Category Archives: small town life in Mexico

So Much To Relate! Harvesting and Planting!

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Here’s the condensed version.

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We harvested our wheat. There was concomitant drama: parts of some of the fields weren’t mature and the grain elevator owner asked us to wait four days, causing several days of stress and worry:   Would it rain? Would the wind knock it all down? Skimming over the days of stress and wonder, it all turned out fine. We didn’t have a magnificent harvest, but it turned out to be quite respectable after four long days of hot and dusty harvesting.

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We had had to delay our planting dates because of other, more pressing personal and human problems, but that’s a story for another day.

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As immediately after the wheat harvest as we could, we began our corn planting, hiring a nephew to drive the tractor, using our brand-new planter-seeder. IMG_3328

Torn between planting an established and famous strain of hybrid corn seed, and a brand new type, we ended up using mostly Cimarron, an expensive seed we bought from a new dealer, the daughter of a local friend. Until we ran out. That caused us to scramble to order more, with delays and not-exactly-the-truth finessing by the dealer. We ended up ordering a new hybrid from a trusted dealer who even delivered the seed and loaded it into our pickup so that we could rush out to the last two fields to finish the planting before the rains came.

IMG_3365Planting usually results in long, long days, even though the work isn’t too taxing. The guys that are hired for loading have lots of waiting before they move into action, loading the canisters of the seeder with seed and fertilizer. Often one worker helps the other load bags weighing up to 100 pounds onto his shoulder, whereupon he walks to the tractor carrying it, and dumps the contents of the bag into its canister.IMG_3364

There are minimum half-hour waiting times. There were some unexpected problems (aren’t there always?). Some parts – nuts and bolts things – got lost, and we found out to our chagrin how much the tractor company charges for replacements. Since they weren’t available anyway, at least not locally, we made substitutes.

And the cycle starts over – instead of hoping that it won’t rain and ruin the crop or the planting, now we’re hopefully watching the skies for clouds to coax the baby corn plants out of the ground.

Tractor Tires

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Here’s my friend Josefina and her helper – early morning sweepers.

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This morning, bright and early, we drove our new red tractor to the llantero, tire guy, about 3/4 of a mile from here. Since we’re going to use it starting tomorrow (already!) we had to get the tires filled – get this – with water. Water. I didn’t have a clue.

We backed the tractor out of our garage, and started up the street to the carretera, the highway that’s in the process of being reconstructed. On the gravelly, dusty highway, we made our tractorly way to the tire repair guy, Pancho. He repairs and fills all kinds of tires, and is an pleasant guy. We got to his shop and sat there for awhile as he began.

A woman we know passed by, carrying sacks full of plastic bottles to recycle. She used to come to our house every couple of weeks to pick up the bottles we save for her, but she hadn’t come lately, and we had several fertilizer sacks full of bottles. They had been there so long the sacks had begun to deteriorate.

As it so often happens, and as it turned out, she is the aunt of a neighbor woman. In these small ranchos, nearly everyone has relatives in the surrounding ones. We often see her trundling by on the highway, carrying bags of plastic bottles to sell to the recyclers.

There’s a very small hardware store very to close to the tire repair place, and we walked over there to get a couple of things for the tractor. We needed a new what’s-it-called, thingy to drop through the holes to hook the disc to the tractor. when we received our tractor, the holes weren’t properly aligned to do the hook-up,

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and we needed to either enlarge the holes or get a smaller thing to drop in there. And one of the nipples for greasing had broken off, so we bought a new one of those. The hardware store had all sorts of things to keep me looking, as do many hardware stores:  nest boxes for parakeets, fish hooks in two sizes, rope, and fiddly little things necessary to keep your house running well.

Next to the hole-in-the-wall hardware store was a restaurant that serves seafood, and we had resolved to spend our hour-and-a-half there to have some breakfast. There was one thing on the menu – shrimp cocktail. We ordered a large one to split between us, and it was excellent! I watched as the owner prepared it for us. In the kind of tall glasses with large bases you’d expect, he started with about a half-cup of water (shrimp water?) he dipped out of a plastic bowl. Then he added the shrimp, and as I watched he chopped up onion, then tomatoes, and then avocados. He poured a red liquid over the top (probably Kermato or Clamato, maybe with some sweetener added). And then, voila! he brought them to the table and opened a cardboard box of Saltines, called Saladitas here. It was excellent, and a wonderful breakfast. It cost less than six dollars for the two of us.

The tire man finished filling the tires with water, and we headed for home on the dusty, bumpy highway. Once there, we parked the tractor behind the house and started filling the big water tank in the back of our pickup so we can dump water in the bottom of a narrow ditch our workers have been cleaning. It’s been so hot and dry that it required pick-axes to break the surface of the ground in the dry ditch.

And then, the señora showed up to get the bottles, so we helped to re-bag them in newer plastic sacks. This is the first time I’ve seen 100-lb bags that are a green color. They deteriorate rapidly in the sun. Farmers use these sacks by the hundreds and thousands, so it’s a wonderful thing that they are clearly biodegradable. This woman is a widow, and supports herself by picking up bottles along the highway. She walks several miles every day.

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We had six or seven sacks to fill with the plastic bottles. We have a few bottles that we buy ourselves because we purchase Coke-a-Cola to serve to visitors (that’s about all they care for), and I pick up bottles whenever possible while we’re working.

Music – More Gigs For Our Big Little Band!

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Recently we’ve been hired to play more Catholic masses, and more parties. If you’re curious, here we are paid about the same in pesos as we were in dollars in the US. A dollar is worth around 17 pesos right now. We don’t do it for the money.  We do play out of devotion to what we were born for – music.

We played for a fiesta last Sunday – a big birthday party held in a nearby ex-fertilizer vendor’s warehouse. We received mixed reviews. A man who worked for 25 years in Nevada and Montana loved it. Two tables of women sat and listened to every single song, hardly talking.  An older man asked for “Mexican music! Don’t you play Mexican music?” When Chon announced “This next song is pura Mexicana! I wrote it myself, and I’m Mexican.” The guy and his wife got up and left after the song.

The menu was puro Mexicano – carnitas and sopa.  (Dessert came later). When a pig is butchered and cooked in an enormous copper kettle it’s called carnitas. Sopa here (sounds a bit like soup, doesn’t it?) is what you might call Mexican rice. The recipes vary, but it is almost always red rice. Some recipes have more ingredients, like diced carrots and peas. It’s always good.

We played different styles of music. We played cumbias (check out cumbia rhythm: it’s one of the most infectiousand non-boring rhythms I’ve heard, ever). We played baladas, slow songs. We played rock ‘n roll. We played rock. We played original songs (very popular). We played songs in Spanish and English. We played until after 11 p.m., and we had been hired until 9 p.m. It’s typical that Chon plays better and better, and sings better and better the later it gets. (Look up the word “duende”). He’s an astonishingly good singer, guitarist and composer.

WOMEN helped us load up our equipment! Women! They stayed on and on, chatting, until nearly everyone had left. They loaded our heavy equipment into our big truck, and then loaded us with food to take home. Most of these parties are well armed with to-go plates and containers and aluminum foil. We had food for a week! There was at least two pounds of carnitas which I prudently packaged and froze.

Although the fiesta was less than 5 miles away we arrived home very late indeed. We had to call it a success.

And here’s a truth about local Mexican audiences: in general, they’re surprised by us as a band. The first thing they notice, other than we’re only two people, is that we don’t play banda. They love banda. They expect banda, that ubiquitous mix of Spanish lyrics, simple, repetitious  melodies, and what I would call a tuba band. Instead, they get something more like a rock band. We have big equipment, enough to produce sound for large crowds. We have a large truck to carry equipment – you should see the stares when we show up.

If you are a musician, or have some knowledge of what you see on a stage, you may wonder how we do it. Among the pieces of electronic equipment we carry are two drum machines, programmed by us. We would love to have a live drummer, but it’s just not likely to happen. I’m a classically trained singer and keyboard player, the person you might see singing on a stage with a chorus and orchestra, or in an orchestra pit accompanying a musical comedy, and I use two synthesizers. On one synthesizer I play bass with the left hand, and lead parts like introductions, and accompaniment parts like strings and piano sounds as well.

Chon is a very, very, very good guitarist, with many years of experience playing in a bar and touring band from Chicago. He has extensive training and on-hands experience in sound engineering. He also has impressive skills as a composer. He has written literally hundreds and hundreds of songs for church services and live performances of all styles.  I love it sometimes when we’re recording or practicing and I tell him that I think what I’m playing on the keyboards sounds boring, and he thinks for a couple of seconds (literally) and then says “Try this.” And sings me a riff or a melody or a rhythm. He has stunning ideas!

Las Cabañuelas

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Cabañuelas translation:
wild weather forecasts (Latin America); first rains that fall in the summer (Andes); first 12 days of the year (used to predict the weather) (Mexico)
It’s lovely in our part of Mexico right now – we are enjoying a short rainy season called cavañuelas that sometimes occurs during the winter months. It is a bona fide rainfall as well for farmers, who take the opportunity to plant a bonus crop of garbanzos. Whether they receive a real crop, with beans, or only grow the plants until they die a dusty death, the plants are good for the soil when they get disced into the ground. So, while old people complain about the cool air, the farmers are taking advantage of the moisture.
We have been investigating planting garbanzos. Our two fields were deeply ploughed last month, so the ground is perfect; clean and soft and wet. TOO wet for tractors, so we thought of seeding by hand. The price of the seed varies from place to place, and type to type – who knew there were so many kinds of garbanzos?
Garbanzos make a popular snack. You can buy a smallish plastic bag of garbanzos right here on our little street, in front of the school, with or without chile sauce on them. They are simply fresh round, green chick peas in their shells, so it takes a small amount of concentration to eat the delicious little things. You don’t just pop a handful in your mouth. But that is only one type of garbanzo.
Garbanzos are also well-loved by many animals. If the garbanzos you grow do not pass the flowering stage, or you need to harvest the plants early, the whole plants can be ground for an excellent feed for cattle, pigs, or goats and sheep.
The seed ranges in price (around here in central Mexico, anyway) from 15 pesos a kilo to 25 pesos a kilo. That makes for  quite costly seed. Some types I have heard mentioned are garbanza (for people), garbanzo cal, garbanzo puerquero (for pigs).
A big advantage is the plants do not require close monitoring. No herbicides or pesticides are necessary.
However, you must monitor your fields because of human predators! Since the crop is so popular with people and animals, you must expect that people will come to cut the plants and carry them away in large sacks. Since there are many people in our little town and nearby ranchos who need supplements to their meager incomes, the illicit cutting and ensuing thievery is rampant, and can make a big difference in the size of the harvest. We are not sure that we want to be on the protect-your-crops and punish-the-thieves side of things. Although the harvest is pretty much a sure thing, we are still thinking it over…

DEATH OF A LOCAL CHARACTER

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Nena was born into a family of over twenty siblings. When Chon’s mother describes  Doña Mathilde’s and Don Luz’ multitudinous family she always says that Mathilde had 23 children; “tres vezes cuates”; three times twins.

Nena’s name is Maria Elena, but was never called that. She was always called Nena, a common nickname for Elena. Nena is also a word for “baby girl”. Nena was a twin, born second. She was always trailing behind – in everything.  She was not very healthy, and many things just sort of passed her by. As she grew to adulthood she became known in this little town as a viguera; a person with “bad” language. She liked to sit in front of her family’s little store, right across the street from us, and watch the world go by, trumpeting  insulting remarks about nearly everyone.

We met about 26 years ago, and I tended to avoid her; not because of her language so much, but because I was learning to speak Spanish, and Nena was harder than the usual to understand.  As I came to know her better, we would have conversations. I can’t remember her ever saying anything really rude to me, but whatever Nena said to anyone was heard by everyone within a couple of hundred feet because of her extremely loud and focused voice. She was absolutely incorrigible; loud, rude and crude.

Her health, never good, began to deteriorate to a serious level a few years ago. A small-boned person, quite short of stature, she began to carry more and more weight on her frame. She looked a great deal like a ball and she had to lean back to walk on her tiny feet. People said that she carried a lot of water weight, and evidently that was true. They said that from time to time the doctors would remove several liters of water from her stomach. That was not true, except for the amount.

Several times I heard family say that they just didn’t know what was wrong with Nena; the doctors had told her, but they just couldn’t remember what it was that they had said. She died of renal failure.

The last few months of her life she developed a continuous cough, deep, rasping, and painful-sounding. Here at our house we heard it a lot, because she would visit nearly every day. She especially liked to visit on Tuesdays when Chavela would come, because she often brought or prepared here delicious meals. Nena was the first one to the table, not only at our house.  She made herself welcome in many, many neighboring homes.

She and Chon would sometimes exchange mild insults. Other people would avoid her, or just chuckle and shake their heads, saying “Oh, Nena,”. In spite of her insulting and low speech, was quite religious, and attended mass when she could.

There was much conjecture about her coffin – how would they fit the enormous amount of flesh into it? As it turned out, the coffin was a normal one, with a glass window on top.

The funeral mass was very well-attended, and included many family members who had not visited for years. Many of the attendees had never been friends of Nena’s, but attended out of respect for the family, or bald curiosity.

There were fireworks Saturday night, when Nena’s body arrived from the hospital/morgue, and there were more fireworks early the next morning. These are typically rocket-type things that are shot into the air, and explode high above. You can hear the swish of the rocket as it flies.  There was also a mariachi group, only occasionally hired in our little town (mariachis are costly). Nena had a couple of favorite songs, and they were sung, along with popular rancheras, at the velorio.

As far as I know, although Nena told stories about bus drivers and musicians that she had her eye on, she never had a boyfriend. I doubt that she ever had a close friend. She never attended school. She lived much of her life in pain. She was truly one-of-a-kind, and I already miss her.