. Others came to visit me. Some were in the adjacent campground and ended up staying to restore a trashed house. None of our stories connect through common ground.

So sometimes we grind against one another. Some sand paper is fine; other paper is coarse. We seem to smooth out any bumps. I’ll miss my friends when they are all gone. But I am easy with my solitude.              

Before I’m alone again, I will move forward the hands on the face of my clock. I will fly with friends to Cancun in yet another time zone and be totally confused. What time is it? Time to celebrate my birthday with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. Skip the candles, please.

When I return home, I shall remember that time has a very special grit of sandpaper for we who live alone. Meanwhile, tempus fugit.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 4, 2019

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The Sleaziest Hotel in Chacala

            The Sleaziest Hotel in Chacala

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            We told her. We told her. Never again is she allowed to pick the hotel.

            “The owner is really nice,” she said.

            “Yes, the owner is a nice man; his wife is nice, his three-year-old daughter is cute.” The hotel is sleazy.

            Not sleazy in the way of an immoral business conducted in a hotel on the outer edge of town posting hourly rates, but sleazy in the way of shabby, dirty, sordid, inadequate and unpleasant.

            In her defense, she didn’t know and none of us checked it out before we booked.

            I suppose we’ve all had an experience like this, if we’ve traveled. I remember a motel off the highway on the way to Phillipsburg . . . but that is a different story.

            Lani, her husband, Ariel, Carol and myself drove to Chacala on the coast in Nayarit. If one has a large enough map and a magnifying glass, one might find Chacala north a bit from Puerto Vallarta. We went seeking a three-day holiday to scout out the town as a possible destination to flee next year’s colder weeks in January.

            We chose Chacala, a tiny fishing village, carved into the mountains on the edge of a small bay, for its isolation and quiet. The setting is beautiful. The townsfolks welcoming and friendly. 

            Our hotel perched two blocks above the main street along the beachfront. Straight up the hill on a street covered with ankle-turning rubble. The hotel office is a cell phone in the owner’s pocket.

Built onto a narrow lot, the two floors each contained three rooms.   My room required a precarious climb up a curving narrow staircase littered with construction debris.

             Sparse. Dirty white in color. A cell with two beds, a bathroom, and one dollar store plastic chair. No shelves, no dresser, no tables. One bedside wall lamp had no bulb. The other lamp had a bulb but didn’t work. The bathroom bulb had burned out and not been replaced. There was not a spot of color. White sheets covered the beds.

I made the best of it. I emptied my suitcase onto one bed, converting it to closet, drawers and shelves. For a mere three day trip, I had packed my two down pillows and my blue plush blanky.

We all made the best of it. After all, what’s to complain, we did have hot water for showers.  

Did I mention construction debris? Work men were building a third floor to the structure, adding three more rooms above. Seven in the morning until dark, hammering, hammering; dust and noise prevailed.

I speak but a minimum of our collective complaints. To say the hotel is “bare bones” might be complimentary. Why didn’t we move out? I don’t know. We grumbled. A lot. We had prepaid, in cash. Perhaps our room fees paid this week’s construction costs. Perhaps hope of a refund was long gone.   

Chacala, a lovely jewel on the sea. Chacala is not a tourist destination, not a high-rise resort town. We popped into several hotels, peered into empty rooms, inquired about rates.  We poked our noses into hotels with a dozen rooms. We checked out others with twenty or thirty rooms, all clean, all colorful, all reasonable in price, all along the beachfront, none perched precariously on the hillside.

We ate seafood at a different restaurant (or street stand) every meal. We found the best coffee in town. We spent hours on the beach, lingering over every meal. We talked. We read books. We lounged. Carol and Lani swam. Ariel and I shared a dozen oysters on the half shell, in ecstasy over every bite while Carol and Lani grimaced with disgust. We had good times.

Then we trudged back up the hill to our hotel.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 28, 2019

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What You Gonna Do When Your Well Runs Dry?

            What You Gonna Do When Your Well Runs Dry?

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Three weeks and counting. Two deep wells supply the municipality of Etzatlan with water. One of the city well pumps quit working. Died the good death after a life of service to his community.

Down on the lower edge of town, we in my neighborhood experienced an extreme decrease in water pressure.  We had no idea or thought of concern to what was occurring up on the hillsides.  A week passed before we were aware of a problem. Until our own water ran out.

I took immediate measures to conserve. Short showers every other day. Laundry piles grew high in the bodega.  Flowers gasped with thirst.  My green grass faded to brown. I flushed only when necessary. I stacked dishes in the sink for the once-a-day wash. My insular world is coated with dust. But I have lived with less water.   

Here’s the background story. Etzatlan snuggles tightly in the foothills against a mountain. Water from the two city wells is pumped up the mountain to a huge tank. From there water flows by gravity to the maze of water pipes and to the tinacos or storage reservoirs on every business and household roof.

I am fortunate. There is enough water coming down the hill in the evening while I sleep to replenish my tinaco. I’ve not gone dry one single day. Yes, flowers will wilt and some will die. Most will recover. Laundry will eventually dance on the clothesline. Living with less water is inconvenient for me, no more than that.

Water runs downhill. We at the bottom might have little water but generally enough to keep the tinacos full if nothing else. Those in the foothills have no water whatsoever. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I am fortunate. I repeat, I am fortunate. What I did not know until a few days ago, is that entire sections of town have no water. Miguel, who works on the ranch for Josue, is one without water to his home. Miguel has five children. I quit my whining in an instant when I heard. So, a few flowers die, so what.

The city hired an independent business to fix the pump.  When the pump was determined to be unsalvageable, a new pump was ordered from Monterey. By this time we were two weeks into the water shortage.  In installing the new pump, somebody with fumble fingers, imagine that, dropped the pump into the well, Whoops!  Days pass as attempts are made to retrieve pump. Days.

The “fixer” company ordered a crane in from Guadalajara, which also failed to reach the drowned pump, now in permanent residence in the bottom of the well. Did you notice the water tastes metallic?  More days slide by.

The schools have issued a request for teachers to go slack on the uniform requirements for students. Many families are unable to launder uniforms. Let the children wear whatever is clean and available. It is these little details that let me know how fortunate I actually am.

How do people in town get water? Some walk to a public faucet and fill buckets they lug home. Neighbors put containers into a pickup truck and drive to the water plant to get enough water from the public spigot to get along another day. I quit whining immediately on hearing these stories.

Etzatlan is a small city. We do not have unlimited funds, no spare half a million pesos or more lying in the coffers to order another pump when the city already paid for the first one, which city workers did not drop. I’m telling it like I heard it.

Going into the fourth week, the outcome between the city and the “fixer” company is uncertain. The president of town, an office similar to a mayor, is an astute rancher. Citizens with no water are predictably angry. If I were a gambler, I’d bet the city will scrape together funds to buy a new pump and it will be installed on arrival, even if it takes all night.

News Flash: At 10:00 last night the mayor announced that the city purchased a new pump and it is installed. By tomorrow, everybody should be back on full water service. Who paid? The city.

Listen to the rattle of sinks full of dishes. Every washing machine in town is swishing school uniforms, every clothes line full. In my own yard, hear the small gulps of gratitude as flowers drink heartily.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 21, 2019

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I Got Culture

            I Got Culture

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            Last Thursday Kathy, Richard, Nancie and I drove into Guadalajara for a night of highbrow music.

El Teatro Santo Degollado, in the Centro Historico district where the Orquesta Filamonica performs, is a spectacular building of European architecture, a treat in itself.

Are you impressed? I am. I grew up minus music, other than what I heard on the radio broadcast from Havre.

Kathy, however, an avid cello player for many years, is in a different league and knows music intimately, classical music, that is. I envy her knowledge. I love classical music in which I can lose myself while listening, transported to imaginary worlds. Of musical knowledge, I have none.

Thanks to long winters when I was housebound in Dodson, snowed in on the ranch south of town, thanks to radio from Saskatoon and Regina, every Saturday morning I tuned to opera. Knowledgeable? No. Enjoyable? Yes, very much.

The orchestra preformed works by three Russian composers. The first presentation, by Gliere, should have been last in my estimation. I did not want it to end.  It was alive, purely magical.  

The second, a grouping by Tchaikosky, while romantic, with glimpses of love stories, was inconsistent, alternating wonderful with ho-hum. Remember, now, I an ignorant of music, just telling it like I heard it. Technically, the performance was excellent. It lacked that indefinable spark that creates, what else, magic.

            Shostakovich; mostly I wanted to go home. I heard horses charging through narrow streets. I heard moans of pain and hunger, of war torn fears. The music was savage. The music cried tears. The music exhausted me.

            Later, after much urging by Kathy and hesitation by myself, I told her my impressions. I could have listened, transported, to Gliere all night. I wanted the magic. Interestingly, Kathy, in more sophisticated musical terms, agreed and added knowledge to my assessments.

            Thus, I discovered my hidden musical talent—identifying the magic. I went on to discuss the magic of other music, unknown to Kathy; of Hank, Sr., of Elvis, of Freddie Mercury. I felt redeemed. I felt good.

 It’s true. I got friends in low places and perhaps I ain’t big on social graces. But I know magic when I hear it.

            The following night at the Casa de Cultura in Etzatlan, a different cultural experience unfolded. It was the International Day of the Woman. Etzatlan held a pagaent to honor the Working Woman of the Year.

            Samantha had nominated her mother, Bonnie, and I’d helped Sam prepare the nomination paper. Bonnie, who manages the rancho is a licensed practitioner of Chinese medicine. So I was happy to be in the audience for support.

            A dozen women were in the running. The impressive program was well presented. The women nominated consisted of a professional, a woman runs a dress shop, another who makes and sells crafts such as pinatas, a domestic worker and cooks and vendors of simple foods. Five women were honored for various categories and I wish I could have taken notes. Bonnie was selected as Elegancia Woman of the Year.

            Chosen for The Working Woman of the Year was a quiet and humble woman from Santa Rosalia who made and sold tacos, tamales and atole from her home kitchen. Santa Rosalia, an ehido about ten kilometers from here, is included in the greater Municipalia of Etzatlan.

            The only thing that would have made the night better would have been subtitles. But as a bonus, I learned that the Casa de Cultura sponsors a movie night. Using discretion, of course, being as cultured as I am, I plan to show up regularly at the cinema. Popcorn, please.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 14, 2019

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Strange and Sad and Sweet, Amid Mardi Gras

            Strange and Sad and Sweet, Amid Mardi Gras

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            I’ve heard stories about this elderly couple who live in El Amparo, the abandoned mining town in the mountains, ever since I moved to Etzatlan.

Every Thursday this traditional couple, she in her long skirt, he in baggy white pants, both with wide sombreros, rode horses down the mountain road into town. They stayed the night with family and bought supplies at the Friday morning tianguis. Then in the afternoon, the couple would ride back to their mountain home, carrying their meager needs in saddlebags.  

            “How old are they?” I ask. Answers vary but all agree, somewhere in their nineties. A couple years ago they quit riding horses but kept the same routine, riding into town with neighbors, often sitting on an old bench seat in the open back of the pickup.

Four days ago the old man died. He must have said something like, “It’s okay. I cleared the path. You may come now.” This morning his wife died.

Somehow this news touched me greatly. I don’t know, have never seen, this couple, yet their story lodged in my heart as if they were family.

Sitting in a rocker under the jacaranda, I imagined, made up a life for this couple, who surely had lived in El Amparo back in the mining days. Perhaps they played together in the creek as children. Their fathers were miners. Their mothers called them inside to bathe Saturday night, a light supper of mangoes and tortillas, Church in the morning.

They would have lived through the closing of the mines, fathers out of work, hard times, mothers making do, shelling beans from the garden vines, grinding maize for tortillas on the metate in the back yard.

In a few idle moments I carry the youngsters up a rosary of years, from school mates to sweethearts. They marry. He finds a job in Etzatlan, walks to work down the mountain road every day to the cane fields. Perhaps one day he apprentices to a welder in town, carrying on a job his father once held at the mine.

They have babies, bury their parents, celebrate the good times, tough out the lean years, add a room or two their house, hobble a pair of horses in back. Watch their children grow up, leave home, one to California, one to disappear, two daughters to Etzatlan, grandchildren to love. They grow old.

I stop myself before I give the elder couple names and an entire history to relive. Any people who have garnered the respect I hear in my friends’ voices deserves my respect. I’m a sucker for a love story, even an imagined one.

These last few days in Etzatlan have been full of celebrations of Carnaval (Mardi Gras). By chance, I saw the first day’s parade of horses, and such horses as we never see up north, of Spanish bloodline. Every horse dances to the music of the band leading the parade.

Prancing in front of and alongside the band are other dancers, the “ugly queens”. These “beauties”, young men in feminine attire, wigs and tight skirts and jutting bosoms, vie for the crown. The contenders are a hardy lot to dance the cobblestone streets every rock of the way to the Plaza.

As afternoon segues into evening at the Plaza, bands compete at top volume. Young and old dance, celebrations carry long into the night, events I choose to skip this year. One street is blocked for children’s rides. Another for food stands. One evening food is free to whoever comes, a community thank you from the city.

World famous toreador Andy Cartagena from Spain led the spectacular bullfight event. At the old charro, every afternoon one could see precision riding or contests similar to our rodeo. Our city sponsored an agricultural expo, with purebred bulls and goats, any one of which would take top prize in any State Fair and bring a pretty peso to his owner. These events satisfy my needs for a whiff of farm life.

In the dark nights I hear the bands from my patio, catch some of the fireworks over the trees. My own celebrations are quieter, private.

Etzatlan, a town trying to hang onto tradition, is changing rapidly, as everywhere. (Children have smart phones. What is the world coming to!)

After Carnaval, the quiet weeks of Lent. No tianguis in town during Lent. No bands in the Plaza. We have quiet until Easter when Cathedral bells waken us back to Celebration.

I am glad to be here in what might be the last of the “quiet” years for Etzatlan. I’m glad I can imagine, with some knowledge of what their lives might have been, the years of Tia and Tio, the elder couple from El Amparo, now part of my own imaginary history. I still haven’t decided what to give up for Lent.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 7, 2019

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February is the Longest Month

                                    February is the Longest Month

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            Winter, we are weary.

            Whether she gambols like a bleating lamb or roars like a lion, we welcome March after the grim days of February.  Skies may still be gray but a fleeting scent in the air says winter is over and spring is here, or nearly so.  Snow may fall, temps hit the low scale but spring will burst forth, even in Montana.  The calendar tells us so.

            I’ve no complaint, I admit, here in my mountain valley in Jalisco. But friends and family live in frozen Montana and even worse, in drizzly gray-to-the-utmost western Washington, so I keep a weather eye on other places. 

            This morning I found three more corn plantings, caches of the squirrel-who-hates-me. I’ve yet to figure out what the rabbits eat. Perhaps their nibbles are small, a pruning with little damage. I catch glimpses of them only before sunrise but my yard is well-fertilized with leavings.

Iguanas lounge with impunity on the brick walls enclosing my yard, awaiting their chance to savage favorite flowers. Lizards of several varieties skitter across the patio as soon as the sun is out.

I don’t mind lizards because they eat bugs, unlike their vegetarian cousins. Though I took exception to the wee lizard in my shower enclosure. The thought of standing beneath water, eyes closed, head full of shampoo, and stepping on his cold little body undid me. I asked Leo to please remove the critter.

My favorite pair of partridge doves are sitting on eggs in their nest in the air plant on the lower branch of the jacaranda tree. To me the nest seems vulnerable to attack. But I have to imagine most threats to eggs or babes come from above so I suppose the low hanging nest is well placed.

Perhaps I hang onto Montana weather because, even after three years, I have little understanding of weather patterns here in this mountain valley. Montana weather and seasons seem “normal” to me.

My Jacaranda, a huge canopy of green most of the year, sheds its leaves in spring. Today it is nearly naked but not shivering because on the top branches I see tiny buds which in a few days will burst into lavender clusters and eventually clusters will merge into a purple umbrella. After five or six weeks of color, new green leaves will push the flowers off, to float to the ground.

This year I will get to eat mangoes from my own baby tree, first time, hopefully in July. My mouth watereth.

Lest you think all I do is sit in my garden admiring fruits and flowers and birds and growling at lizards, though I can think of few better ways to live, I tell you, I do have a social life.

In the weary month of February I went with John and Carol and Leo to the top of the caldera of Volcan Mt. Tequila, a trip I’d long contemplated.

Several days later John, Carol, Jim and I explored the gold and silver mining town of El Amparo and over the mountains on the trail to the backside of Ahualulco.  

The opal mine of San Martin outside of Magdalena, a short drive from home, is nothing more exciting to see than a pile of red rocks in a quarry.  With picks in hand, Pat and my cousin Steve and Jim and I hammered rocks into bits and pieces in search of opals. I brought home several small opals. My best chunk of opal I picked off the ground, walking from here to there with “eyes peeled”. I will go again.  

Some of the best times are the simple times when we come together for food. Just yesterday Pat and Nancie, Julie and Francisco and I dined at the Casa de Romero. I had a chunk of pig leg baked to perfection, tender and moist, full of flavor. I ate a small portion and brought home enough to graze on for several days; the whole meal cost 110 pesos, less than five and a half dollars.

No matter what I might have planned, each day dawns with its own agenda, “weather” or not! Today I am back in the garden, watering, pruning, admiring. That pair of doves I mentioned? I think they think I am their grandma with a pocket full of crackers.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 28, 2019

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