Halloween

The house is decorated, the Jack-o-lanterns are lit, the big bowl by the door is filled with candy. But no trick or treaters have come to the door, no trick or treaters are expected--we live out in the hill country of Southern AZ. There are no street lights or sidewalks and kids want neighborhoods, houses close together, company!

But I had such fun carving pumpkins!

Wait!! There's the doorbell. A little vampire stands and asks for treats. Halloween success. These three pumpkins are for you Nola, and Gabe, and Ta! I do have more!

Tamazunchale

OK. I didn't actually do justice to Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
First. We always pronounced this town Thomas n Chahhhlie. Which is a pretty close approximation of the correct Spanish pronunciation and easy to remember.

Tamazunchale sits in a narrow valley with a deep gorge on the north side and mountains on the south, east, and west sides. When you come down out of the mountains from the north you cross a bridge over the verrrrrry deep gorge with a river in the bottom and make a turn to the right and you are in the town.
I think it sits in a little microsystem of its own. I don't know anywhere else this far north where you can grow cocoa for instance. But, I do know that when you cross that bridge you enter a different century. The popluation is Huastecan, people sit on the sidewalk shucking corn kernels from off the cob using an already shucked cob. I stopped in at a grocery store and looked at the copal wrapped in little rectangular packets. I was curious. I asked the storekeeper, a tiny woman with long braids, (made longer by the ribbons braided through her gray hair and tying the 2 braids together at her lower back) what the copal was used for. She looked at me like I was a real dummy--You know, you put it in the coffin with the deceased. Oh, of course. How could that have slipped my mind.
When the boys got haircuts with hand held clippers it was in the Plaza under a huge old tree, but in a proper barber's chair.
I don't know. I am not giving you the feeling of this place.
One thing more. There are two roads out of town to the south, both eventually take you to Pachuca, both run through the sierra in the state of Hidalgo, both look like they head into endless tropical cloud forest, shrouded in fog and mystery.
You know when your take-off point is Tamazunchale that you are headed out past the far end of the middle of nowhere.
I love that little town.
I wonder what's happening there today???

Tamales, Beaks and Claws

Continued from previous post. . . . .

We got to Tamazunchale, cleaned up and walked around the town. There were monkeys here, it was tropical! I bought cocoa beans in the market and the woman who sold them to me explained how to roast them in my frying pan, peel and grind them to make cocoa powder. We climbed the steep trails between houses on the hillside to the very top of the mountain and looked out at the ocean of green below us.

We bought Baygon at the drugstore and Mike sprayed the van thoroughly to kill any remaining scorpions. The boys got haircuts at the barbershop. The barber used hand operated clippers--no electricity. I wish I had bought a pair while I had the chance, though they did tend to pull the hair.

I went back to the market near the heavy colonial stone church and bought dozens of tamales from a tiny woman cooking over a little brazier. The chicken tamales were wrapped in corn husks, the pork tamales were wrapped in banana leaves.

Everyone was hungry. Everyone unwrapped their tamales and started to eat. What unexpected treats--a rooster claw, a piece of beak, a bit of bone with the pork. Somehow the kids lost their appetites. They just couldn't eat chicken tamales that had that much chicken in them!!

We crowded into a small room; everyone slept well. We were up early, ready to hit the road. Charlie and I walked up the hill to a panaderia and bought fresh, warm bolillos for breakfast. By the time we got back the van was packed and everyone was sitting up waiting to go.

The Smith boxes--collecting boxes about the size and shape of cigar boxes, but made of light wood--were stacked between the two front seats of the van. As we started out Mike asked me to hold the boxes, he was afraid they would slide around. As I picked them up I saw two or three scorpions under the top two boxes. "Scorpions," I yelped, and pulled open the door as I dropped the collecting boxes onto my seat. Charlie had the sliding door open and was half way out when we both noticed that no one else was alarmed. They weren't moving. They were laughing.

Something was really wrong here.

I was suddenly suspicious, and with good reason: While we had been busy getting breakfast the hooligans had discovered scorpions killed by the Baygon and planted them where they would be sure to scare us to death.

Back into the van, and down the road. . . .

Scorpions and Duct Tape

Continued from previous post . . . .
We headed down the road toward Tamazunchale in a heavy rain. Not too many miles south of Valles the road crew was out with bad news. The road was washed-out ahead, flooded and closed.

We looked at our trusty Guia Roji maps of Mexico and took a sharp turn to the east on a secondary--no, tertiary at best--road. We dropped down through a small town where the bulldozer pushed a path through the mud in the road for us to follow. The water had been 4 or 5 feet deep in the buildings on the sides of the road, but we were fortunate again. The water had receded, leaving only deep mud behind.
We stopped at a small Huasteca ruin at Tamuin and saw the partially excavated altars and temple mounds, then turned south on a road that could only be described as pesimo. Really ugly. There was a mist in the air, the tall grass was wet and butterflies covered the telephone poles along the road--even they knew this wasn't travel weather.

Charlie had been talking for days about getting a cowboy hat. When he got to Mexico he wanted to get a straw cowboy hat. We wanted to look at the butterflies on the poles, and pulled over to the side of the road. The van door slid open and Hopkins descended. Much to Charlie's delight the storm had blown a nice looking cowboy hat his way--there it was sitting it the wet grass. He snatched it up and tossed it into the van.

We spent a while collecting butterflies. They just sat and waited for us. They couldn't fly in the wet air. Coming from Arizona the air felt great. Finally we all got back into the van and ready to go. Suddenly, from the far back a voice yelped, "There's scorpions in the car!"

Mike hit the brakes and everyone bailed out. Sure enough there were scorpions looking for cracks to hide in on the floor of the van. Mean looking scorpions not quite an inch long. Lots of em.

While I stood gaping, Mike grabbed the duct tape and wrapped it backwards around his hand and started sticking scorpions to duct tape. When he had a handful he changed tape. They didn't have a chance.

One of the kids wondered aloud where the scorpions had come from, and the light went on as a chorus of voices sang out, "The hat!"

Mike snatched up the hat, and in the crown was the four inch mama with babies still scrambling down from her back. He did not try to trap her with duct tape. We didn't even put her in a collecting bottle. We crushed her dead.

Finally, hoping we had captured all her little poisonous offspring we loaded our offspring back into the vehicle and headed down the road. We traveled on roads that could have provided great moguls for skiers--if they liked mud. We traveled through tropical villages, under huge trees where we saw our first electric blue morpho butterflies on the wing, and finally, hours after leaving Valles we turned back west and hit the main road less than a hundred miles from where we'd started that morning.

We stopped in Tamazunchale and spent the night in a little hotel behind the bus station.

To be continued. . . . .

The brown van and bolillos

In the early 1990's we began vacationing in Mexico, spending the entire summer wandering from one interesting spot to another. We called these trips our TGV's--Tres Gran Viajes. On our second TGV we traveled over to Brownsville, Texas and then drove down to Ciudad Valles to spend our first night in an older hotel with a room on the second floor. The rooms were large and opened onto a wide covered porch. Drinking water was available in a large glass jarro outside the door. There was no TV, just double beds, ceiling fans, and space for eight kids to spread out on the tile floor.

During the night the hurricane arrived.

When we got up in the morning I volunteered to go to the panaderia and buy bolillos and maybe fresh fruit for breakfast. I stepped outside. It was raining. Really raining. I went down and got in the van. I think maybe Megan and Charlie came with me. We asked directions to the panaderia, got in the car, and headed south on the main street. The water in the street was deep.
It got deeper.
I turned onto a side street where I expected to find a bakery, the van stalled out. When I stepped out the water in the streets was up past my knees--maybe higher. No cell phones back then. No phone in the hotel room. Just me and the kids stuck in deep water. I walked--slogged--up the street and found the bakery, bought bread, bought carnitas next door. Asked if anyone had a phone. Someone pointed me to a house further up the street. Who could I call?
We walked back to the van with the food, wondered what to do. Across the street and down a little I saw a firestone dealer and mechanic. So it was back into the water and wading across four lanes of deep water through traffic.
I can't remember just what the mechanic did, except that he came and looked at the van and got it running and charged me nothing.

I was always lucky in Mexico.

Back to the hotel, warming up, drying out, eating, and back into the van.
Now we all drove south through the rain in our warm van headed for Tamazunchale.

To be continued. . . . .

Yes, I can!

Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. -- Groucho Marx

(Thanks Sarah, I stole your quote!)

OctOber!

Must be October. Everything's turning orange and pumpkinny!