Moving Means Sorting Through Your “Stuff”
Moving, whether it’s international or across the street
means sorting through all of your belongings. When preparing to move across the
street to a small house, I’ve been getting rid of a lot of paper stuff and
digitizing some things, throwing out other things. For example, cassettes. Do
you even know what I am talking about, you of the music download generation? I’ve
thrown out at least a hundred of them, mostly music. Then there are three mini
cassettes that I don’t even have a player to listen to them.
Finding Family History Treasures
I discovered four family history tapes that Bob and I had
made in 1978. What I learned about my husband is that he’s an audio type guy.
Not only did I find music tapes but also a dozen song books and a three ring
binder full of folk song sheet music that he had gathered to sing to Brianna
when she was young.
With anticipation of hearing my husband’s voice again, five
years after his death, I began listening to the tape he’d made on his trip
driving our car down to Guadalajara and our new house.
This is a trip even he said was pretty boring most of the
time. Apparently the tape recorder was voice activated and on the second side
had recorded numerous coughs. I think he’d forgotten it was on. Towards the end
I finally caught him telephoning me at the hotel where my mom and daughter and
I were staying in Guadalajara the day before he was supposed to arrive. Of
course, it was only a one sided conversation, but what a treasure I found. At
the close of our conversation, I once again heard him say, “I love you, Bev.”
Sigh.
Back to His Travel Log
Before he’d left Nogales, Arizona (first he had to drive
from Ontario, California to AZ which is about ten hour drive) he stopped at Sanborn’s
to buy Mexican Car Insurance. He said it cost about $400 for a year and he’d
added emergency medical evacuation insurance for all of us which would fly or
ambulance a person to a hospital or back to the US. It was an extra $15 per
person. Fortunately we never needed it.
Crossing the Mexican Border
Bob began the tape expressing his anxiety about crossing the
border and customs. Worried about having to unpack the car, etc. There were two
custom points. Each one had a stop light kind of device that flashed a red or
green light for each car. At the second place he got the dreaded red light and
the agent had him get out of the car while he “poked” around, finally giving
him the all clear to move on. “Guess I just had an honest face!” he records.
The things Bob chose to talk about reflected his avid
interest in learning a new foreign language. He’d begun learning Spanish a few
months before and now I found him “collecting” new words to add to his
vocabulary. He would read then say the various highway signs so as to look them
up later… including: “check your brakes”, “turn on your lights”, “begin fog or
mist zone”, and “keep your distance.”
Bob had a good map and tourist guide that Sanborn’s
had given him.
No Photographs
Bob didn’t stop to take any pictures, although he’d seen a couple
donkey/horse carts with people in them that he thought Brianna would love to
see, saying he was pretty sure we’d see plenty of those before we left Mexico.
(Actually, not so many, after all. Guadalajara is a large city with over a
million people.) The scenery with fields and mountains in the distance could
have been in Arkansas or Tennessee, he observed.
Most of his negative comments were about how expensive the
toll roads were and how few cars were on these four lane divided highways. They
did have “returnos” in the middle to go back the other way, evenly spaced every
few kilometers, as well as telephones. Philosophically he said, “lower the
rates and get more traffic to pay for the roads.”
First Night in Mexico
Bob checked into a small motel in Los Mochis that was clean
and only $10 a night. He set out to find a nice place to eat and at an
intersection almost ran into a car. Bob’s luck…it was a police car. With it’s
lights flashing, it pulled him over. “Didn’t you see that stop sign?” “It was
big.” Bob, using his worst gringo Spanish never heard a single English word
from the “cop.” “It’s only my first day in Mexico, and I’m trying to find a
place to eat,” he continued in poor Spanish. Finally, the guy finally said, “Follow
me,” and took him to a good restaurant. Whew. Although he’d said the word
ticket several times, he never wrote one up. Bob kept saying he could pay for
the ticket now, in other words a mordita or bribe, but no he didn’t go for
that. The policeman turned out to be very thoughtful and helpful instead.
Bob ordered chicken in a molé (pronounced MO leigh) sauce
with milk to drink (that last part caused raised eyebrows from the waiter.)
Guess most people ordered cerveza or beer.
Toll vs Slow Regular Roads
Bob had taken a toll road out of Nogales and bypassed all of
Culiacan, Sinaloa. He was determined not to miss Matzatlan.
Most of the highways don’t have shoulders and when a truck
breaks down, it is right in the lane. “Rather disturbing,” Bob said, because
you have to pull around into oncoming traffic. He noticed pot holes abounded,
too: not deep but still there to be missed if possible. The Super Autopista he
was on did have a shoulder. At one point nature called, and pulling over, he
noticed no cars came in either direction.
Everywhere you stopped, toll booths, Pemex gas stations and
stop lights, kids would rush up to clean your window expecting a tip. It was “kind
of annoying in a way,” but you could hardly blame them for trying to earn a few
pesos with Mexico’s economy the way it was.
Here 99% of what hit his windshield was yellow butterflies,
in droves, leaving a “splat!” He said, “I’m fast losing my affection for
butterflies as they mess up my windshield. If they don’t quit, I’m going to run
out of washer fluid.”
Anyone Listening?
At 42 km outside of Matzatlan, Bob says, “If anyone is
listening to this dumb tape, besides me, I just am giving random thoughts as
they pop into my head.” Twenty-seven years later, hearing his random thoughts
brings me joy.
Photos are Fun But a Voice Recording is GREAT
Photos are fun memories to put into FamilySearch.org’s
family tree, but voice recordings are rare. So any of you planning on writing a
personal history or story to add to that “Memories” section, get a recording
device that uses MP3 or MP4 format and leave at least a few minutes of a parent
or grandparent's voice.
Continuing on about 11 am, Bob approached the exits for
Matzatlan. He had a choice: Beach Cities or Center of Town. He chose the beach.
“Whoa, a huge butterfly just hit my antenna and whacked it good, it’s shaking
now. My sense of adventure is kicking in, hope I don’t lose too much time
taking this route, but I’ve been bored up til now.”
After quite a few miles going west he saw the beach or
coastline. Then the road turns south and sees the beach, but it is all resorts
and private beaches. He went down one street that dead ended at the beach but
it had about a foot of water at the end of it an “I didn’t want to get my shoes
wet.” Driving further south on the coastal highway, he took 4 or 5 photos
finally, saying, “It’s nothing extraordinary except for mountains sticking out
of the water, that’s kind of nice; at least I got to see it.” (maybe I’ll find those
4 or 5 photos sometime, but haven’t yet.)
Heading to Matzatlan Centro he sees lots of pastel colored
buildings very similar to Southern California beach towns with hotels and small
shops. He comments passing a hotel with a high “hideous dark purple wall” that
even Ruthe (my mother, whose favorite color is purple) wouldn’t want to stay
there.
Settling into a New Language
The “language guy” says, he’s feeling better about Spanish
because he completely understood a fellow that gave him directions to get onto
the correct road to Tepic that were accurate. He is now on the Highway to
Tepic. But Bob the language guy despairs, “Everybody rattles on too blasted fast,” he moans. Even when he
says “mas despacio, por favor” or “much slower, please,” people will slow their sentences
down for a few words then begin to rattle them off again. Bob says, “But, I’ll
get used to it; it’ll just take a little time.”
Final Comments on Side One of Tape
He passed an area with a sign that in Spanish said Center of
Social Re-adaptation and laughed. “That’s an interesting euphemism for a
prison!”
Here the scenery changes from a desert to mountains green
with trees and bushes: “not a cactus in sight.” He saw a dead horse in the
roadway that had obviously got in someone’s way. That’s why driving at night can be
dangerous. Now he runs into a stretch of road with thousands of little potholes
and Wishes he’d had our shock absorbers and struts replaced before the trip.
Side Two of the Tape
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this side is one
of coughs and a mumble every now and then, and the final night at a hotel where
he calls me to see if I know the best way into town and reaching our hotel in
Guadalajara. I had listened for many, many minutes to absolutely nothing on this
side, then his call to me. AND his signing off with “I love you, Bev.”
Note: no photos because this is a tribute to Bob, the
audio-type guy.
