Chapter 3
I had started on this enjoyable trip with the hope that moving to Mexico would recreate order in my helter-skeltered life. Poorer than the biblical Job’s turkey, I was virtually homeless since cashing in my chips after ten years of homesteading and coming out with zilch. All the equipment was sold: the expensive solar submerged pump from the well, a dozen solar panels, a good generator, a large Servel propane refrigerator and big cast iron stove—the list goes on and on, yet had raised only a pittance for the move.
Should I have
postponed going to Mexico? Should I have
rented a house somewhere near Boulder and gotten some kind of a job until
things could have straightened out? I
was baffled. At my age I probably
couldn’t have gotten a job that would pay even enough to cover my ass. I was stymied.
All my
household furniture, do-dads and appliances, everything except what was now strewed
in Melanie’s garage waiting for me to pack, had been given away or sold. Rents in town were exorbitant and the place
was inundated with technocrats jogging along the roadsides with their
earphones on, wearing fluorescent-colored Lycra outfits, getting their daily
high by hyperventilating carbon dioxide from the mainly foreign-manufactured
cars whizzing by. Not my style. It was time for me to leave Colorado. Things were getting Orwellian.
Well fuck a
duck! I had no debt, but neither did I
have any dinero except for minimum Social Security--and you can’t get
much more minimal than that.
I tried to look on the bright side. I had
tried--I’d kept trying—to do the best I could, knowing that’s all life ever
seemed to require of me and it had been wondrous so far even with the ups and
downs. I started out in life naked with
nothing; I still had my original birthday suit of skin, though it had become
quite wrinkled and worn during the years.
As the song goes: ‘Freedom’s just
another word for nothing left to lose.’ I knew this to be true though sometimes
difficult to remember.
The day was as
cloudy as my turmoil. I felt like a
turtle pulled out of its shell.
“I can’t wait
to get out of fucking Boulder, fucking Colorado, the United fucking States of
America. . .” I was fired up to kvetch
more, but Melanie put her cheek against mine and enclosed me in her arms while
I cried. Sometimes a good cry is the best solution to life’s problems.
“Well, gee-whiz, Polly dear,”
Melanie--always the practical one—drawled, “here’s a tissue. Blow your nose and let’s get going on what we
can accomplish instead of crying
about what we can’t.”
So after this tearful time of
commiseration, she left for work and I went out to the garage to work on what I
could do. I could
get my pickup loaded and get myself on the road to Mexico.
***
Only the day
before Melanie had helped me finish vacating my homestead a few miles outside
Boulder. We’d dumped all the household
items I planned to haul to Mexico in her icy-cold garage—now it was all
scattered on the concrete floor waiting for me to pack my Toyota pickup. Some items I’d managed to sort into
preliminary piles. At least some of the
dishes were stacked up, with the smallest items inside larger bowls, trying to
conserve space as much as possible, but most of the junk was totally
disorganized. The hodgepodge looked like leftover trash from a rummage sale in
Shantytown.
Melanie was a small dynamic
green-eyed redhead who was capable dealing with the material providence—much
more so than I. Her home in Boulder was
a delight of comfort and beauty that she worked diligently to create and
maintain by sales at her trendy boutique.
I was a dilettante who had lived
for years on the edge of my economic incompetency. I never was any good at coloring within the
lines; I’d always lost playing Monopoly.
Still I’d managed through the years to always provide my daughters with
eggs on the breakfast table and I made loaves of whole wheat bread and healthy
cookies with oatmeal, nuts and raisins, delicious goat milk cheeses and yogurt.
Amazing how much children eat: milk and meat, vegetables, fruit, bread, p-nut
butter of course, and candy when they can get hold of it.
I had hated to
go back out to Melanie’s frigid garage --it was as cold as a witch’s teat there
--but as soon as I could load my pickup with my few remaining household
possessions I’d be on my way south to a more tropical, warmer Mexico.
Hot Diggity Dog! Mexico!
There I planned to live cheaply on refried
beans and tortillas. This would far surpass other unpleasant options I could
think of: having to be dependent on my
friend, Melanie, or Stacey and Marta, or being a homeless bag lady pushing a
market cart while going through trash bin.
No way!!! Anyway, my daughters both had moved from Boulder leaving me
there with only Sally and two of my grandsons.
It didn't seem
as if I would be able to fit even a small portion of the useful junk in the
back of my little Toyota. That paltry
truck now seemed to shrink more every time I looked at it. How much could be squeezed in? First the most essential things like a few
dishes, pots and pans, but then?
The past five
years had been burdened by dealing with son-of-a-bitch bankers and lawyers
and accountants while I attempted to hold on to my homestead-- I was plumb
tuckered out from it. Basta!
Enough of living in Gringoville with its Disney fascism and King George
Bush in the White House, of watching land developers and oil barons screwing
Mother Nature up the gazoo. The
bureaucrats swimming in their polluted sea; the politicians floating in their
own bubble.
In Mexico I
figured I could make some sort of a home for myself-- create an unknown new
life, a life not yet visualized, blank as a newly-gessoed canvas.
It was time to move forward--onward through the fog-- to search for and trust in some beneficent future as an ex-patriot in Patzcuaro, a charming historical Mexican town I’d visited during my hippie days. There I’d seen huge Ponderosa pines with orange orchids perched on their branches. Muy bonito.
Patzcuaro was
high up, a lot higher than Boulder, high up in the volcanic mountains of Michoacan. The small town was perched by a large lake
that had a little island, Janitzio,
the center of Los Dias Del Muerto
(The Days of the Dead). The lake was
surrounded by native Purepacha Indians living in small adobe pueblos, using
boats that went back and forth from Patzcuaro’s harbor.
As I kicked open the door of the garage, a
gaggle of geese flying overhead made a V in the sky as they flew south. South to Mexico! I became full of optimistic enthusiasm as I
began to pack my Toyota.
Then I heard
Melanie’s phone ringing.
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