Which angle will I show?
of limes and crappy sunsets in Mexico
When I first got here I wandered around looking for the good stuff to take photos of. A beach town! Surely I could find something. Everyone clamors to live on the beach. Mexican beach towns of lore and reality. Those toes in the sand palapas where I used to while away hours, entire shift changes of margaritas and piles of limes on a table with friends and fish tacos. Vamos!
This isn't that kind of Mexican beach town. And I’m not on vacation. I mean you could, in theory, do whatever you wanted at the beach. Set up a table, buy some fish, cook it somewhere, buy some tortillas, get some limes and make tacos, drag chairs down there and sit. Oh wait, margaritas. Well send someone to the store for tequila. They don't sell tequila here? You're lying. Nope. Okay why? They have Passport Scotch for 600pesos. I can't think of a more non Scotch drinking place, but this is a MEXICAN beach town where MEXICANS live, not a tourist vackay place for gringos (the real tequila drinkers to be honest) and not where Mexicans vacation. They head to Mazatlan like everyone else.
This is a place on a coast with some guys who work in fishing and clamming and there's a geothermal plant and everyone else works there. And oh, laying pipe for a refrigerated natural gas line picked up in port for the Koreans. There’s no margaritas here.
And of course, drug smugglers and support businesses therein. An auto parts place, a sorta hardware store, a place to buy used refrigerators and occasionally used furniture, a handful of tiendas with cheap low quality meats. It's not the Mexico of pueblo magicos and your Oaxacan vacation for Dia de Los Muertos the mardi gras of Mexico. But not everyone lives in West Palm Beach in the US either. I've landed on that beach in Mississippi where you wouldn't likely stop twice.
Anyone else read those Richard Scarry illustrated books as a kid? What do people do all day? I did. I had several. I liked finding Lowly Worm and loved the towns with the baker and the town hall and the post office run by a cat walking on his rear legs wearing a jumper. The butcher and the police officer lion on his motorcycle. Some towns are still like that in the world, but I never seem to live in one. NYC is full of trendy crap you can’t afford and don’t need and when they finally open a big box anything you’re condemned for not shopping “mom and pop” which isn’t real anymore either.
My last town in rural Georgia had the town hall and the post office but nothing to buy anywhere. The next town over had a Dollar Store (of course, the new flag planted on US soil) and a big box hardware and grocery store. As things progressed it got a row of chain drive thru joints that everyone hailed as progress. If you think getting a Chik Fil A and Sonic is progress, you may need to get out more. Well actually that won't help, it's Everywhere USA. None of that exists in most of Mexico thankfully. There’s crap stores for sure but you can find what you need, shoes, bags, fabric, furniture, appliances, tons of food. I love markets and butchers and flower districts and counters with cheeses. None of that exists in this town, but you know, I didn't "pick the place" it sort of landed on my lap like a wet newspaper. But I’m making sorta do.
I got a new broom last week and anyone who has suffered the indignities of a lousy broom, can appreciate the Extra Suave Fluffy kind in a sandy dusty desert town. And that's it really, I was thinking of wins this week. The broom was the pinnacle. A $4.85 miracle for my 3x daily sweeps in a completely tiled house with 10 dogs. There were more good things and bad things I guess but I've stopped measuring all my days as good, bad, lousy, sad, super special mega bien (what my neighbor's 8 year old says if she had a cool day at school) they just are. And tomorrow will be different.
The sun shines 362 days a year. I have a clothesline. I got a cheap rental and this week they hooked up a better internet from some satellite on the roof because the pharmacy who is the modem broker in town was being slow and dickish about "plans" and signing me up for a contract for a chip to a modem they sold me a month ago. Long story but I was going to have to use the bag boy's ID at the beer store to register a modem, a local drug and drunky street kid, not a bad guy but you know. Lowly worm gone off the rails. And the lady said, well you'll have to give a deposit because he won't have good credit. (They turn the service off if you miss a day of payment, I'm not sure why there'd be a credit check, and Mexico doesn't have credit like that so they're just being assholes and abusive because they can. ) Americans are WAY more accommodating to Mexicans on the other side of the border, if for nothing else, because we want their money. Business is King on the other side.
If given ANY other option, I'd never use their stores but they are, as it is called in polite company, the mafia. But it can be where the Not So Chill part of me kicks in. As an established 56 year old with excellent credit (yes in my own country) I'm not getting a pay by week rip off and paying my bill when I can find the muchacho who bags beer at the tienda. If you sold me a machine that I can't use without a "chip" that's registered to a Mexican (which I clearly am not) then that's fraud. And go fork yourself. And your fake off brand generic pill mill and sub par vitamins and "fat bypass" pills you sell to the mostly indigent incredibly poor and ignorant townsfolk. I know what you guys are up to.
But I need the internet, so I make nice nice. My new landlord is either bigger mafia or rival but is a better business man so he hooked up a different service I didn't even know was a thing on my roof. It's in my name, no big deal, I got to pick my own password and I pay my own bill online. Done. He told me to call the cops on the others, they're scammers. How can you tell in this town? I guess, if their lips are moving. I'm not calling anyone, but I'll sell that modem for cheap on WhatsApp and buy my dog antibiotics and my aspirin elsewhere. I'm hardly beholden to a pharmacy. But it is the same group that owns the only food stores (2) in town. I'm already pretty hungry and tired of shitty ham sandwiches.
Likely I'll just bank my lesson and take the $140 hit. My need to eat will be bigger than my need to be right. And my need to be unbothered in a place where I'm not exactly embraced will also be a priority. So I take pics of the sunset with less frequency and walk the dogs and deliver eggs to the strays on the beach so they don't know where I live and don't follow me back home and no one can get mad at me for feeding the street dogs. It's not ideal but I let that go a while ago. It could be a LOT worse as we know. This is just a lot easier. Asi es. (that's how it is
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