Iggy and the American Stooges

Well, it finally happened. Mexico broke containment. The klaxon horns sounded in the Yucatan reactor room, and the Spanish levels started to rise on the (cathode ray tube) screens. Don’t get me wrong. We’re here to live more or less like Mexicans in a Mexican city. But you never go full Mexican. At least, not all at once.

We got the firehose of Mexican life trained on us in one long blast the other day. We thought we were prepared for it, and maybe we could have withstood it a little at a time, day by day, but I’ll bet even Mexicans aren’t prepared for a full Mexican experience served family style in a single pot.

Of course we’ve had minor Mexican experiences already. English is not generally spoken here, and our Spanish is just shy of El Gato Ensombrerado. Pretty soon everyone resorts to speaking Italian, more or less, sputtering, pointing at things, and making wild gestures.

“There’s no hot water.”

“No senor, here for the knob the agua calor ees on the right, and agua fria ees izquierda –on the left.”

“Oh, entiendo. That’s the opposite of los Estados Unidos.”

“Si. Also senor, there ees no hot water.”

We adapted pretty well to the, how do you say it, the informality of services in this ancient city. We’ve had it cushy. There are plenty of people paying real money to rent Air BnBs in the centro near us that can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet, because the pipes were installed by Columbus Plumbing, Heating, and Smallpox, LTD. There’s a trash can for it. Even Ed Norton would pass on that job, Ralphie boy.

Our house and pool is cleaned once a week by two lovely people, Wilma with the gold tooth, and Senor Rainier. They can’t speak any English, so they think they like me. If they could talk to me, they’d know better. Senor Rainier cleans the pool, but he is also on call to sort out any sort of problem we might have. We had some.

There was no water. Nada. Senor Rainier was summoned, and came shortly after. He explained to me that it was so simple. The cistern in the laundry room was empty, but there was another cistern just outside the laundry room with a giant hose you could put into the other cistern. Then you went into the little concrete missile silo in the yard that held the pool filter and four hundred little lizards and flip the primero disyuntor in the circuit breaker panel to start the pump. Flip only the primero breaker, senor, not the other ones, or you could die, maybe, or be disappointed in some other way.

I think that’s what he said. He might have been giving me instructions on how to prepare arroz con pollo. I was still processing the second and third words in his peroration while he was finishing up with the fiftieth. But after pulling back the concrete lid on top of the cistern, which made nifty Indiana Jones noises, and threatened to take a digit if you weren’t careful, the hose was inserted and the water was restored. It was handy that he explained how to do it, because when we returned that night, there was no water again.

I flipped the primero disyuntor like he told me, and filled up the cistern myself. Then I went hunting around, because the water was going somewhere, and I wanted to go and  visit it, and ask it why it didn’t like my wife and me. I discovered that we have a third bathroom. It’s out by they pool, and we had no idea it was there. I do not appreciate having third bathrooms imposed on me by stealth. There was a toilet in it installed by Cortez and Company, purveyors of fine ceramics, and the flapper valve inside the toilet was more true to its name than most flappers. It was flapping up and down and letting water sluice down the drain continuously. I shut the water valve off, said goodnight to the geckos who own the place, and shut the door forevermore.

Of course this is minor, isn’t it? But later the same day, my wife came into our bedroom, shaking like a leaf. “There’s a… there’s a… Come and see… the thing…”

So we went out to the kitchen, over by the pool. We’d seen most every critter over by the pool. Big bats circle the yard noiselessly in the evenings. There are mourning doves, and things that look like crows, but sound like they’re yelling speeches from a balcony. We had a flock of giant green parrots perch in the trees. They sounded like an argument in an asylum. We’ve hosted stray cats, lots of geckos, and anoles, which are little lizards that disappear when you look at them, like a reptilian Vegas act. My wife thinks they’re cute. My wife didn’t think it was as cute when they went and got their big brother. There was a great, big iguana on a limb outside the kitchen window, looking at her like he hadn’t heard a good joke in ten years.

I said, “What ugly squirrels they have here.” My wife was not in the mood to be amused. We norteamericanos are unused to coming face to face with the Mesozoic Era without paying admission to a museum first. If we wanted to walk among actual ancient lizards, we’d sign up for a job as Senate pages.

“Make it go away.”

“My darling, my Spanish is not good. I don’t even know how to order a table for two, or say, gee, it’s hot today in iguana. I suggest we let the iguana do his iguana thing, while we do our gringo thing elsewhere. We’re boring. He’ll probably crawl over the back wall and party down at the drag bar they got over there. It’s livelier.”

So we went out into the evening, and dodged down the little streets to the Remate del Paseo de Montejo. Remate means “end.” But for us, it’s the start of the paseo. There’s a kind of park surrounded by restaurants and handsome houses, with lots of trees. It’s a peaceful spot. Usually.

Holy cow, La Noche Mexicana had set up shop there. How? When? We’d been there earlier, and there was nothing. Now there was a big stage, and hundreds of chairs, and the street was lined with stalls selling street food and gifts and handmade clothing and who knows what all. And this appeared, like a vision in the desert:

You can buy stuff, but it’s free to be entertained. Packed house, with stars bent over the proceedings for a roof. There were lots of acts, all amusing and superb. I loved these guys:

Who doesn’t love a mariachi band? This was the real deal. Four fiddles, a guitarlele, a guitarron bass, and two fine trumpets. Mexican trumpet playing is like the antidote to American trumpet playing. It’s brassy and loud and clear, and doesn’t sound like anything but pneumatic happiness.

The bandleader was a pro. He walked to the front of the stage and teased the crowd and flirted with the old ladies and “did the show,” as we used to call it. He said, “Who wants to hear La Cucaracha?” The crowd yelled. He looked all around, paused just the right amount, cocked his ear, and said, “I heard nothing.” Laughter. “Who wants to hear La Cucaracha?!” He pulled this gag a few more times until he achieved the desired tumult. And then they played La Cucaracha, and everyone (except two sunburned people) sang along. And it was an interstellar version of it, too, like you asked Dizzy Gillespie to arrange it. They sang folk songs, too, that (almost) everyone knew the words to, and sang along. They all played like demons and sang like angels.

The next day, it had all evaporated. The water in our taps flowed. The remate was empty, with no sign, not a candy wrapper, to prove we had seen anything there. The iguana had lit out for better bugs in the neighbor’s yard. We could not summon Senor Rainier to enjoy his smiling face and patient tutoring, because nothing was wrong. We would have to wait a week to see Wilma take off her good flip flops, and put on her work flip flops, and bustle around our casa.

You never want to go full Mexico, maybe. But you sure miss it when it’s gone.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.