Down in the Mexican Part of Town

　

　

Down in the Mexican part of town, Rolly walked his dog, Buddy. They walked in the gutter, avoiding broken glass that might cut Buddy’s paws, and, on old irregular sidewalks, raised and tilted by the roots of sycamore trees. Buddy was a yellow lab and, when he met people, he grinned at them and wagged his tail. In Washington, President Trump was inveighing against immigrants and his decrees separated children from their parents at the Border and, so, the older men that Rolly met in that part of town were aloof and avoided his eyes even when he spoke to them directly. The boys and teenage girls were equally impassive and didn’t return his greeting when he said hello. But the women generally smiled shyly and said something to Rolly and his dog although he couldn’t always understand what their words.

The neighborhood was residential with small, neatly groomed houses and alleyways where there were garages and sheds, some of them lathe frames wrapped with plastic to incubate tomatoes and flowers during the colder months. A tiny treeless park with scuffed lawns was located among the houses. Some playground equipment, swings and a slide and a wheel-shaped merry-go-round occupied a corner of the park. Beyond a narrow field with soccer goals at both ends, there was a corral made from cracked and splintered wood panels enclosing a weedy patch used as a hockey rink in the winter. It was very hot in the late afternoon when Rolly walked his dog and the park was without shade and deserted.

Rolly decided to cut through the empty park. This was an infraction: a sign warned in English and Spanish that dogs were not allowed. But no one was around and Rolly was already carrying in his right hand a plastic grocery sack wrapped around a coil of dog poop. At the corner of the park, near the playground, a big black pick-up was pulled along the curb facing in the wrong direction. A Latino woman with a pig-tail held a cell-phone to her ear. As Rolly watched, a little boy, about three years old, pushed open the back door and ran as quickly as he could toward the playground equipment. The child looked over his shoulder mischievously as if daring the woman to follow him. He was a small brown boy with huge eyes.

The woman in the truck put down her cell-phone and shouted something to the little boy. He did a defiant dance kicking up the pinkish pea-stones near the slide. The woman shouted again, but the child ignored her, trotting to and fro as if unsure whether to swing or slide or ride on the merry-go-round. It was clear that the boy’s mother was calling him back to the pick-up, but he wanted to play and pretended not to hear her. Buddy tugged at the leash and wagged his tail to show that he was interested in the child. Perhaps, Rolly thought, I should drop the leash and let the dog prance over to the little boy. Buddy was very gentle but Rolly was sure that this would frighten the child and, probably, drive him back toward his mother waiting in the pick-up. Black and brown people are afraid of dogs, Rolly thought – it’s an instinct in them. But the dog was already an illegal entrant in the park and Rolly didn’t want to unduly frighten the child and Buddy was big and rambunctious and if he jumped on the little boy, he would surely knock him over and, then, what?

The mother revved her engine and honked the horn once. The little boy scampered around in circles still pretending to ignore her. So she, then, put the pick-up in gear and slid forward about a half car-length. The child’s response was immediate. He threw up his arms in horror and opened his eyes as wide as he could wailing in a shrill voice. Then, he spun on his heel and ran with a stagger toward the big black pick-up. Of course, he caught the tip of his shoe in the gravel and fell forward in a scatter of stones. Then, he sat in the rock shrieking at the top of his lungs and flapping his arms like wings around his head.

– That was irresponsible, Rolly thought, but Mexican parents often took risks with their kids that White people wouldn’t dare. He remembered a Mexican father cutting grass with a riding lawn mower, a small toddler bouncing up and down on his knees as the whirling blade flung grass and pebbles in all directions.

Rolly sighed. Buddy leaned forward against the taut leash. – Live and let live, that was best, Rolly thought.

The mother opened the door of her wrong-way parked pick-up truck and hurried toward the child. She was obviously irritated. The truck’s engine purred – no one was around. The only visitors to this silent neighborhood were the wind and the seasons. The howling little boy sat next to the slide. The tall slide cast a long shadow in the late afternoon light and, towering above the child, the slanting channel in its aluminum flange looked lofty and very steep. The slide’s old polished metal reflected the bright sun and shone like a scimitar glistening in the heat.

My Air BnB Review

　

　

Recently, my wife and I had the pleasure of traveling to Elcinor. We are avid travelers and, always, excited to use Air BnB for the intimate glimpses of local culture that this service provides. Although our experience with hosts Alpay and Oglor in Elcinor was not optimum, I hope that no one will construe this review as hostile to that country and its wonderful, hardworking inhabitants.

The occasion of our trip to Elcinor was a happy one. Several years ago, we had the pleasure of hosting an exchange student from that nation. We have kept in touch with this wonderful young man and he invited us, as his American foster parents, to attend his graduation of the University of Elcinor. Those ceremonies happened to coincide with the Dragonfly Festival, a notable local fiesta (celebration) in Elcinor. So, after the requisite vaccinations and doses of prophylactic antibiotics, my wife and I flew to Elcinor, landing at Elcinor International Airport. (As AirBnB readers will know, the capital city and the country bear the same name.)

Public transportation in Elcinor is iffy. All car rental agencies are controlled by the ruling junta and transactions with them, particularly those involving credit cards, are discouraged. My wife and I elected to take a taxi from the airport for the 50 km ride to the University District (about $750 American). Depending on traffic and road conditions, the trip takes two to two-and-a-half hours. Elcinorians speak creole English and it will take you a few hours and several conversations to pick up the accent and diction. The ride to the University District passed through picturesque wetlands, many of them extending to the horizon and we were able to glimpse vast flocks of dragonflies with iridescent wings and other insects swarming over the oozy terrain.

Alpay and Oglor are instructors at the University and their dwelling is conveniently located. Our hosts resided in a small, very neat and pleasantly decorated bungalow to which was attached a tin-roofed student dormitory (the so-called Ostelhay). Set near, but apart from the dormitory was our lodging, an old but perfectly serviceable mobile home. The Air BnB listing assured us that the mobile home afforded privacy and seclusion from the student revels in the dormitory with the added benefit of a semi-private bathroom. Strictly speaking neither of these representations were true. I should also note that upon our arrival, we were both issued complimentary fly-swatters, but asked to provide a credit card number (complete with security code) as a guarantee that we would return these swatters to our hosts.

Alpay and Oglar greeted us with a buffet of roasted small, local mammals, washed down with El Dictator beer. Then, fatigued, to bed! The students in the dormitory were a rambunctious lot and spent the evening consuming the local, fiery aguardiente. Some of them, I’m afraid, indulged to excess and our midnight was enlivened by the sound of brawling and couples making love in the shrubbery near our lodging. Many of the students were proficient at playing flutophones and pan-pipes and they regaled one another with simple country tunes, a pleasant enough evening concert but rather disconcerting to hear after midnight and at the crack of dawn. (I don’t wish to be judgmental; we later learned that half of the so-called students were, in fact, refugees from the fighting in the Sierra.)

After a sleepless night, my wife and I were more than a little peckish. However, we were looking forward to the Dragonfly Festival at the campus a couple kilometers away. It was difficult to prepare for the day’s events because the students (and displaced persons) in the dormitory occupied to our exclusion the single rest-room available for use in the Ostelhay. (There was another privy outside the trailer house but it was occupied by large and aggressive jumping spiders and, even, the locals were not willing to make use of that facility.) A night of drinking fiery aguardiente is deleterious to the bowels and the students stood in nervous queues waiting to make use of the small closet-like toilet. Needless to say, my wife and I had to make due with toilet facilities that were grossly inadequate.

Our hosts served us with a tasty breakfast of Orpsekay fruit, so named for its distinctive odor and texture, and steaming cups of hot coffee. Alpay, then, announced that he would drive those who desired an excursion to the campus for the Dragonfly Festival. Of course, my wife and I were glad to accept his offer.

Oglor, unfortunately on house-arrest, was not able to accompany us on this trip. Our conveyance to the University was memorable. Alpay hooked a flat-bed trailer to the rear of her small and elderly John Deere tractor and bade us hop aboard. We stood on the trailer as she put the tractor in gear and drove us through the citrus groves to the Moorish pavilions and ornate baroque buildings on campus. About half-way along our trip, Alpay urged one of the refugees, a man blessed with a beautiful baritone voice, to entertain us with an old and popular ballad, Elvetway Onelinesslay. The man sang beautifully, although we were distracted by the fact that, during his serenade, he perched precariously on the hitch between tractor and trailer, balancing between the two moving implements.

At the campus, the commander of the local regiment inspected our passports and the student’s identification cards and, then, granted us admission. The splendid buildings at the university are an artifact of the last century’s rubber boom in the country and they are wonderful edifices, although much in disrepair these days. We toured the ruins of the library, very majestic and still occupied by great stacked towers of books moldering in the humid, sub-tropical weather, and, further, were shown the spanking brand-new modernist eugenics laboratories and registry, quite a contrast to the faux-Baroque of the older structures. Alpay summoned us together for the mandatory salute to the colors commencing the celebrations of the Dragonfly Festival. As I was standing on the flatbed trailer, I felt inconvenienced – my bowels were churning and I was in some need of a rest room. (I believe it was the combination of coffee and the unfamiliar tastes and textures of the Orpsekay fruit that I had consumed.)

I asked Alpay where I could find a toilet. He obligingly directed me across the bramble-covered quadrangle to the field house. The field house was a large, cavernous structure in which big bats patrolled the upper air. The military firing range was adjacent and local students, the equivalent of ROTC scholars, were discharging their weapons at life-sized targets depicting various imperialists as well as the presidents of the adjacent regimes. A neatly groomed officer met me at the threshold to the facility, checked my passport, and politely told me that I could enter the building, but had to remove my shoes because the floors were antique and could be damaged by my footware. I was given a plastic sack and a cubby-hole in which to deposit my shoes.

Oddly enough, I didn’t detect any unusually beautiful or ancient wooden flooring in the building. Everywhere that I went, the floor was wet concrete, the surface drenched with water from the adjacent showers where naked men were bathing. Several times, I inquired as to the "WC" but had difficulty making myself understood. In most cases, the students simply ignored me. At last, a young man with a badly damaged eye, directed me to corner in the big open hall where there was a drain in the floor. This was manifestly unsuited to my needs, which were becoming ever more urgent, and so I politely declined the use of that facility.

I repeated my request to the soldier at the door. He seemed bemused but walked with me to the building next to the Field House. I was becoming increasingly concerned that my wife, alone with the students at the tractor-trailer, would be distressed by my long absence. (It’s always very embarrassing when on a tour with others to be the last person returning to the means of conveyance.) But there was nothing that could be done for this problem. I was, indeed, a man with a mission!

The building adjacent to the campus Field House was a sort of natural history museum. The military officer asked me to show my passport to the attendant and, then, I was admitted to a display on volcanism in Elcinor. I asked the guard at the exhibit about a restroom, but he only shrugged. He was apparently one of Elcinor’s indigenous tribal people and purported to not understand my version of local creole parlance. The exhibit was a darkened space with groove-like walkways set in a fiberglass facsimile of mountainous terrain. Beyond the upper ramp, there was a simulated caldera filled with some sort of viscous syrupy substance bubbling and spurting in the intense red cast by an overhead light covered with a red filter lens. I asked a guard protecting the caldera about a toilet, sniffing at the strong odor of sulphur in this part of the museum. He suggested that I simply approach the caldera and use that as a receptacle for this call of nature. Obviously, this was unacceptable to me. Then, the guard, grasping my discomfiture, suggested that I enter a corridor ending at a long descending stairway. At the base of the stairway, I found a squat toilet comprised of filthy bars opening into a cavity below. I lowered my trousers and was about to use the facility when I heard a low groaning sound directly below me. Peering into the darkness of the pit, I dimly descried several prisoners, entirely blackened with filth, sprawled in the ordure. I assume that they were political prisoners. But, by this time, my need had grown so insistent that there was nothing to do but avail myself of this unpleasant facility. (When traveling in Elcinore, tourists are advised to equip themselves with their own toilet paper since this amenity is almost never available in public restrooms – fortunately, I was cognizant of that minor inconvenience and properly supplied for this occasion.)

When I returned to the surface, a pleasant guard hustled me out of the building. Only, then, did I discover that I was missing both my wallet and passport, apparently fallen into the noisome pit that I had used as a toilet. And encountering brambles in the quadrangle, I looked down to see that my feet were quite bare.