Reading Books Again

I've been an avid reader all my life, but almost completely stopped reading novels, sci-fi, literature and philosophy books a long time ago. In the 70's and 80's, almost all my reading was either mathematics, computer science or tech manuals (plus a healthy does of reading and grading student papers). Since the 90's, it has been mainly tech, history, economics, politics and more tech. To a great degree, this has been a "book vs. web" thing, but also somewhat related to diminishing eyesight.

I have spent a lot of time at the computer over the last 30 years and grown accustomed to reading screens where I can adjust the text size as I like. To some degree, this has also been an attention related issue as I like to constantly switch between many different topics when on the computer (or computers; I'm one of those people that tend to have dozens of browser tabs open at once). It's also a hypertext and yak combing issue.

The notion of curling up ...with a good book was something I used to enjoy very much, but had lost it's appeal over time. I thought I no longer had the patience for spending the better part of a day with just one book, especially without my youthful eyes that could handle the fine print and various lighting conditions.

But things may be changing, in part due to our travels. First, I started to read a few books on my iPhone and that got me back into the habit of reading novels (and still quite a bit of history).

More recently, I discovered a small library of books here in our quaint little hotel on the beach and am enjoying them as much as ever. In fact, I think I like them far more than using any kind of device. There are lots of reasons for this, but mainly a book (especially an old paperback) is, still, just so much simpler to use than any device. Plus I don't worry about losing it, running out of power or being diverted by something else.

I just read my first Earl Stanly Gardner (not a Perry Mason, but one of the Cool and Lam series he wrote under the name A. A. Fair). Fun LA detective stuff for Noir fans. Pure escapism. Can't wait to find some more of these; there are over two dozen in the series.

My good friend Jay Dedman planted some seeds a few years back and I think they have sprouted. I've starting to think about finding some library book sales and flea markets where I can browse for some cheap reads. Thanks Jay.

Acapulco - Fate

Death grabbed at me twice in one day when I was an eleven year old boy.

 

It was in Acapulco in the summer 1965. My mother and father and I were traveling in Mexico for the summer. My father's brother had hired a driver to take us from Mexico City to Acapulco through the mountains and jungles. It was one of the most fantastic sites I had ever seen with huge waterfalls plunging hundreds of feet down to the canyon floor far below us.

 

It was also filled with terror and sadness as the driver sped along the winding mountain road. I remember the terrible thud of an unfortunate dog that we hit, my parents angry with the driver as he tried to explain that any swerve to avoid the animal would have resulted in the car going over the cliff.  I wept in the back seat the remainder of the drive.

 

But Acapulco was a magical place and my tears dried in the magnificent sun and surf vacation Mecca. It was everything one would expect from the Hollywood movies. The candy stripped electric carts, the cliff divers  at La Quebrada and hotels surrounded entirely by swimming pools. It was the first time I had ever swam in a heated pool in the rain and the pool was cooler than the rain water.

 

My parents made friends with another vacationer named Roy whom I became very fond of. Roy was a cool single guy in his 30's, funny and took me on glass-bottomed paddle board rides in the beautiful, fish filled crystal waters.

 

Months later, Roy came over for dinner to our home in Woodland Hills, California where we introduced him to my mom's good looking friend Barbara. Roy accidentally took Barbara's cigarette lighter so that he had an excuse to call on her again. My parents said that Roy was quite the operator.

 

One day in Acapulco, we went swimming at the beach. I had one of those little Styrofoam paddle boards that were popular back then and headed in to the surf. Paddling out a ways, I suddenly found myself caught in a whirlpool and could not paddle out. I remember waving to the adults on shore for help, the sound of the crashing surf swallowing my cries. My mother smiled and waved back as I began to spin in circles around the funnel of water.

 

My father had never learned to swim and was always a bit uncomfortable in pools and on the beach. In fact, he generally preferred a three-piece suit to swim shorts and confided to me once that Mexicans in his day looked down on men in shorts.

 

But he could tell that I was in trouble and quickly started wading into the surf. A few moments later a young life guard jumped in to the water, swam over and pulled me free from the whirlpool's grasp.

 

On the shore, everyone came running and I finally let go of the little paddle board, my chest burned red by the Styrofoam I had clutched so tightly.

 

Everyone finally relaxed and after a short while I noticed a horse and her colt down the beach.

 

I went over to have a look, my parents saying "stay out of the water for a while son."

 

I reached out to pet the colt. I remember hearing my mother scream at the exact same moment I saw the shadow move. I felt the wind from the Mare's hoof as it missed my head by a fraction of an inch. I dove and rolled in the sand, the mare still kicking in anger. I made a mental note not to play with other animals children without permission.

Again, everyone came running and I was escorted back to safety once again.

 

Perhaps Fate was playing with me that day. Perhaps it laughed in amusement and said "Let's let this one live a little longer and see what happens." Perhaps I was just lucky.

I ponder and write about this on another, more distant Mexican beach on the Caribbean, not far from Belize. Either way, it was a day I will never forget.

 

Chihuahua - The Curse

My mother was cursed. It happened in the town of Chihuahua, Mexico when I was a boy. My parents and I were driving from Los Angeles to Mexico City to visit my uncle Carl and my aunt Pepita who lived there with their children Carl Jr. and Monica.

We drove across the American southwest in our new Dodge Dart station wagon. It was in the summer of 1965. I recall that the days were long and hot during the trip and I used to look forward to swimming in the pools of the motels recommended in the AAA guides that were popular at the time. This was my first trip to Mexico. We drove south into Mexico from El Paso, the blue tourista decal affixed to our windshield. You didn't need passports back then.
 

We arrived in Chihuahua early in the afternoon and checked into a beautiful hotel on the hills overlooking the city. The front of the hotel consisted of large balconies instead of hallways and with the doors to the rooms opening to the stunning vista.

After checking in, we toured some of the classic streets and buildings of this beautiful colonial city, one of Mexico's greatest treasures. My mother, a first generation German-American, was excited to explore the city's many historic colonia, aqueduct, government buildings, the old, wide cobble stone avenues and photograph the classic architecture with her Kodak Instamatic camera.

 

She insisted on going inside the great cathedral in spite of having nothing to cover her head. It was hard to pass up such an historic building and she was a Protestant, unfamiliar with the Catholic traditions practiced there and by most of the members of the paternal side of my family, except for my father. Even I was schooled through Catechism and wondered at this, but no one warned her as we entered.
 

The interior of the cathedral was dimly lit from the stained glass and many prayer candles. A few locals sat in the pews, deep in their own thoughts and conversations with God. One old women dressed in black looked up from her rosary and muttered something in Spanish, first to my mother and then to the crucified figure of Christ at the head of the church.
 

My mother asked my father, who was fluent in Spanish, what the old women had said. He simply said "Nothing."

We were about a block away when my mother started to vomit. We got her back to hotel room quickly, where she endured a long and uncomfortable evening while my father and I went off to dinner. She had no interest in eating and wanted only to lie down.

Upon returning, she told us that someone had repeatedly knocked on the door, but that no one was there whenever she could bring herself to open the door.
 

The next day, my mother was weak, but recovering and my father finally told her that the old woman had cursed her vehemently for her transgression.

Later, we learned from the hotel staff that it was common for bats to bang into the walls at twilight, in search of prey.
 

Afterwards, whenever we visited other churches, and later, at weddings and funerals, my mother always covered her head.

My Father's Side of the Family

I can't tell you much about my father's father, as I never met my paternal grandfather Steven Sandy. As far as I know, my father Warren only met him once. It's harder to describe my father's family as things were a bit more crazy on that side.

My father was raised by his mother Francis, who gave birth to him when she was 14. She was Mexican and lived in New York City with my father as a boy, moving back to Mexico City in her 20's to remarry and have another child, my uncle Carl, an architect who still lives there today.

After her second divorce, Francis and my father moved to the heart of Los Angeles in one of those big old wooden two story houses that used to be common in the area and like you see in film noir movies. It even had a basement, which was not something I ever saw in people's homes, growing up in the San Fernando Valley or in Santa Monica and West LA, where my mother's parents lived.

Francis was a very free spirit and loved to party. She had lots of friends and always brought strangers to family gatherings, who then became part of our extended family. She loved her friends and she loved her dogs. She was engaged to my "Uncle Bill" for all my childhood and into my teens, until she died when I was 18.

Ignacio William Walsh was one of the finest men I have ever known and he loved my grandma Francis, my father and me dearly. He was an Irishman and a "corn husker" from Nebraska and I have no idea how he ever hooked up with my grandmother, but he was always around and, as far as I can tell, totally supported her financially as she never worked a day in my life. Francis lived alone with her little white cock-a-poos in her big house and Bill had his own place nearby that everyone jokingly referred to as "sputnik" because it was up on a hill and it was the 50's and 60's.

Bill's house was a literal maze of magazines, newspapers and books and he always encouraged me to educate myself more than anyone else. He was also a very funny and gentle man, always smiling or laughing and telling jokes. I could see that he wanted to marry my grandmother Francis, but they obviously had some kind of arrangement and it seemed to work for them.

My great aunt Flo, Francis' older sister, was a devote catholic who went to mass daily (or so it seemed to me) and was always disapproving of Francis and everyone else, except for my Father, who they both adored. Flo and her husband Bob had no children and so I was treated rather special too.

I am 11 years older than my sister Susan, while my older half-sister Carol, from my dad's first marriage, lived with her mother and adopted father, so I was essentially an only child for most of my youth. My uncle Carl had two children, but they rarely came to the US to visit. When I was 9, my parents and I drove to Chihuahua, Mexico City and Acapulco, a trip that I will never forget and an inspiration for my travels here in Mexico today and for many years after college.

Flo and Bob lived with Frances and Flo's brother Fedencio (uncle Fed), who seemed to spend most of his time writing and publishing a newspaper about revolution in Mexico and was the first person to ever speak to me intelligently about higher mathematics and politics. Everyone told me he was a bit crazy, but I always loved seeing him and he would hug me and call me "chiquito", which means "little one". Uncle Fed was very short and I was already 6'3" by the age of 14 but he always called me that anyway.

Everyone on my father's side of the family was fluent in Spanish, even Bill. My mother and her side of our family (Gertrude, Otto, Lotte, Ellie and Paul) were all fluent in German. I studied more German than Spanish in school, which was handy in my mathematics studies in college. I am finally catching up on my Spanish now and I know that my dad's side of the family would all appreciate this if they were still around.

The food was always awesome when the two families came together at the holidays. Ham, roast beast, turkey and mashed potatoes next to mole, rice and frijoles. German chocolate cake and flan. Rolls and tortillas. There are few things in life that I miss, but I would give just about anything to relive one of those meals.

Francis used to drive my mother crazy at parties, always showing up quite late, which is normal Mexican protocol unless one specifies "English time". Once my mother tried to fool her and invited Francis two hours early and of course Francis showed up on time to my mother's shock and dismay. My mother tried to BS her way out of it and kept asking "where is everyone?" and pretending to not understand why everyone else was so late.

Francis died in a house fire. I'm not sure how it started and neighbors said that she had gotten out, but went back in for her dogs. They escaped and survived unharmed, but she died of smoke inhalation. I think she was still in her mid 50's.

Years later, Bill married one of Francis' best friends and we kept in touch while I was in college. He seemed very happy and would write jokes in all our letters. I think he had always longed to settle down and finally did.

I was very fortunate to have such loving grand parents, aunts and uncles.

My Grandfather Paul

My grandfather, on my mother's side, fell eight stories from a scaffold while working on a New York hi-rise. He survived, but his partner, who he landed on, did not. There was no workmen's comp back then and he was laid up for two years. He lost his job too.

As a result, he was an epileptic for the rest of his life, having a seizer every afternoon like clockwork. He was never allowed to drive again.

A WWI vet, he had migrated from Hamburg, Germany to Hamburg, New Jersey in the 20's. His wife and my aunt followed some years later. My mother and my uncle were born and spent their early childhood in NJ. They were kids when grandpa fell and his wife worked as a housekeeper and took in laundry to make ends meet. My mother hated the depression and always talked about it in terms of food availability, especially the lack of pork chops, which she loved.

After recovering from the accident, Paul (pronounced 'Powell', by his wife Ellie, my grandmother) migrated to Trona, California, near Death Valley, where he worked as a machinist. The family eventually followed some years later, coming by way of the Panama Canal, to West LA, where my grandmother became a housekeeper for Charlie Chaplin and my mom attended University High School during WWII. My uncle was a submariner in the Pacific. I remember looking at my mom's HS yearbook as a kid; almost all the boys were in uniform.

After graduating, she worked at the Broadway, Downtown for a while and eventually met and married my dad when they were in their early twenties. They said they met in the unemployment line. I showed up about 9 months later.

As a boy in the 50's and 60's, I would often stay with my grandparents. Paul would get up very early every morning, make coffee and have a smoke, while making me a light breakfast of smoked fish on toast. I used to love that and still do. He would always bring my grandmother a cup of coffee and kiss her good morning, but otherwise they spent their lives watching TV in their separate rooms. They both liked to watch wrestling (my grandmother hated "that Freddy Blase") and she would cook dinner for the two them, which they ate in their rooms on TV trays. Whenever I came to visit, Paul would hide Ellie's teeth as a joke, which I thought was hysterical. They loved each other in their own funny way.

In his 70's, grandpa would hold out his arm and I would swing from it. I was a skinny kid back then. In his 80's, he was hit by a car and tossed several feet, breaking his arm and collar bone, but otherwise recovered ok. He finally died at the age of 84, within a year of my grandmother's passing. He was still taking his morning walks down Wilshire Blvd, from Bundy to the Santa Monica Pier and back, running errands and always dressed in his olive drab or dark blue Sears work shirt and pants.

He gave me the best advice anyone ever has. He told me: "Marky, I go to bed every night with no worries, let a good one out the backside and turn over and go to sleep."

He liked one good belt of scotch at night (Black Label) and smoked two packs of Pall Mall everyday until he died. He never showed any adverse effects not attributable to his accidents. Not everyone gets cancer from smoking.

Sounds of the city - Veracruz - Elotes

I love the city sounds that I can hear from our apartment, here in Veracruz. I often hear this one going by at night and have wondered what it was. I knew it was a street vendor, but could never quite make out his call.

Tonight on the way... to dinner with Alicia, he passed by and I could hear him clearly sign out "elotes!", which is cooked corn, either on the cob or by the cup full. A very popular snack in mexico, it is usually cooked in butter and served with salt and lime, or other toppings that I have not tried yet.

 

 

Shannon Hacks My Photo

Shannon Noble, a vlogger friend whom I have long admired recently applied his techniques to one of my photos. I really dig it and am seriously thinking about dying my beard blue. Thanks Shannon.

Lazy Sunday in Veracruz

Lazy sunday, warm, sunny day outside. Laying naked on the bed after a shower with the AC on. Her body still excites me after all these years. Making love slowly. The kids, now in their late 20's, would probably think we are nuts. They'd be right. We are. About each other.

Life does not end at 50 (almost, 60 now).

Tip: sell everything and run away with your beloved.