Speak your truth quietly and clearly
and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant
…they too have their story.
Framed on our wall, near the front door of my parent’s home, was the Desiderata prayer/poem from Max Ehrmann, 1927. It was my grandmother’s and her mother’s before her. It was one thing that I took after everyone died. Somehow it has survived all my cross country trips and a van crash. I have it sitting on the table where I type… (notice I did not say desk, for that, it is not)
It centers me with a reminder that people have been trying to figure life out for hundreds of years. Thousands?
Listen to Others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud & Aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
Last Monday when I was going on the wild goose chase that is buying anything in Nowhere Pueblo, Mexico, I listened to a lot of stories from the carne asada man as he drove me through this town where he’s lived 45 years. There’s not 45 minutes of sightseeing to be fair, but stories? Plenty of stories. We went to look at an old pickup truck so I can haul dogs and kibble to far ends of the bay without my organs melting in the heat (or getting abducted). The truck was unfixable and likely stolen or worse and we looked quickly, had a laugh and kept going.
He hauled out photo albums when we got back to the shop. Showed me pics of the tienda when they used to have a full grocery store. Fruit and veg and more inventory besides chips and soda. La Esposa (the wife) had taken the bus to the city and so he felt free to be nostalgic I guess. He said she hated looking at old pictures. I indulged him. I have always had bartender face. It’s always interesting to see Polaroids from the early 80s no matter who you are.
He was a more obvious Indian back then, shell necklaces, riding horses, cowboy hats, big concha belts and long black hair, suede moccasins. He looked wild for sure. He confirmed, yes, he was hot headed. Even now, at what I think is 70 or more, he still walks through the tienda with a shovel full of hot coals and lifts the asada grill top with his bare hands to stoke the fire. Picks up barrels like they’re feathers and saws bones with a tree saw.
They used to have a meat counter, he sold pork and beef but the wife hated the smell of the pigs. They didn’t have AC (still don’t, only in the bedroom in back and one dining room that no one sits in) and he said the wife used to be lazy! hard to imagine because she works 12 hour shifts now and still makes kilos of salsa by hand every day except Monday. I noted that it looked like she was raising the 3 kids, no? What raising? She just didn’t want to work. It took her 30 years to figure out if we don’t work, we don’t eat.
It’s 1932 all over again. I let him continue.
Looking at photos of giant pigs bleeding out of the back of a pickup, this was no gentleman farmer. I had my “gentlewoman farmer” experiment for a decade and only culled chickens and can attest to the flies, the smells, the mess. There’s nothing gentle about it even in the best environment. Pigs are next level at 1000 lbs or more and these guys aren’t in some indoor abattoir with a chill plunge. Mexican desert and machetes. Some of the pigs were wild and caught and then slaughtered. Tell that to your hippie nephew who wants to live “off the land” but thinks that means growing garbanzos.
They caught the blood in a bucket to make morcilla (blood sausage) later.
The wife was a young gal he plucked from the obscurity of the “ranchos” he said. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t ready to sign up for hot pig business in the desert. Plus making babies? Was it an arranged marriage? I don’t know the words for that in Spanish but well, probably. She’s 10 years younger. I’m trying to do the math. She still runs around and makes his 8 fried eggs for breakfast each morning and warms his tortillas in the toaster oven because he, like me, forbids the microwave.
He grew up on the streets in Chihuahua and didn’t get his life together until he found his real dad when he was in his 20s and they both stopped drinking. The dad had cirrhosis already but it seemed he came back into his life just in time to teach him some life skills. Business basics. Get a wife, don’t booze, have kids, invest in concrete houses and have a food business. The wife was supposed to be the helper in all things. He felt like he got a lemon until recently.
He pointed out the guy from the hardware store who spent most of his life in prison for drug dealing. He has 8 kids despite the incarceration. I met the wife once and she seemed pretty fancy and I heard she lived in Phoenix. She died suddenly last Fall. The hardware guy seems happier than before. I asked if he poisoned her, the carne asada guy asked how I knew?
It just seems like that kind of town.
He pointed out the 4 mafia families and illustrated which ones had fish businesses (aka boats in the Sea of Cortez), which ones had hotel business and which ones laundered money at the ice factory. Mexico went to shit in 1992 he said and he had to change his business model. Too many poor people in town to buy cuts of beef and sides of pork. They’re squeezing him out now but he’ll never sell his buildings to them. He’ll sell it to Starbutts (his word) before he lets them have it.
Nothing better than stories from a well lived elder. Especially in a world where noise is dominated by tweens on TikTok discussing the billion dollar Barbie movie or tech nerds shorting the crypto market. It’s all so boring. Most days it’s hard to believe we’re all spinning on the same rock.
I fit nowhere per usual. And that’s okay as a perpetual fly on the wall.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Dog of the Week
Cookie! A mini pittie Chihuahua? hard to imagine that courtship but The Velvet Pickle is about 15 lbs and happy being an inside lady with a silly high houndy bark. Once a day zoomies and spins and evening cuddles she has a keen ear for door knocks. She was found as a yam sized puppy in a trash can 1.5 years ago and has survived Parvo. Her sister is Brindle. Spayed and vaccinated.
