Oysters, Tequila and Time Outs
July 27, 2016 14:17
“Hey David”, my amigo Roberto intoned, “I’m going to visit my brother in Dimas You want to come with us? I have three days off but I think we will go over and back in one day because he does not have very good places to sleep. It’s only a little over a one-hour drive. He is going to get some oysters and lobsters for a bar-b-que.”
“Sure”, I said, always up for an excursion. “One day up and back is good. And I agree about not spending the night.” I’d been to Raul’s. I wasn’t anxious to overnight with cockroaches or sleep in the van.
By the time I loaded myself into the front passenger chair of Roberto’s well-used van his wife and two daughters – seven and nine – were happily ensconced behind me in the middle bench nestled into blankets and pillows, laughing and busily jabbing at electronic devices producing all kinds of sounds and entertainment created, I discovered, for young ladies. As we drove out into the country they laughed and played and sang while Roberto answered all my questions about the countryside and what were the Spanish words for any number of my observations. Geeze, will I ever learn Spanish?
Avoiding the toll road, we rumbled along the older rural route heading out of Mazatlán for about an hour then turned onto a marginal blacktop track punctuated with yawning gullies winding through eroding long stretches of gravel and dirt roadway. The undulating countryside was striking, showing off varying shades of deep luxuriant greens, thick with trees and foliage. Twenty-five minutes later, through blue smoke billowing from chicken grilling in front of multiple curbside eateries, we rolled through Dimas, turned off the main street, drove an undulating, twisting seven blocks and parked in front of Raul’s rustic, dusty house.
Roberto’s wife and the girls piled out of the van and vanished into the shadow of a roof connecting the house to an adjacent brick structure. I was thinking about the beer and tequila and other sustenance in the ice chest and the promised home-made exceptional concoctions and local seafood. I was looking forward to a day of eating and drinking and laughing. A day of forgetting whatever rigors of the world I might have been contemplating.
Roberto and I wrestled with the ice chest and a couple of bags of food carrying it into the back yard. Raul was adding wood to the fire in the brick ‘stove’ in the ‘patio,’ stuffing odd length branches under the warped and fire-beaten steel plate supported on three sides by brick and mortar. On a prehistoric adjacent table piles of tomatoes, peppers, limes and onions and a big ball of tortilla dough were piled next to an antique wooden tortilla press. Local lobsters and oysters were sequestered in burlap bags. Raul is, reportedly, a pretty good cook. I guess being single helped make that happen.
“Hola Raul” I smiled as he shook my hand and smiled back an immense greeting. Raul is a big, jovial guy. Five nine and probably pushing two hundred forty pounds. He doesn’t drive a Maserati but he is not missing any meals. He ushered me into the yard with a sweeping motion of his arm. My lousy Spanish and his non-existent English hampered verbal discussion, but we knew what we were saying.
Roberto and I hauled the ice chest over next to a ‘Pacifico’ table ten feet further into the unkempt yard, clunked a bottle of tequila and some appetizers on its bright red metal surface, grabbed a couple of beers and went back to watching the cook, Señor Raul, now busily roasting ingredients for fresh, fire roasted salsa.
I looked around, sizing up the surroundings. Raul’s back yard was an L shaped affair. An expanse about seventy-five by sixty feet, with a thirty-foot wide strip alongside the brick structure next to the house pointing back to the dirt street. Near the back a small stand of dying banana trees and a few scrubby plants were partly shaded by an immense leafy tree spreading over the outdoor cooking area. The back and one side facing the neighbor on his right was fenced with a six-foot high screening material that he obtained from his work in agricultural farms. Looked like a greenhouse netting of some kind. Opaque but let light through. If Raul owned a rake or a broom or pruning shears or a laundry basket they were collecting dust somewhere.
“Baño?” I inquired, looking at Roberto. He pointed to a door in the small brick building next to the house, connected by the overhanging roof under which we had walked to get to the back yard. The bathroom was an unfinished, bare, brick-walled structure with a rough concrete floor, a toilet bowl (with no tank) anchored near one wall. A used five-gallon plastic paint bucket standing at the ready for flushing. The hose from the yard was dragged into the grotto to fill the bucket to flush the toilet, however it needed to be left running from a jagged cut at the end of the hose. No nozzle. While one was occupied at the rust stained porcelain fixture water filled the room and eventually undulated out and under the door as you tolerantly waded around and prepared for its necessity. A roll of toilet paper hung haphazardly from a giant nail pounded into the wall over the commode. Several other rusty spike-like lances protruded from places in the bricks whereupon hung a plaid shirt, a frayed towel, a burlap bag, a pair of thread-bare blue jeans and a mesh ‘mercado’ polyester shopping bag filled with miscellaneous bathroom articles. Not having to linger long I finished my business and sloshed away without any permanent damage – boat shoes having been tested.
Back in the cooking area salsa ingredients were being chopped and roasted. I love fresh salsa. I’m easily sidetracked by fresh salsa. Roberto stepped over. “I lived here for a while from when I was eight to ten years old. This is still my mother’s house.”
“Oh yeah, I think I remember you telling me that before,” I answered.
Me and Roberto hanging out 22 years ago.
“About twenty-four years ago we took a photo of us around the corner just about three blocks from here. You want to go take another one in the same place before dinner. We can put my van where your old Jeepster was.”
Today, and we don’t look a year older!
“Twenty-four years. Wow. Sure, let’s go.” What the hell, yes, I thought. Revisit some local scenery that I had nearly forgotten. I could scarcely believe this was the same place where we had taken the photo of Roberto and me next to the Jeepster so many years ago. That photo was a part of one of my first book covers. A quarter mile away we parked the car and took a photo in the same spot as twenty-four years ago. The place was different. Unrecognizable. Ravaged by sun and time. Roberto and I looked different. Ravaged by sun and time. Nearly unrecognizable.
Back in the back yard Roberto hacked at the stubborn oysters with a machete and prepared the lobsters for the grill. We cooked the delicacies on the metal plate perched over the coals and Raul made the best fire roasted tomato salsa I’ve ever eaten. Ever. The oysters and lobsters weren’t so bad either.
After dinner, while the family visited, I carried a glass of tequila with lime to a resin chair on the other side of the yard where the neighbors were disinterested though enthusiastic and busy -chickens. I sat down and forgot about the troubles of the world. Maybe the Sauza Conmemorativo Anejo Tequila helped.
Later, Roberto, ambled over to me. “I’m going to get some gas, do you want to come?” He, and I with a fresh glass of tequila, pulled out of the yard heading to the Pemex station. Two blocks later when I mentioned I forgot a lime he pulled to the right in the street and put a lime tree branch into the passenger window. I snatched a lime hanging eighteen inches from my face and sliced off a piece with my all-purpose, stainless steel, twenty-eight applications in one traveling tool. “Thanks” I replied. “De nada” he said.
Two hours later, with two hours of daylight remaining in that languid day, we found the road out of Dimas and settled in for the return trip. Roberto’s wife and daughters snuggled in the back seat oblivious to any troubles the world may think of bringing their way. I envied them. They were often in that condition.
But I too had found peace and tranquility in that Mexican village that day and had tossed the problems of my world over the fence to the chickens – at least for a little while.
David Kindopp
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