Snake Bit, Part 3

 

 

 

The afternoon after the debacle at The Picadilly bar I went to the other bar in our apartment complex. Just one floor above my little apartment, it was on the roof and called The Penthouse. I climbed up on a barstool, ordered a beer and prepared to mull over my employment possibilities when the owner of the bar approached me. He knew me as I lived just below the bar. He told me that his evening bartender had left town suddenly and he was in need of a new one and asked if I would be interested.

Serendipity? I thought so at the time but looking back I think it was more appropriately a snake bite. I told the man that I had worked as a cocktail waitress but never as a bartender but I would like to learn. When I returned that evening for my shift he handed me a large copy of a bartender’s drink guide, asked me to learn one new drink every day and left me there. Luckily it really wasn’t very busy that evening and I managed to wing it.

The owner (whose name, to this day, I do not feel comfortable repeating) returned at the end of my shift, asked me which drink I had learned to make and showed me how to tally the evening’s receipts and put them in the safe in his office. And Bob’s your uncle, as easy as that I had started a new career. One that actually stuck as I worked mostly as a bartender for the next twelve years.

I didn’t really know the previous bartender but over the next few weeks I notice that there seemed to be some animosity directed at me from her circle of friends who hung out in the bar. When I finally confronted some of them and asked if I had done something to offend them they told me that I was responsible for her disappearance. ????????? HUH? I said eloquently. I really didn’t know the woman other than to see her behind the bar.

The bar owner, who we will call Jim, had told me that the other bartender had left town suddenly, and I repeated this to her friends. They all laughed knowingly and asked “don’t you know who Jim is?” Apparently not, I told them. They then explained that Jim was the ex-husband of the head of the Hawaiian Mafia. Yea, I laughed too. However they were dead serious and felt that he had gotten rid of her because he wanted me to be his bartender. Whether she had left town or not no one knew, but she had definitely disappeared.

Well great! I really wasn’t sure if I bought any of this or not but I did ask around and much to my surprise this did seem to be the general consensus.  Still, I worked at The Penthouse for a long time without anything untoward happening and I had really forgotten the whole thing until one afternoon as I arrived for my shift, Jim asked me to come into his office. Once there he proceeded to tell me that because I had stolen the last evening’s receipts that I was fired. ????????? HUH?

I explained that this did NOT happen, that it went against my very nature! It didn’t matter and I was canned. The following day there was a knock at my apartment door and when I looked through the peep hole I saw two very large Hawaiian men in dark suits standing there. I put the chain on the door before opening it and asked what they wanted. They said that they were the police and would like to speak with me. I thought, all right, what now?

I asked to see their identification and they flashed some kind of card but it sure didn’t look like a police shield and they refused to give me their names or tell me what they wanted to talk to me about. They just wanted to come inside. I shut the door and told them to go away, hearing them say through the closed door that they would return. Now I was pretty freaked out. Over the next couple of days the men returned once more and I decided that I had had enough of that.

I packed my meager belongings and went to stay at the apartment of my friend David  (who later became my first husband, but we don’t need to go there) and just sort of laid low for awhile. One afternoon though I had agreed to meet David at a restaurant at the Waikiki Yacht Club. I arrived first so I waited for him at the bar. A man sat down beside me and started to chat, which didn’t strike me as strange because back then it happened every time I sat alone at a bar. However, at one point he offered me a plane ticket off the island because I was a nice kid and I was in trouble.????????? HUH?

Now I was actually panicked. I had never seen the man before or he me, I thought, so how did he know anything about me? I had the sudden feeling that if I got on that plane I would not get off at the other end. I told David what happened and he felt we should go home immediately and discuss what we should do. Call the police? Probably not the best idea. Instead I called my parents. They were wintering in Carpenteria California and sent me a plane ticket which I used in all haste and left Hawaii behind.

As I flew to California I went over and over in my mind all the events that had occurred in the previous couple of weeks, trying to make some sense out of the whole thing. The only thing that made any sense to me was that I probably had inadvertently seen something in Jim’s office that I should not have seen, on the night that I supposedly had stolen the money, but I had no idea what that might have been and never found out.

 

I’m sorry, I lied, the final chapter of this odyssey will be posted tomorrow. It seems to have gotten rather wordy.

Snake Bit, Part Two

 

 

 

I don’t recall if Denny, our latest roommate, ever did get a job, but Gwen and I became dancers at a club in downtown Honolulu. We were not exotic dancers but we were definitely scantily clad. Honolulu is a military town and such was our clientele. The club owner sold posters of the dancers and mine announced that I was Shannon from Vancouver (no mention of Canada) and that my statistics were 42-24-36. They could do that back then without our consent. Or at least they told us that they could. Naturally we graced a lot of locker doors on several military bases.

One young man desperate for a date knew that I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle and told me that he had a little 250cc job that would be perfect for me to learn on and that he would be happy to teach me. When he arrived to pick me up it was on a somewhat souped up 650cc bike, someone had borrowed the other one, but this would be no problem, he assured me. Sometime later, after tearing up a good chunk of the football field at Hickam Air Force Base and finally wrapping the motorcycle around a plumeria tree, I begged to differ.

Shortly after the motorcycle incident my career as a dancer came to an untimely end as well. During one of my stints on one of the little stages, between which I waited tables, I had an epiphany. This was brought on by a small patch of powder put on the stage by the dancer before me so that her shoes would not stick to the floor. My shoes did not stick to the floor even without powder. In 1975 we wore very high heeled platform shoes. Mine were on a  2 inch solid carved wooden base with 4 inch heels and macramé tops. With these beauties I stood about 5’ 11”, quite a sight with my scantily clad “statistics”.

Shortly into my number, with one foot raised above my head, the other slid into the patch of powder. Lying on my back with the wind knocked out of me and staring up at myself in the mirror on the ceiling I had the epiphany. No amount of money, or lack there of were worth this. I also thought that perhaps if I just lay there they would think I was dead and carry me away, after which I could slip out the back door never to be seen or heard from again.

Instead, with a heavy sigh, I got to my feet and carried on as I ran through the article in my head that I would write and send to Reader’s Digest about my life’s most embarrassing moments. Although our wages, paid under the table, were practically non-existent the tips that we earned at Tammy’s Nightclub for men were fairly lucrative. For this reason, I had managed to squirrel away some money and I decided to give up this somewhat seedy endeavor to look for work a little more in line with what my mother might have approved, although I doubt that actually occurred to me at the time.

I worked in Honolulu but I actually lived in Waikiki, in a four story apartment building just off the main drag. I lived in a studio apartment on the fourth floor and had I been on the right side of the building would probably have had a beautiful ocean view. As it was I was on the other side which looked over our small pool and even smaller poolside bar, a tiny  English Pub style venue called The Picadilly.

After having quit my job without any other prospects I retired there for the evening to drown my sorrows, only to find that a large group of servicemen from the downtown club had followed me to Waikiki to lament my parting of the ways with Tammy’s Nightclub for men. This was more business than The Picadilly had ever seen in one evening and the following day they actually gave me a bottle of Jose Cuervo 1800 as a thanks for all the money it made the previous evening.

I had been drinking this tequila that evening when I first arrived and the boys of the military just kept them coming. At one point I recall sitting cross-legged on top of a Watney’s Red Barrel beer barrel surrounded by young men. This was certainly an improvement over lying on my back on the stage at Tammy’s Nightclub for men. Then of course, because I am Snake Bit, the lid of the barrel fell in leaving only the top of my head and my feet sticking our. They had to turn the barrel over and dump me out, bruised and once again humiliated. The snake bitten story of my life……

 

Stay tuned for part 3, and I promise I will wrap it up!

Snake Bit, Part One

 

 

 

For most of my life my father used to jokingly call me snake bit. I thought it to be an interesting term as he was the only one I had ever heard use it, but perhaps it was simply dated as he was 40 years old when I was born. I was sort of an afterthought. I don’t think I was really sure what it meant when I was very young so it is unlikely that it was responsible for any psychological damage developed during my formative years.

In retrospect, though, I now think I have a pretty good grip on the gist of being Snake Bit. As a kid growing up on the mostly unpopulated side of a mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia I was always going hell bent for leather through the forest with my Irish setter, Roxy. To say that I was a little clumsy would be greatly understating the matter. My mother told me later that the first thing out of my mouth when entering the house as a small child was usually, “I fell in”. Even in the dead of summer when there had been no rain for a month ( it does happen in Vancouver occasionally ) I would find a wet muddy  spot to fall into.

Now this, in and of itself is not entirely uncommon and could be chocked up to my being a somewhat ungainly and clumsy kid. Somehow though I guess my father saw through it and realized that there was a whole other dynamic evolving there. By the time I was in elementary school a pattern had developed. If, for instance, in gym class the volley ball net was likely to fall on someone, the climbing rope slip out of the ring in the ceiling or the edge of the vaulting box to slip off the mat and send the gymnast careening ass over teakettle onto the wooden floor boards, that child was most likely to be me.

After such occurrences I think there was some relief among the other students in that they felt they would now probably make it through gym class unscathed, as the odds of these incidents repeating with someone else were astronomically high. In short, I was a good kid to hang out with. A lot of my childhood prior to school had been pretty solitary so this seemed like a good thing to me.

By junior high the trend had escalated. I was a pretty good baseball player but had certainly had more than my share of bruises and broken bones gaining that status. By senior high I had become a little aloof and didn’t fit in very well. I credit my best friends Gwen and Shelley (still in Vancouver) for my sanity during those years. I didn’t go to school very often, but always showed up to write exams so no one really missed me until the middle of my twelfth year when they decided that the best way to handle the fact that I had not been there for two and a half years was to expel me.

I spent the next two years in a cosmetology apprenticeship and liked the makeup end but realized early on that the hair and nails end of things (which was the majority of the program) was definitely not for me. I stuck it out and got my license and then headed off in early September across Canada with my friend Gwen in a bright yellow Volkswagen Van, which we quickly, and appropriately tagged “The Lemon”.

I believe it was our second day out, in the middle of the night in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, that our electrical system failed and we lost all our lights and our windshield wipers. It was dark and snowing and the road was narrow and treacherous. There was no safe place to pull over so we bundled up in sweaters, stuck flashlights out the windows and soldiered on. By morning we had made it safely out of the mountains and into the town of Golden where we had to stay a few days while the mechanic figured out what had happened to “The Lemon”.

With the electrical system repaired we drove on to Calgary where Gwen had relatives. On our second day there, with two of Gwen’s very young cousins in the van, a horrendous explosion emanated from the rear of “The Lemon”, followed by billowing black smoke. As we sat on the sidewalk contemplating the remains of our black and smoldering engine, I think Gwen was having second thoughts about having undertaken this trip with me. Gwen and I have known each other since we were nine or ten years old so she really should have known better.

We had to go to work for about 3 weeks in Calgary to pay for the new engine so it was now late September as we headed out across the prairies. Thankfully snow came late that year so we enjoyed a really beautiful fall. We were heading to Saskatoon and just before midnight we drove into town and noticed the sign said Moosejaw. I was navigating at that point and clearly map reading was not my strong suit. I was off by 224 km. At this point we noticed flashing lights behind us and Gwen pulled over. 

A young smiling policeman told us that he had about 15 minutes left on his shift and had noticed our license plates and pulled us over for a routine check. At 19 we knew nothing about our rights as citizens of Canada and as the smiling young policeman did his illegal search and seizure, all the while telling us about his pregnant wife who was about to “pop”, we just sat and listened. Very chagrined, he notified me that he had found marijuana seeds in the bottom of my purse and that he would have to arrest me.

We went to the police station where they called the circuit court judge. This being one of my very rare incidents of profound good luck, the man was actually in town which meant that I did not have to sit in jail for a couple of months waiting for his arrival. By about 2 am it was over, I had paid a fine for the misdemeanor and we were once again on our way, with Gwen navigating.  “The Lemon”, however was not finished. By the time we reached Halifax we had spent about 2,500 dollars, which was a lot of money in 1974 and also about 500 dollars more than we had originally paid for the beast.

This is how we came to find ourselves in a public park in Halifax with 35 cents between us and a nearly empty gas tank. While we sat in “The Lemon” contemplating our immediate future an old man approached the van and knocked on the window. When I rolled down the window and greeted him he said he had noticed our out of Province license plates and  proceeded to tell us the story of a young boy being recently murdered in that self same park and that we should be very very careful as this was “a dirty, dirty city”.

As it turned out we absolutely loved the “dirty dirty city” and stayed for a year and a half. But by then we were 21 and getting itchy feet again so we returned to Toronto and divested ourselves of “The Lemon”, getting about 2000 dollars, and feeling lucky to have passed on “The Lemon Torch” to someone else. We hoped they had deep pockets.

We had left Halifax with the intention of flying from Toronto to Florida and beginning a new adventure in the States. Our roommate Allen unbennounced to me, had left us a going away gift in a seldom used outside pocket of my carryon bag. He had rolled us a rather fat 12 inch joint. When it was discovered in airport security the agent removed it, held it up and asked me “what is this”? In my ultimate 21 year old wisdom, I grinned and said “it looks like a joint, why don’t we smoke it and find out”?

Everything we owned, which was admittedly little at that point, went on to Florida while we remained in Toronto to straighten out the mess. Thank you very much Allen. In about two weeks we had done so, and with the help of more of Gwen’s relatives in Florida who vouched for us (it was a different time then) we were able to catch up with our belongings. Thank goodness for Gwen’s prolific family.

After a few months of working our way across the southern USA  we wound up in San Diego. We had enough money to either go home to Vancouver or fly to Hawaii. Care to guess whether we went north or south? Yes we went to Hawaii. We had picked up another roommate in San Diego and between us we had enough money to get to Waikiki and rent an apartment for one month. It was two months before any of us found jobs and those to which we had originally turned up our noses were starting to look good.

To Be Continued…

Emiliano Zapata Wants Brownies

 

 

 

 

Each time I think I have found my favourite San Miguel de Allende Restaurant I visit a new one and discover that I was wrong. Still, for today I am going to expound on the gastronomic virtues and ambiance of my latest favourite, Café Rama. I had made the mistake of not visiting earlier because of some negative comments I had heard around town.

I had been told that about a year ago Café Rama lost it’s chef and that it was “just no longer the same and don’t bother going there”. Well you can’t believe everything you hear. Tuesday night was my second visit to Café Rama, I like to visit a restaurant at least twice before I write about it, just in case the first time was a fluke. It was no fluke.

I have now had two totally different types of meals and both were exceptional. The menu said that one of the daily specials was a white fish (robalo) baked in pastry. That sounded pretty good to me so I asked the waiter to tell me about how it was prepared and if he thought it was good. He told me that they had actually just got in fresh Mahi Mahi and that that was now the fish special.

As that is one of my favourite fish I opted to try that, grilled with a pesto sauce. The fish came with two side dishes, of the client’s choice, and I chose asparagus baked in pastry (to make up for the fish) and baked red potatoes. I could not have been happier with the outcome.

 

 

Todd was in the mood for comfort food that night and ordered the chicken pot pie. Having had that on my previous visit, I new he would be happy. Lots of chicken and vegetables that still have a slight crunch even though they have clearly simmered for some time in the rich creamy sauce. This is topped with flakey puff pastry baked to a perfect golden brown. Along side of the pot pie there were some fresh,and fragrant, French bread slices with chopped fresh basil and sliced cherry tomatoes.

 

 

 

 

Café Rama was expanded about 10 or 11 months ago and now offers two dining rooms. They both have fireplaces but the similarities end there. The room you enter from the street is the upper floor, although only by a few steps, with a ramp for the disabled. An important point for some of us, LOL. This room is windowed and bright with a lovely garden. There is a huge tree there, and rather than remove it they built a garden and the restaurant around it. This area sort of has the feel of a high end New York deli.

 

 

One thing that the two rooms do have in common is fabulous lighting. All of the vintage lamps and chandeliers are a work of art. Although the main bar is found in the lower room, there is a very small, quaint bar next to the dessert counter on the main floor as well. In the dessert counter reside such delicacies as handmade chocolate truffles, carrot cake, chocolate torte, cheesecake with blackberries, fresh brownies sprinkled with powdered sugar, and cups of flan fresh from the oven, among other things.

 

 

“Downstairs” the ambiance changes, as though you have entered a New York warehouse loft. Whitewashed wood and high ceilings give way to a huge bar at the end of the room. Looking like something out of an old western, it has a television behind it that plays (silently) things like The Munsters and Charlie Chaplin. The walls are covered with colourful art by Jaime Shelley, which can also be purchased, and the floor is carpeted with cowhide rugs.

 

 

The evening was chilly so the warmth emanating from the large fireplace on the lower floor was welcome. On the cowhide rug in front of the fireplace sits a coffee table with a vase of roses. Around the table are comfortable high backed leather chairs and a cowhide sofa and chair. There is also a bookcase should you like to relax there and read. The waiter did tell us that we were welcome to have our coffee by the fire after dinner if we were so inclined. Unfortunately we had to be on our way that night, but another time…

 

 

 

Some of the other items on the menu included Pulled Pork Sandwiches, which Todd says are wonderful, a Veggie Burger with portobello mushroom, gouda cheese, tomato, peppers, pickles and caramelized onions, Fish and Chips and Fried Chicken Rama.

You could also have a warm spinach salad with fish or shrimp and sesame miso dressing, cold spinach salad with apple, candied walnuts, cranberry, goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette or a meal size mango salad. If you are in the mood for something different you might like Fish Curry, served on a bed of shallots, apple and mixed rice, or maybe Makhani Chicken Curry, served with jasmine rice, purslane curry and grated apple chutney.

With the daily specials you have a choice of two sides, some of which are Cauliflower with toasted almonds, cranberries and parsley garlic chips, Spinach sauteed with lemon pepper and Olive Oil, Zucchine rolls stuffed with goat cheese with chives, Sauteed Asparagus wrapped in bacon with grated Parmesan cheese, or baked in pastry.

There is also a full breakfast menu which is served from 8 am to 11:30 am Tuesday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday from 8 am to 1 pm, and rumour has it that the Eggs Benedict and Florentine are very good.

 

  Pancho, the host at Café Rama is waiting for your visit.

 

All the photographs in this post are courtesy of Todd McIntosh and you can click on them for a larger image.

The Times, They Are A Changin’

 

 

 

 

Hi, I’m, back. Did anybody miss me? Actually I didn’t go anywhere, I just have not posted for a couple of weeks. We’ve been BUSY! And this is a good thing. For the longest time, even though we have been enjoying San Miguel, we have kind of been feeling like outsiders here.

I don’t know about Todd, but I’ve been a little homesick for Patzcuaro and Michoacán. I miss volunteering in the kitchen at El Sagrario, and all the wonderful folks there. It was nice to walk through town or the mercado, and have so many people wave or stop to chat. I felt like I was really part of the community there.

 

El Sagrario, Patzcuaro

 

But then I realized, after a couple of really busy weeks, that our lifestyle has changed quite radically since we first arrived in San Miguel. For the last six or eight months I have been taking a conversational Spanish class twice a week in a little back room in Juan’s Café where I have met some wonderful people. We are such a diverse group, with totally different opinions and perspectives, that our discussions are often very lively.

 

Juan’s Café on Calle Reloj

 

At times it seems more like a book club than a Spanish class, as we read novels and discuss them in the class. There are days though, when we don’t even get to the novel because someone has mentioned some current event happening in the news and we’re off and running. Our teacher José, a charming young man from Aguascalientes, is a wonderful mediator, somehow always managing to keep us on track.

This class has really become the highlight of my week, but lately it’s been vying for position with so many other things going on in our lives. A couple of months ago Todd began volunteering for the house tour which takes place every Sunday afternoon. It is one of the many events overseen by Emma Salazar, the event coordinator for the public library. This is one of the ways the library raises money to maintain itself as well as for several local charities.

Somewhere along the way Todd became the photographer for the house tour and Emma’s all around go to guy, which keeps him, and sometimes me, pretty busy. Last Sunday after the house tour we enjoyed the company of Todd’s fellow volunteers at Milagros, one of my favorite restaurants here in San Miguel.

 

Milagros

 

There is always live music at Milagros and the menu is huge. From the inexpensive burgers and Tex/Mex section (which is almost impossible to come by in Mexico) to the moderately priced fresh salads, pastas and seafood, to the pricier classic Mexican cuisine which includes authentic Molcajetes, the food is always consistent and delicious.

 

Molcajete

 

The Molcajete is a basalt stone bowl which sits on three little legs and is used to grind spices and make salsas and guacamole. In this case, however, it is piping hot and filled with grilled arrachera, marinated flank steak, grilled chicken, chorizo sausage and panela cheese, chiles, and nopal cactus, all bathed in a homemade salsa verde. You wrap these delicacies in hot freshly pressed corn tortillas and it is absolutely mouthwatering.

 

Some of the charming Milagros staff

 

If you go to Milagros on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon you can enjoy your molcajete while you listen to the music of Jack and Francis. They both play seven string guitars, which was totally new to me, and they are incredibly adept. Their music is varied, and depending on their mood you may hear classical, jazz, country, R&B or just about any other genre you can think of. I’m not really sure which category the Beatles fall into but Jack and Francis recreate their music beautifully.

Where I was actually going with this before I got off on a tangent, was that while we were dining last Sunday Emma told me that her next project with the library is going to be an English class for local kids. Emma speaks excellent English and knows what opportunities it can give the local kids when they are ready to go to work. She asked me if I would be interested in helping out with the class. I was delighted and told her that I would love to help.

This may be just what I have been looking for since moving to San Miguel. I’ve been wanting a way to connect with the community here like I did in Patzcuaro.  We have our classes, Todd has taken improv and is thinking about an acting class, and I have my Spanish and recently took a course with the new Lifelong Learning program here and we have new clients that are keeping us busy, but I was still feeling like something was missing.

I think now our “Plan” is finally coming together and somewhere along the way San Miguel de Allende became home and I didn’t even realize it.

 

 

All the photos in this post are compliments of Todd McIntosh except the Molcajete.

Who Do We Blame?

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook have likely seen the image above. For the rest of you, let me explain. My very dear friends and ex-neighbours in Patzcuaro recently suffered one of the worst experiences possible for any family. Their  15 year old nephew and his friend disappeared from a mall in Guadalajara. Tragically their bodies were recovered several days later.

This is a story heard all too often, not only in Mexico, but in every country in the world. What I would like to address here is not so much the events themselves but our reactions to them. Today another dear friend of mine shared on Facebook, a very interesting and insightful blog post discussing the abduction of the two boys, from a blog entitled La Política Circense.

The post asks us to consider the possibility that we should take social responsibility for heinous acts such as these and questions the actions ( or non-actions ) of the government in it’s responses to these situations.
The author of the post says that in response to this situation there are two general opinions. On the one hand there is indignation, accusation, grief and sadness. On the other there is justification. He “was a narco”, and that, in some way makes the crime “expected”, dehumanized. In our minds we see that the assassination was a narco mandate which has become all too common, and if it is narco related we have no control. We just keep our heads down and say ”poor little things”, “how terrible for the families”.

It’s a good excuse isn’t it? “Ohhhhhh, he must have been involved in drugs”.  The author goes on to ask “ How is it that we allow crimes like this to become normalized?” “When did it become normal that thugs with guns can snatch away the lives of 15 year boys?” “Who’s fault is that?” he asks.

He feels that the government is shielding itself under “fue producto del crimen del Narco” , “it was the proceeds of narco crime”, and he wonders if we, as a society are doing the same thing. Because we feel we can’t do anything against the drug cartels, have we reached a point where we say, well it’s no one’s fault, these things happen? As though they were accidents?

Todos somos responsables de la muerte de estos chicos. Somos responsables de la muerte de todas las víctimas del narcotráfico. Hemos, deliberadamente, permitido que las cosas se salieran de control. Tenemos policías que no sirven. Esperamos que papá Gobierno llegue a solucionarnos las vidas: ¿secuestran a dos chavales en una plaza? Pedimos cámaras de seguridad. Como si la construcción de un mejor país se hiciera con cámaras de seguridad y no con la propagación de valores de comunidad, de protesta, de transparencia, de cooperación.

I have added the passage above as it is very heartfelt and profound. I will translate as best I can. “ We are responsible for the deaths of those boys. We are responsible for the deaths of all the victims of drug trafficking. We have deliberately allowed matters to get out of control. We have police that do not serve. We wait for Father Government to solve the problems of our lives. Kidnap two boys from a plaza? We ask for security cameras. Like a better country might be built with security cameras and not the spreading of community values, protest, transparency and cooperation.” 

He goes on to say that we are responsible for our lives as they are because we do not embrace those values. That we are conformists and individualists. That we see these atrocities and the ineffective efforts of the government to control them, and we do nothing. We get angry with those who “rock the boat”, exercising their rights to protest. We put our individuality before the community, always.

This is interesting to me, as I have noticed a huge tendency among Mexicans to say “ni modo”, what can you do? I’m not referring to drug cartels here, but to life in general. “Si es la voluntad de Dios”, if it’s God’s will. However, don’t we all really do that, or something similar? Take the easy way out? I’m curious if the blog author’s feeling is a non-Mexican attitude, a young Mexican attitude or maybe more people in general are inclined this way but don’t voice their feelings. Or maybe they just don’t voice them to gringos. Or maybe he's a zealot.

http://lapoliticacircense.com/2013/07/luis-antonio-y-andres-a-quien-le-echamos-la-culpa/

Food for thought.

To Everything There Is A Season…

 

Timing is everything. Whether you are a comedian, a musician or just an average Joe.

 

Friday Market, Patzcuro, 2006

 

When we arrived in Patzcuaro, in the summer of 2006, our new lives filled with promise, life was ideal. Vincente Fox was still in office and the Michoacán days were warm, slow and happy. Shortly after our arrival we discovered Corazón de Durazno, a new housing development in the forested hills above the town.

Real estate was booming everywhere and our hope, when we packed up and left Canada was that we could buy, renovate and flip properties in Mexico. We had researched the market here and at that time real estate was relatively inexpensive. With my home staging abilities and Todd’s acumen in real estate photography and website building in addition to the influx of retirees from north of the border, our plan seemed sound.

 

Breaking Ground in the “Corazón”

 

“The Plan”, however did not include building from the ground up, but we had fallen in love with Corazón de Durazno. In our defense it really was something totally unique to Mexico and under different circumstances would have been a good investment. But then hindsight is 20/20. We didn’t move on to spend more time in Guanajuato City or Zacatecas, the other two towns where we had considered settling, we just started building. In retrospect I think this was the beginning of the collapse of our “Mexican Dream”.

On July 2, 2006 the Mexican presidential election was held. The competition was fierce with 8 parties involved. The National Action Party  (PAN) had won over the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, then in coalition with the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico) in 2000 for the first time in 71 years, and was anxious to hold on to the presidency for a second term, while the PRI was desperate to regain the office.The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) (then in coalition with Convergence and the Labor Party) also believed it had a good chance that year after losing in the two previous elections.

The preliminary official count went to Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (PAN) by a very narrow margin over Andres Manuel López Obrador, (PRD) who then declared a challenge of the results before the Federal Electoral Tribunal demanding a full recount of all the ballots in Mexico City. The PRD alleged election irregularities, including allegations that the IFE’s running scoreboard, tallying the votes, blinked zero for all candidates for a period of 4 minutes.

On July 8th a group of Obrador’s supporters ( a crowd estimated from 500,000 to 3,000,000 depending on which newspaper you read ) gathered in Mexico City’s Zócalo square starting, in Obrador’s words, “the defense of the popular vote”. The protests were mostly peaceful and within the law, but some unions and PRD supporters threatened “civil resistance” should the courts ratify Calderón's victory and there was some concern expressed that this could lead to an armed conflict.

After a prolonged period during which recounts were done in Mexico City Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was declared the definitive winner on September 5, 2006, and was sworn in amid loud protests and demonstrations by the PRD supporters on December 1st.

 

Our wonderful Corazón neighbours, Irma and Marcos

 

Being FM3 visa holders, we were not permitted to be involved in any way with the political goings-on so we really paid them very little attention, and with our initial euphoria still intact we celebrated our first Christmas in Mexico. 

Seeing as we were “on Mexican time”, our scheduled move-in date of March 1, 2007 didn’t actually happen until July 1st. I guess it was a good thing that the furniture that we had purchased at a show in Moroleon in March didn’t actually arrive until August. We spent the remainder of that year blissfully decorating and landscaping and readying our new home for sale. Don’t forget “The Plan”.

 

Front yard

 

By Christmas 2007 the war had begun. We had seen evidence of the escalating altercations between the police and the drug cartels. President Calderón had begun his war on drugs in his home state of Michoacán. Patzcuaro’s warm, slow days of easy living had become strained by kidnappings, extortion and burning busses.

After some initial worrying we adjusted, as one does to any new situation, and really our day to day lives were not affected very much. Although, one day I did have the army creeping through my back yard and eventually searching my underwear drawer, but that’s a story for another day. What was affected was tourism in Mexico, and in Michoacán in particular.

By mid 2008 most of the responses that we received from the website for the sale of our home were in the area of “beautiful house, but is it safe there?”. The media was having a field day with the Mexican drug wars. Then following closely on the heels of the new Mexican struggles, came the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. As I mentioned earlier, timing is everything.

 

Christmas Cactus, 2008

 

By the end of 2008 the situation had become somewhat prickly, as evidenced by the cactus above. The house had still not sold and in early 2009 we lowered the price quite dramatically. The drug wars raged on and tourism in Mexico had reached an all time low as the world media continued to play up the violence, which really only happened between warring drug factions and the Feds. For the most part the general public was left entirely alone, or in some cases greatly helped, and or greatly intimidated by “La Familia” ( Mexican mafia) which made it difficult for the police to obtain the evidence that they needed to bring them to justice.

The United States was in turmoil with the worst depression since the 1930’s and the rest of the world was reeling with the impact. In March of 2009, in the midst of all of this we sold the house. Our buyer, understandably, had financing problems what with the state of the American banking system at the time. It took roughly 6 months with us lowering our price another ten thousand to alleviate half the cost of our buyer having to take investment money rather than financing.

However we were just happy that the house had sold, greatly improving our financial situation, as we now had all of the money from the sale of the house in our bank account, but the buyer had second thoughts. On the day that we were to sign the papers, we were in the office of the notario, our buyer went off the deep end.

Calling us thieves and con artists and threatening to have us killed by her mafia friends in Guadalajara and saying that we had threatened her life, she barricaded herself in our home and refused to leave until she had 100% of her money back. After one week and many long hours of negotiating with lawyers we returned 90% of her money, she went back to the States and we started over from scratch.

 

Photo courtesy of  http://www.life-in-el-corazon.com

 

2010 saw many changes in  Corazón de Durazno. When we bought the property there were only a few houses built there and the atmosphere was relaxed and happy. We socialized with our neighbours, enjoying many parties and dinners in their homes. Todd even said once that it was like living in Mayberry.

We were technically a gated community, but as you can see from the picture above our gate consisted, in Todd’s words, of “pine and twine technology”, and we liked it like that. Eventually though, time marches on and new houses were built, neighbours left and new ones arrived and the property was turned over to the owners and registered with the city.

With this progress came the dreaded Home Owners Association. No matter how well people get along in social situations they will never all agree in a meeting of the HOA, and of course there are many issues that it is essential that everyone agree upon to maintain what ultimately becomes a business. Monthly dues needed to paid to maintain the property, to pay the lovely young man who had to be hired to man the real gate that eventually had to be built, and repair and maintain the high tech sewer system that the architect had included to service our community.

When the house finally sold in April of 2011 we were happy and relieved. But we had taken a bath on that investment and it was pretty clear that “ The Plan “ was going to have to be rethought. Although tourism was improving and we were looking at a new political regime in the following year it was fairly clear that our original idea of flipping property was no longer viable.

The situation in Corazón de Durazno however, had become uncomfortable for us. Somehow we hadn’t thought ahead to when it would eventually become a real gated community. We discovered that this was really not for us and felt that our timing was good in this instance when we moved to San Miguel de Allende.

Our timing had also been good when we sold our condo in North Vancouver, for which we had paid very little, for a ridiculously large price. Now we are about to embark on a new  “Plan”. This time we will endeavor to be a little more diverse in our thinking in an effort to be more adaptable to the changes that ultimately happen in our lives. Is our timing better now? Only time will tell, lo que será, será.