There are businesses all over the place that sell construction material. If you drive more than a few blocks, you’re almost guaranteed to see something being built.
It’s an incredible, ongoing phenomenon.
When we get back from Mexico City, where we’re headed shortly, we also will be building stuff, a yearly occurrence in springtime when there is no daily deluge of rain.
And we’ll be constructing in Mexico City too. Ceramic tile will be laid on the floor of the “service patio,” that space Mexican homes have out back where the water heater, clothesline and big cement sink sit.
Mexican homes have big cement sinks out back.
But the best news — for us at least — out of Mexico City recently is that we finally have the deed to the condo. All we have to do is pick it up at the lawyer’s office.
Signed, sealed and delivered!
Getting the deed has been an ongoing process and headache for years. But now it’s done, and we own three homes free and clear that we could sell if we wanted to.
ALL YOU need is love. This nutty notion was born in the 1960s with the hippies, and it’s traveled down the years branded into the hearts of the hippies’ children and grandchildren.
The concept’s basic error is that all cultures are of equal value, that people around the world think the same.
The basic error is why so many support open borders, both literally and figuratively.
Open borders in Europe has led to Amsterdam and Sweden and Paris where Mohammedans run amok.
Closer to home, it’s led to places like Dearborn, Michigan, where now live lots of people who want to murder you.
LEFTISTS LOVE to scream racist at all contrary opinions.
And they love all black people and know them to be oppressed by whites. Problem is that black folks in America have not been oppressed by whites since around the 1940s.
That’s the early part of the previous century. And then only in some neighborhoods.
Here’s a video by an intelligent woman who will ‘splain to you why so many blacks in America are poor.
Nutshell: It ain’t racism. It ain’t lack of equal opportunity.
The leftist media has cited “darkness” repeatedly since the election of President Trump. The Washington Post, more leftist even than The New York Times, recently added “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to its online masthead.
The Post says it has nothing to do with Trump.
Yeah, right.
I don’t want to be associated with leftists and their dark obsessions in any form, so I am abandoning entirely the dark photos I’ve used here for avatars for a long time.
Gone is the black hat and the dark bebop cap in black & white photos. I am out of the cave. The new face to the world is this, which was taken about 12 years ago.
New
I am enjoying a churro* in the restaurant owned in downtown San Miguel de Allende by Mexican actress Margarita Gralia.
Old
While I added this photo to my comments avatar weeks ago, it was only today that I made it official by adding it to the Felipe Page up thataway.
This change has lifted a darkness from my spirit. I feel more upbeat, happier and fulfilled. Let’s leave the darkness to Democrats and other sourpusses.
Conservatives are happy, colorful people.
* * * *
* Churros sometimes are sold filled with something like chocolate. This is an abomination. Churros should always be eaten au naturel.
WE ESCAPED the Mardi Gras celebration in our hardscrabble neighborhood over the weekend by heading to the Gringo-invested burg of San Miguel de Allende.
I always find San Miguel unsettling to the soul. There is something just not right about it. It’s about as Mexican as I am, which is to say legally yes, spiritually no.
Perhaps Disneyland, but better: Mulatto* Ville.
It’s a combination of two very different worlds. Two mindsets, two races,** two cultures. And they do not stir well.
Oil and water.
Walking around downtown San Miguel, it’s all I can do to not burst out in howling laughter. The rayon shirts, the Bermuda shorts, the Birkenstocks, the berets, the feathers in the hat bands, the old white women*** wearing native blouses, the art paint smeared preciously on khaki pants.
So one might wonder, why do you go there? The main answer is restaurants. Mulatto Ville has great places to eat.
I enjoy eating.
And this recent trip was also to visit an old friend from high school who was wintering there, a retired university professor who included Marco Rubio among her students.
Another beautiful day in Dolores Hidalgo.
We took a drive north to Dolores Hidalgo where we had not gone directly downtown in a long time. We were pleasantly surprised, shocked even.
It’s a wonderful city that’s been undergoing renovation for a few years. Most of the plaza has been closed to vehicles. The church has been painted. Much of downtown too.
Some good restaurants and hotels can be found. And, unlike San Miguel, which has horrible streets and sidewalks, Dolores Hidalgo is flat, smooth and easily walkable.
It’s also one of Mexico’s main sources of talavara ceramics,**** the quantities of which are astounding and beautiful.
Next time we flee our area due to Carnival, we’ll be staying in Dolores Hidalgo, not south in Mulatto Ville.
In Dolores Hidalgo I spotted nary a Birkenstock*****.
* * * *
* I am playing loose with the word, of course. A true mulatto is the offspring of one white parent and one black one, à la Barry Hussein Obama who “identifies” as black.
** Oh, I know Mexican is not a race, but bear with me.
*** Why does everyone complain about Old White Men but never about Old White Women?
**** The other is Puebla. FYI.
***** My second ex-wife, now an Old White Woman, used to cringe at my own Birkenstocks, so perhaps I should avoid this point. Nowadays I sport Crocs but only at home.
Where I lived for 15 years. Houston.Where I’ve lived for 17 years.
THE FIRST five years of my life, I resided in the countryside, a farm not far from Sylvester, Georgia.
The latest census puts Sylvester’s population at about 6,000 souls. Lord knows what it was in the late 1940s when I was toddling around there in the dirt.
My current mountaintop pueblo is home to about 80,000 folks, dwarfing the population of Sylvester, but 80,000 is a far cry from the 6 million you’ll find in Houston’s metropolitan area or even the 2 million in the city itself.
Before moving to my mountaintop, Houston was where I lived and worked. I don’t work anymore unless you count pulling weeds and watering veranda potted plants.
I play and relax.
The switch from Houston to this mountaintop pueblo was a drastic move. I’m a big-city boy. And my child bride is a big-city girl. Why are we here?
Lack of communication.
One morning, about two years after constructing and moving into the Hacienda, we were sitting on the veranda in our wicker rockers, talking. We discovered that we’d both have preferred settling in a big city.
How did we not know this? Answer: I assumed she wanted to live here because relatives live here, especially her favorite sister. She assumed I wanted to live here because I was here and had moved here intentionally.
But we never discussed it specifically. Dumb, huh?
Why not sell the Hacienda and move elsewhere? Actually, about that time, I did advertise it online, and got an offer for twice what we had paid to build this place.
But I chickened out because I love our home, and there is a large city nearby, the capital down the mountainside. But, aside from weekly Costco shopping jaunts, we rarely go there.
We’ve become small-city folks. But every time I see a photo of Houston, I sigh. And she likely does the same when we make our twice-a-year visits to Mexico City, which is where she lived when I found her.
But we can stand in the yard on dark nights and see stars from horizon to horizon. And I never heard roosters at dawn or burros anytime in Houston.
Just occasional gunfire.
* * * *
(Note: We’ll be home this afternoon from San Miguel de Allende where we fled on Sunday to avoid the worst of Carnival in our hardscrabble neighborhood.)
JAZZ GREAT Chet Baker provided musical backdrop to this video of a living room corner on a recent morning.
The tick, tock, tick, tock you hear is coming from an off-camera antique wall clock that I inherited years ago from a great aunt. The clock was made in the 1880s.
AS MENTIONED a time or two in the past, I’ve been hankering for a motorcycle. This hankering started last year, and I wrote about it in the appropriately titled Geezer Dreams.
I came perilously close to buying a bike, but common sense prevailed. I’m no spring chicken, and I’m enjoying life too much to jeopardize it for a few cheap thrills.
The dream still erupts occasionally, and I tamp it down.
I considered Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki, all of which are sold in Mexico. There are dealers for the three makes down the mountainside in the capital city.
I also seriously considered Italika, which is the largest-selling motorcycle in Mexico. It’s not sold above the border. It does export to a few other Latin American nations.
Italika is 100 percent Mexican in spite of its name, and the bikes are made in a factory in Toluca. You can buy one online, and it’s delivered directly to your front gate.
A crash helmet is included!
You see Italikas everywhere. They don’t make big bikes, just small to what once was considered mid-size. They very recently added a new bike that is their beefiest at 300 cc.
It’s called the Vort-X 300,* and there’s no price yet.
The first motorcycle I ever drove on a regular basis was my Air Force roommate’s 305-cc Honda Hawk.
I barreled it 100 mph down a California freeway one black night, and I wasn’t even drunk, just young and nuts.
Italika bikes are pretty, and I think I would look quite sporty astride one. They are remarkably affordable.
This likely will remain an unfulfilled desire.
But maybe I could start a biker gang, the Gringo Geezers. We could terrorize anthills and roof dogs.
* * * *
* In the course of my “extensive research” for this piece, I discovered there is also an Italika Vort-X 650. It debuted last year. However, it is nowhere to be seen on the Italika website, and it is not made in Toluca. It is made in China, imported, and has a BMW design although BMW plays no part in its manufacture. It’s something of a mystery.
BEING A VERY part-time resident of Mexico City, this video snatched my interest.
A recent international study claims the Mexican capital has the worst traffic in the world. I believe it. For years, when we visited from the mountaintop, I drove.
But not anymore. Now it’s 100% public transportation.
The video, however, has nothing to do with traffic jams. It’s an artist’s take on his monster city.
We’ve been visiting our condo there regularly since 2007 when the last tenants departed, and we’ll be going again next month for a week or so. Send prayers.
MEXICO’S IN a state of constant construction.
