Sunday, June 11, 2017

Crossing the Border or Crossing the Street

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 molĂ© (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.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

MOVING

Moving is as Big a Change as a Divorce or Death in the Family

     The actual move to Mexico was involved. It required going through all of my mother’s “stuff” and sorting it into piles: take to Mex, throw away, put into storage, sell or give-away.

     I find myself this June facing the same thing. This time I’m in Arizona and in a 3 bedroom manufactured home with my stuff, Bob’s stuff, stuff we inherited from his mother and grandmother and of course my mother!
    The next four weeks I must downsize to fit into a smaller 2 bedroom manufactured home. Fortunately, I’ll have the same landlady, a lower rent than I’m paying now, AND it is just across the street. Whereas the move to Mexico was several thousand miles away across the border with lots of “stuff,” four people and a cat.

 Bob and I had flown down and found our taxi driver who was the key to a smooth move. Here we are eating at a wonderful restaurant, he'd recommended, out on a terrace overlooking the street.
 
     Our taxi drive, Jose’, used his resources and knowledge of Americans in Guadalajara, realtors, etc. and drove us around to find a home we could rent. Having chosen our favorite one, we flew back home to begin the processes of consolidating household goods stored in Tennessee, Oakland (from Kwaj) and my mother’s house, then actually making arrangements for the move to a foreign country. DEFINITELY NOT ACROSS THE STREET!
Video taken going out of my front porch, panning across the street you can briefly see the house I'll be moving to July 15th
SORRY THIS VIDEO DOES NOT PLAY...I HOPED IT WOULD. 
    Me, Mom and Bri, along with Harriet the cat (in a cat carrier), our personal luggage and carry on bags, caught a unique bus in Ontario, California. It’s service was designed for people going down and across the border into Mexico. Bags were loaded on the roof, and off we went. I don’t think it went through customs, but we ended up on a hill above a station accepting these buses, and everyone debarked with their stuff, tried to find their bags and haul them down the hill to find a taxi to take us to the airport. We had reservations to fly to Guadalajara from there. Quite an adventure. Amazing we arrived with everything we’d pack, and in pretty good shape. Jose’ had shown us a hotel, near a shopping center, and Sandborn’s, a favorite American Ex-patriot restaurant, bookstore, and shop, where we had made reservations. Knowing ahead of time that we’d be there a couple weeks until Bob arrived, and then our household goods in a moving van arrived, we settled in.
     Bob packed up our Nissan Sentra, finalized closing my mom’s house which we’d cleaned and rented out, supervised the packing of our moving van, then proceeded to drive down to the border in Tijuana, and crossed with no problems, then drove down to Guadalajara. He took many photos on his trip down. It took quite a few days. Yes, he’d began learning words in Spanish. His quest to learn a new language had begun.
Mom and I knew we needed beds, living and dining room furniture, so we went shopping. Jose’ was our guide and transportation for all of this. Fortunately, we had a really nice retirement settlement and had the money to pay for all of this! It was really quite fun. Who doesn’t love picking out furniture and watching the budget, but knowing you could pay for it all.
Bob and the Nissan arrived safely, here is our new house in Guadalajara.

     My situation monetarily with my current move isn’t quite the same. I am getting rid of furniture, eating dehydrated meals supplemented by a few fresh grocery items and no cushion of savings in the bank. On the positive side, I am meeting wonderful families who are physically helping me go through all the books and food storage area, office and family history “stuff” and lifting the trash out to my garbage container. Just this morning the truck came hauling away my second week’s worth of heavy stuff including paperback books, ring binders, and hundreds of old cassette tapes and their containers. 
     And that dehydrated beef stew I made yesterday was actually quite good. A dollop of sour cream and a dash of garlic powder, slice of garlic bread and a salad, made for a tasty lunch. Then for dinner I made burritos with left over stew stuffing, refried beans and Monterey Jack cheese. Mmmm. Creative cooking again, I am next facing going through all of my cookbooks, recipe cards, and making decision which ones to keep and which to throw away and which ones to give away.

     I have several cookbooks from Mexico, but that’s another story.