Chapter 6: A Fun Fun Story

So a few weeks later the girls in my classes are talking about a carnival that apparently is set up in San Felipe’s “Centro.” I didn’t know that a town with like 4000 people could even have a downtown, but they explained to me that pretty much every town, city and village in Mexico has a city center where the old Catholic church is located. Usually there is a little park and shops surrounding it too.
I didn’t quite gather what was going on, but I gathered that they had at least one car loaned to them and that I was invited. And apparently there was going to be “a huge fireworks display,” as far as I could figure out, at least from what their hand motions and sound effects described.
We arrive into town that night, the borrowed van full of friends, and descend upon the tiny town square packed with people. Lights, sounds, smells, it’s quite the scene. A lot of carnival rides. The first ride we encounter is the classic “spin till you puke” ride where you side in the seat and it goes up and down and rotates round and round on a flat platform. It looks like it was used in the US, broke down, and was sent to Mexico, “Land of No Laws” (nor lawsuits, apparently). It is making some horrible noises, being spun around on tires that are low and are having a hard time operating. No one seems to notice but me.
As I am giving Kike a push past the kiddie rides, I almost get drilled by one of the little cars going around on the tracks. There is absolutely no fence nor guard rail nor people nor anything for that matter separating me from jumping on the ride, or getting hit. And to make matters sweeter, people are crowding through pushing me in front of the oncoming kiddie train.
We make it through past the kiddie rides, and move our way towards the SkyTram or whatever it’s called, the standard “big ride” of every carnival. I check it out, and after it runs twice without killing anyone, I decide I can probably survive a go, even though it’s a debatable decision to get on the biggest ride first. Leti Alcalde – wheelchair Leti from the hacienda – tells me she has purchased me a ticket, and laughs hysterically. I, smiling, pick her out of her wheelchair and carry her up the stairs and towards the seats where we all are going to sit. It was a good thing there was no “you have to be so tall to get on this ride” signs because I don’t know how I would have held her up vertically next to the sign. It would have been awkward. Everyone is on a large bench together, like 25 of us or so in a row with a shoulder bar over each person. We sit there a minute before the ride starts which simply takes you really high into the air and drops you, rotating in a circle left to right and then vise versa. I was in the last seat on the very end, and upon being lifted up and reaching the top could see the whole fair below me. We then dropped to the right, and after a few spins around, I was quite certain the squeaking wheel we were on was due to snap off and roll down the main street that lay to my right. I thought about it mathematically and wondered how many times it had gone around already without having been greased since arriving here, and how many more it would last before breaking off. I assumed it was due, and that I am due anyway for something bad to happen (Another of my biggest fears is that somehow I am “due.” A feeling I have after nothing bad has happened for a long time. It’s a bizarre complex I have that continues to haunt me. I have never seen anything terrible in real life. I have never been punched nor physically assaulted nor anything like that, nor have I ever known anyone really close to me that has died, not at least since my great-grandmother died when I was 12. I fell backwards over a bike and pulled my leg across the gears, leaving me with 16 stitches, but that is the only real pain I have felt, and that was like eight or ten years ago. So it just feels like it’s a matter of time until something bad happens. Oh, and the saying “bad things come in threes” just makes my fears three times worse). Which wasn’t really a bad death, I figured, because I’ve lived a long full life. But since that was just a joke and not really how I felt, with no on around to tell it to I decided that I would actually rather continue living, and thus started to pray. It was kind of fun though because it was like when you were a little kid and went on rides and thought there was actually a chance that you could die and that was half the thrill. It was like that.
Now, if this wasn’t enough, I had noticed prior to getting on the ride that there were like 15 large wooden towers loaded with fireworks located about 50 yards away from my ride that were starting to be lit. That, I was to understand, was the “fireworks display.” I didn’t really pay attention to them until they lit a tower on fire, it started up, and one huge firework flew our way, exploded, and I literally had to duck to avoid a red ball of fire headed straight for my cabeza. About this I am not joking. Technically they were going everywhere, including right into the crowd, which concerned me but honestly the one headed right for me worried me much more. The ride lasted like 12 or 13 loops, which is a lot more than 4 or 5 you get in the US, and finally started to slow down. We got off and I checked to make sure all my body parts were still firmly attached. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought about kissing the ground until the girls said they wanted to again. I asked them if they had heard about people dying on these rides. I think I was the only one who had felt the cold breath of the reaper (or “Santa Muerte” I guess I should say, as long as I am in Mexico). I also think they thought I was joking.
The rest of the evening and night was not as nearly as scary, as I proceeded to stay off the Wheel o’ Gruesome-Unholy-Rolling-Down-Main-Street Death, as well as the Decapitation Coaster and the Insanity Unsanitary House.
I did spend a good amount of time dispatching Mexicans at foosball, only to have my arrogance repaid with a game of “soak the Gringo in shaving cream” which I was hopelessly outnumbered in, but was a good sport about. Good times had by all and my desire to boot small children carrying shaving cream cans was held under control.
Kike had a friend who was selling ceramics there at the fair. A good majority of the fair is small shops set out in the streets. Most of the streets are closed down, leaving just one letting traffic move in and out of the town. I noticed that people definitely live on streets that were closed off. I don’t know how they survive the week of the fair, but it must be not fun. Or maybe awesome fun all week long. They do get a good view from their balconies. While Kike chatted with his friend Pablo, I walked around with Lolita, Chelo, and Angeles looking at clothes, jewelry, cowboy attire, posters, pots and pans and dishes, tropical birds in cages, until we got to an open space where there were huge stacks of blankets. Plastic bags filled with maybe two or three blankets and two or three pillows each were stacked all over the place, and a man with a microphone perched on top. There was a pretty good crowd around, so we looked on. The man would tell one of his three helpers to grab a bag of blankets and pillows, and then he would auction them off, starting at 350 pesos and moving down. If someone really wanted one, they would buy it more expensive so someone else wouldn’t get it. Otherwise, mostly people waited until they fell to 200 and bought them. Then the three helpers would heave the bag to the winner. It was quite a frantic scene. The auctioneer would only drop below 200 like once every 20 bags. If no one got it at 200, most were thrown back onto the heap and another was chosen.
It looked like fun, so I looked for a bag that looked good and got my 200 pesos out and waited. I turned to Lolita and showed her the bag I wanted. About ten minutes later they finally got to it and started to auction it off. The auctioneer started off at 300 when I suddenly for no real reason yelled out “200!” and waved my 200 in the air. I have no idea why I did this except maybe because I didn’t want anyone else to get it for more. The girls with me started cracking up. The auctioneer stopped and looked at me. He was clearly a showman, so he was going to make fun of me at least a little. “Oh! American!” he said in Spanish. “No one is going to outbid you! Hey, give it to him. Don’t let anyone else have it.” Everyone was laughing but I got my bag and gave him the 200. I was laughing too. A lot of people started coming over to see the commotion. I can’t imagine they are packed with people every night, but I certainly helped their sales right then. I stuck around there for a while, just to watch. Sometimes the auctioneer would yell at me to hold up my blankets and would yell “the American won’t outbid you! Come on people! He already has his! Now who wants one?”
And there was a lot of crazy food that I got to try that was really tasty. I can’t describe it, other than it involved normal food with more sugar. That’s a lie, I can explain it: there was ears of corn on sticks, soaked in mayonnaise, covered in powdered cheese, and then sprinkled with chile powder. There were stands with friend bananas and pancakes, both covered in cream and jam, sprinkles, and peach halves. There was “festival bread” which is just round cakes of semi-sweet bread, some sort of bread, like… I don’t know… like something I can’t think of. And there were whole shops dedicated to candy. But candy like I have never seen. Lime peels filled with coconut, jars of creamy homemade caramel, blocks of different colored sweets that I guess were dried fruit, sugar and gelatin,
Yes, we did continue to dodge fireworks for the rest of the night, that is true. Like I said, they had towers of fireworks that would be lit from the bottom explode into light and flame. The crowds were not monitored at all, so they pushed all the way up to literally touching the wooden towers. I was maybe a few dozen yards back, and I got sprayed with sparks a good handful of times. Oh, they had these great inventions, which were basically metal framed rings of fireworks that were put onto the end of poles and lit. They would spin incredibly fast and then released shot up into the night sky. You could see them fly up into the sky, but when the fireworks finished burning out, the nearly invisible metal rings would plummet back down onto the crowd. They probably weighed about ten to twenty pounds, just from observing the force of them hitting the pavement. People would watch them and then scream as they came back down, everyone laughing as people dived left and right to avoid them. Dude.
You probably have heard about Mexican fairs where fireworks are exploding around you and you are covering your head trying to avoid them. Well, much like this story, those stories are mostly true.

Chapter 5: Ghost Stories

I don’t believe in ghosts. I say that to keep them away, in case the secret trick of keeping ghosts away is to not believe in them, like in Peter Pan, or what’s the kids’ story that comes up in? I don’t figure they can open computer programs and read what I am writing, nor turn on computers, especially since any ghosts living in Las Rosas are probably at least fifty years old and old people are bad with computers. And it is probable that these ghosts don’t speak, much less read, a lot of English. I’m safe for now.
I have heard them all now, all the stories. Most are about the hacienda, a good safe twenty minute walk away. The only good one about here is that some guy came in one time with a pistol and killed everyone who worked at the general store, the downstairs part. I guess that must have been the early 1900’s, because it was definitely implied as being pre-revolution. More recently on the road to the hacienda people have claimed to see glowing, floating women who tried to kill two kids. At the bottom corner of the hacienda, where the current owners reside, use to be a cemetery. And in the corner of the cemetery is a huge tree where they used to hang people. The tree has to be as old as the hacienda. People say that they would hang someone and leave their body up for days. This is mostly true, I am pretty sure. I later met a buddy, Marco, whose grandfather had been the caretaker of the hacienda. His parents told me a lot about the hacienda and the cemetery and the tree. I actually would later eat a delicious torta in Marco’s restaurant, which used to be the original place where the workers would go to get paid.
Anyway the tree is still there, and we use it to hang a rope swing now, not people. “They” say that the tree has been lit on fire and tried to have been chopped down but it “won’t let them,” as I am told. Very vague language is used. Things like “the tree put the fire out.” I don’t know what that means, but that is what I am told.
Another time a worker supposedly saw a “troll” (not a true translation, but as they told me, “a real gross troll-like creature, not a person” or anything). He apparently told them about it and promptly left work and never came back. Another worker arrived to the kitchen one night completely white and foaming at the mouth and couldn’t talk for a few days. After he could he said that was walking along one of the outer walls and suddenly the wall groaned and “threw” or “spit” blood all over him. He didn’t have any blood on him when he arrived at the kitchen, but he said that’s what happened. He also left. A lot of people are scared to stay at the hac (pronounced “h-aa-ss,” long and drawn out. That’s the way the cool kids talk).
I’ll tell you what I’ve seen: I have not seen anything. Although I am generally terrified of any dark enclosed areas, thus having refrained from haunted houses my whole life. Now I felt like I live in a real life haunted house. But:
The craziest story is this (it’s not really that crazy): I am sick, in bed, and Kike is out doing whatever. I don’t really care what he is doing because I am sick. All I know is he comes in and says “were you out on the balcony and the old rooms?”
“Nooo.” The end trails up, almost a question.
“Were you out on the balcony and/or the old rooms?”
“Nooo. Why?”
“I heard someone walking around up there.”
“Oh…Kay…” I get up, the adrenaline allowing me to temporarily forget my sickness with my new-found fear, grab the metal pole (don’t you have one by your bed?), and a kitchen knife and my flashlight and peek my head out the door. Creeping towards the walkway, the four stairs, and the soft reflection of light off the three swaying, creaking, doors of the “old rooms.”
OK. Umm, it’s like…ok imagine this: you find an old cathedral, an old stone Mexican church that looks somewhat run down. You walk in and see that it is rebuilt but not like you would expect. You would expect it to be remodeled in the same style it was originally build in, but instead it is completely redone in very practical but somewhat modern ways. The paintings on the walls and ceilings have been recolored, but not the greatest job was done and some faces look rather silly. The arched doorways have wooden or smoothed cement supports now, in complete contrast to the textured original form. A room where they used to have some sort of pastoral scene set up is now a storage room used to house floats and other parade paraphernalia. Supports in the ceiling keep it together where you would have expected them to redo it in order to not have to see the beams in view holding it all up. It looks rather unsturdy.
This is a pretty good metaphor for all old remodeled buildings, but in this example you instead of a church you have to imagine a general store. Like the cowboy movies, but of stone. Sitting alone on a hillside. With three hotel rooms on the floor above it complete with grand balcony, a courtyard surrounded by animal pens on three sides and the store and rooms, and above that a large storeroom made of adobe bricks.
Now some years later it is not alone on the hill, and most of the animal pens have been turned into classrooms, workshops, a kitchen, and an office. The courtyard has a basketball hoop in it. And everything else is run down and full of death traps. Something that in the states you would never be allowed to touch, much less enter, much less live in.
I mentioned earlier that my favorite part is the actual original bar downstairs. That still exists in its entirety: the winding, bending bar, the ornate shelves behind it, the original cash drawer with secret compartment. It is probably the only thing that is still exactly as it was 200 years ago. It is a beautiful sight, one I love to go down and just stare at thinking of what is must have been like before.
Back to the scene. I as I stand outside my door with my steel pole, knife, and flashlight, I also hear the footsteps. Slow, hard, coming from the room in front of me. My heard leaped into my throat. I figured I had the advantage with my pole and knife and no shoes to make sound. I walk slowly up the four stairs, and towards the old rooms and footsteps. The old rooms were constructed so that you have to go up the stairs, and you enter the middle room of the three. The room to the left is used as a storage room for some carpet, rolled up in the corner, and some floorboards that you would fall through if you stepped on them. So you have to be careful. If you turn right and walk into the room on the right, you can go straight to a tiny balcony in front, another spare, but much smaller room to the right, or to the left out onto the main balcony. It is the only available door out to the balcony. So if something is here, and it is not in the left room, it has to get through me to get out. That is an assurance because I know nothing can sneak up on me from behind. That could be my biggest fear in the whole world. Driving at night, I have often stopped the car to check the back seats to make sure no one is there. If anyone ever snuck into the back of my car and I noticed them, I would crash the car as fast and hard as I could to at least kill the both of us. That’s how nervous I am about people sneaking up on my from behind.
I swing up into the first (middle) room and directly into the left room, scanning quickly to see that there is nothing. My biggest fear was that something was going to be in that room, which you really can’t walk through. There are two bats in the corner, and they kind of look at me except I remember that bats are blind so they must not be looking at me after all. I turn back to the right and take a huge breath. I go to the light switch on the far wall, and click it on. That is, the switch clicked on, because the light did not turn on. It was like an inverted scare, something I expected to be there not being there. Great. So I walk into the right room, look right into the small room. Nothing. These rooms are made out of wood, and the only thing left, the balcony, is made of stone. So this is beginning to make me wonder, but in a terrified out of my mind type of way. I take a step out onto the balcony and look around. I know I heard someone out here, so he has to be somewhere. The moon is out, the valley is completely black, but the lights in the distance give a comforting glow. I shine my flashlight around to see that there is nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all. As I back up, the foot steps are right behind me. I turn, and run into the right room, into the middle room, down the stairs, down the walkway, turn left into the room slamming the door, scurry around Kike, drop the knife on the windowsill, the pole on the floor, and jump into my bed. I pull the sheets up to my mouth, breathing fast and remembering my sickness and feeling suddenly really terrible.
“What was it?” Kike moves over and picks up the pole.
“Who knows.”
What could it have been? I don’t know. I guess a ghost. Is that what you want me to say? I really don’t know.
There were other times. We heard what sounded like leaves being rubbed together, also coming above from the old room. We have heard whistling in the morning coming from down in the old bar. Another time two girls, Leti and Osvelia were going up to buy food from a small tienda above Las Rosas, staying late to fire ceramics, Kike was trying to fix the hot water heater in our bathroom, and I was in my room. In the stained glass storeroom, which is below to the left of the general store, the light suddenly for no reason turned on. Kike and the girls both saw it and when the girls came back we all went to investigate. The doors were locked shut with the padlocks, like normal, and Lety had the keys in her pocket. We had to unlock it all just to turn it off. I guess it’s an old house, but talk about creepy.

Chapter 4: Rabbits

That first night, Kike bought a rabbit. He went and took it from the rabbit pens that are in the big warehouse just above our room, and lets it loose in our room. I found it later when I went back inside to sort my stuff out. It was kind of funny to see a rabbit there hopping around my room. I picked it up and played with it until he came in.
“Oh, you’ve found our dinner.” Uh oh. I was already attached to the poor thing (although it was pretty fat) and it was going to be tough to see it go.
“Dinner? How do you cook it?”
“Kill it, skin it, put it in the pan.” Although, honestly, I only caught the “kill it” part at the time. I would soon find out the other two parts.
So in about an hour later, when most everyone had gone home, I heard him calling my name. I run out to see him down in the courtyard holding the rabbit by the neck with two fingers and a hammer by the other three in his left hand, my Gerber utility knife on his lap which, along with his chest and arms, is covered by a long painting smock, and the rabbit’s furiously kicking back feet in his right hand. Without warning he lifts up the hammer and BAM! hits the rabbit on the head which causes quite the blast of sound. I jolt back, not expecting to see that coming. The rabbit shudders for a few seconds and his head falls to his chest. Not used to such violence, I reach with a funny face, and then turn squeamish when I see him pick up the knife to cut open the rabbit.
He cuts at the neck, pushing hard. But because it is all on his lap, he has to use a lot of caution not to cut himself. He is really giving it quite the go, me holding back covering one eye and squinting with the other to not have to see any squirt of blood or anything extra gross. He is cutting and cutting on the underside of the neck but I still see no red. He stops and breathes out heavily. “This thing is way harder to cut that I imagined.” He starts to cut again when suddenly the rabbit pops away and goes crazy. Our dinner is shaking and kicking and we are screaming like girls. Kike grabs the hammer and BAM BAM BAM again knocks him on the head and again it shudders and falls limp. We laugh and laugh and Kike gets back to cutting. We are completely on edge. Cut cut cut cut nothing. Kike looks at me for advice when again the rabbit jumps to life and we scream and I go hide and come back in an hour where the now furless rabbit lies in a frying pan.
We eat it straight, with tortillas. This is my first true meal with tortillas. I start to eat the meat right off the bone, but Kike stops me, heats up tortillas over the open gas flame on the stove in the kitchen, and puts them in a little hand stitched napkin, or washcloth or whatever it is. I guessed that it was to keep them warm (I guessed right). I finally pulled the meat off the bone with my teeth and dropped them into the tortilla, which I then ate.
It was party showing Kike I wanted to try and partly recognizing the relevance of the tortilla. You could afford to have a small meal of meat or vegetables or whatever that tasted good, and just add tortillas which fill you up and keep you healthy. This was a great service to both the Aztecs back in the day as well as anyone who has little money now. You could always life a simple life with tortillas and a little salt.
We grew a plant in Las Rosas at the time called “amaranth.” As opposed to corn, amaranth grows naturally in just about any soil. Heck, it can grow wild. It gives little seeds that when ground looks a lot like flour. My buddy Nick, studying Botany, did a little research for me. As it turns out, amaranth is a terribly boring, basic plant that gives a healthy crop without any complications or caring for it. The Aztecs used it for everything, which, unfortunately included mixing it with human blood sacrifices for tasty munchy munches. Of course the Spaniards would have nothing of the sort, and so banned amaranth from being used for anything. And so to this day, it remains unpopular even if it would be much healthier, easier, quicker, and just as simple to use as corn.