Month: June 2023

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The Mango Wars

There were two huge mango trees in my Mazatlán courtyard. They were a source of welcome shade throughout the year and wonderful, fragrant blossoms beginning in January. By spring the trees were heavy with delicious sweet mangoes. Thousands of mangoes! More mangoes than one person could eat or even dispose of without a plan.

But Neto had a plan. He hung a sign on the door that said, “Free Mangoes!” and invited anyone walking down the street to ring the doorbell, come inside and help themselves. I didn’t realize that Mona and José, my next door neighbors, wouldn’t like what I was doing.

 

First Mona pleaded with me to ban the neighborhood children from coming into the courtyard. She wanted me to put mangoes in bags and hand them out the door, as if it were Halloween.

That way, she reasoned, no one would know what my courtyard looked like. Her exact words were, “You don’t know what you are doing. These kids are bad. They are surfers!”

Mona told me that even the police were angry with me for opening my courtyard to children coming from the beach. When I told her that I would be careful but I intended to continue to give away free mangoes, I thought she would explode.

Later that day, Neto and his best friend, Publio, were up on the rooftop picking mangoes when José came to the open window that overlooked my house. He started screaming at Neto. “You are looking in my window! Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me”

José picked up a fallen mango and pitched it right at Publio’s head so hard it could have killed him. Luckily, José, an old and unsteady pitcher, missed. Publio, who is generally very passive, said that if he’d gotten hit he would have just started pitching mangoes right back at the old fool. And by that time, Publio had an arsenal of more than sixty mangoes at his disposal.

I wish I had used that opportunity to tell those two busybodies to close up their windows and they wouldn’t have to worry about people looking in or climbing through the windows to rob them. Of course, then they couldn’t watch what I was doing, either.

Soon whole families were at my door, holding plastic bags. Word spread throughout the neighborhood about our ripe, juicy, free mangoes. We brought the families inside, and turned on the music. There was dancing and laughter in the courtyard. There was a party goin’ on! 

One Saturday, after a week-long Mango Fiesta, my doorbell rang about 2:00 in the afternoon. I opened the door to find two uniformed policemen standing there. I remembered what Mona said and figured they were there to arrest me or, at least, warn me about the dangers of opening my door to children. 

Before I could say anything, one of the policemen pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and asked, “Are you still giving away free mangoes?”

“Por supuesto! Of course!” I said. “Here use this ladder to get on the roof and pick all the mangoes you’d like.”

“And,” I added with a smile, “Come back any time.”

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Mona and José

In September, 2004, I wanted to move to Mexico. It was an impulsive decision on my part and I never regretted it. I flew to Mazatlán and talked to a realtor. I asked him to show me homes for sale in El Centro, the downtown section of Mazatlán. The first place I saw was a huge house, owned by Mona Felton and her husband, José Fuentevilla. The home took up an entire city block.

“Only half the house is for sale,” the realtor explained. “It used to be where the servants lived and worked. Mona and José have run into financial problems and need to sell this part of their home. They are going to continue to live in the main house.”

The realtor opened the door marked 222 Circunvalacion. My eyes popped. The home was at least one hundred years old. The servants left long ago. There were huge mango trees in the courtyard and banana trees it the back. It looked as if the patio hadn’t been swept in months. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to put a fountain in the middle. I wanted to make this big house my own. 

I bought the home eight months later. Jose and Mona became my neighbors in an on-again-off-again friendship. I learned that Mona was from a very old, very influential Mazatlán family. The Feltons were early entrepreneurs from England. They established the water system, the lumberyard and a technical college. They ran for political office and usually won. 

Mona met José on a trip to Spain, when she was a young woman. They fell in love and were married, much to the dismay of her aristocratic family who did not approve of Jose’s dark skin. I found José to be very charming ~ except when he wasn’t. The same was true for Mona.

One of the first weeks after I moved in, Mona invited me to go to dinner with her in the Zona Dorado ~ the Golden Zone. Zona Dorado is the tourist part of town, known for its multi-story condos and fancy restaurants on the beach.

Mona picked me up in her white Chevy Blazer. The car lurched as she sped away down the street. Her eyes were everywhere except on the road. As I reached to put on my seatbelt, Mona grabbed my arm. “Please don’t put that on,” she said. “People will think I’m a bad driver.”

Over the course of the five years I lived in Mazatlán, I had many encounters with José and Mona. One of the first was when Neto and I realized that someone was stealing our water.

ME: “Neto, why is our water bill so high? Does everyone pay this much for water.”

NETO: “This bill can’t be right. We’re paying as much for water as a whole block of people.”

AHA!! Neto search the back patio. He looked behind the banana trees and saw a water pipe going from our hook-up straight into José’s kitchen. He cut the pipe and capped it off.

ME: “Are you going to say anything to José?”

NETO: “No. He’ll figure it out.”

José and Mona kept a pack of fancy dogs on their second floor balcony, overlooking our patio. I never saw the dogs but they barked constantly. There must have been five or six of them. No one ever walked the dogs outside. I assumed they were “rooftop dogs” ~ a common practice in Mexico of keeping dogs on the roof. They are considered guard dogs and are not treated as pets. I asked Mona about them,

“Mona, why do you have so many guard dogs on your balcony?”

“Oh, those aren’t guard dogs. Those are my breeding dogs. They are very expensive. I sell their puppies for extra money.”

I hated those dogs. With their constant barking, they didn’t give me a minute’s worth of peace.

One day I noticed that we had a bunch of mice running around our courtyard. I talked to Neto.

“Neto, is there anything we can do about all these mice? They are all over the courtyard and I really don’t want them in the house.”

“Sure. I can get some mouse poison. If we don’t stop them now, they will be in the kitchen by tomorrow.”

Neto put mouse poison in the courtyard. Before they died, the mice went crazy. They ran up our mango trees and into Jose’s balcony, where the dogs were barking as usual. The dogs chased the mice and ate them.

The next day, I saw Mona at the tortilla shop across the street. She looked terrible.

What´s happened, Mona?”

“All my dogs got sick and died. Now I don’t have any dogs to breed. I don’t have any more puppies to sell.”

“Do you know how they died?”

“No. I came outside when I didn’t hear them barking. That’s when I found them. They were all dead.”

I didn’t say any more. I didn’t expect to kill Mona’s dogs when I poisoned the mice. I felt guilty when I realized that I was happy not to hear their constant barking.

I asked Neto, “Should I tell Mona that we are responsible for her dogs dying?”

“No,” he answered. “She won’t figure it out.”

One of my last conversations with José was in 2008, when I returned to Mazatlán after cancer surgery. 

“Where have you been? Neto has been here without you all summer.”

“Oh, José. I’ve been recovering from cancer surgery. I’ve been really sick.”

Then José told me that he’d been diagnosed with cancer, too. “But my doctor told me about a cure.”

“Really? What?”

“Every morning, I pee in a pitcher. I mix my urine with fresh orange juice and drink it. It doesn’t taste bad. It’s going to save my life.”

Last year I learned that José died of prostate cancer. He and Mona were my friends. He was a good guy. I wish his doctor’s cure had worked for him. I hope he died knowing that I was happy to be his neighbor..

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The Talent Contest

I’m not sure whose idea it was for my brother and me to enter the talent contest. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.

I was in eighth grade and Bob was in seventh. My mother pointed out a notice in the Ramsey County Review:

TALENT CONTEST FOR CHILDREN AGES SIX TO THIRTEEN. PRIZE IS $10.00!

$10.00 back in 1956 was a lot of money. It is equivalent to $100 today. 

“You kids should enter the contest,” my mother said. “I think you would win.”

Bob and I had been playing duets for years. My father had recently brought home a book of Latin duets with very complicated rhythms. Bob and I had a lot of fun plowing through the duets. Bob played the accompaniment because he had a better sense of rhythm than I did. I played the melody because my fingers were faster. (And often more accurate. Just sayin’.)

We entered the contest and squabbled about what song to play. It was between Perfidia and Tico-Tico. Tico-Tico was faster, but we usually played it so fast we were completely out of control. We probably played Perfidia too fast, too, but at least we knew we could get through it in front of an audience.

Bob and I practiced our duet every day. We argued about who was making the most mistakes. We speculated on how many people might be in the audience and if people we knew would be our competition. Mostly we dreamed of what we could do with the award money if we actually won.

The day of the talent show, Dad drove us to North High School, The show was going to be on the stage located at one end of the gymnasium. Folding chairs were set up in rows for the audience. Someone from the newspaper was in back, handing out programs. 

Bob wore a suit jacket and I wore my best dress. My parents, my sister, and Grandma Hunt were in the audience. I glanced at the program and saw that we were the last act of the day. No one else was playing the piano.

Other acts included a young magician, a girl who sang You Are My Sunshine, and a variety of other acts that included tap dancing, cartwheels, and twirling batons. As I watched the performers, my heart sank. I was certain Bob and I hadn’t practiced enough. What if my fingers slipped on the keys? What if one of us lost our place in the music? What if I couldn’t turn the page fast enough? 

When it was our turn, Bob went to the side of the stage to help the announcer pull the piano onstage. It was an old, dusty upright piano. As soon as Bob gave it a shove, one of the legs fell off. The leg was mainly decorative and didn’t really support the weight of the heavy piano but the audience didn’t know that. 

The audience gasped. Bob kicked the fallen leg across the stage. The announcer retrieved the leg and propped it back the piano. We sat down on the piano bench, looked at each other, opened the book and started to play. Somehow we made it through Perfidia without a mistake.

We stood up, bowed and took our place on the chairs with the other acts as we waited for the judge’s decision.

“The winner of the 1958 North St. Paul First Annual Talent Contest is …. Mary Lynda and Robert Jones!” 

We won!

Bob and I walked across the stage and accepted a small trophy and a check for $10.00. It was my first and last talent contest. It is still a thrilling moment to remember. I wonder if we would have won if the piano leg hadn’t fallen off.

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Peonies

The official flower of the Jones family is the peony. Just kidding. But if we had an official flower, it would definitely be a peony.

After retiring from the Northern Pacific railroad, my grandfather, Robert Jones, bought a small log cabin in West St. Paul where he began growing peonies. Acres and acres of beautiful peonies.

Grandpa Jones cultivated new species. He entered them in local and national peony shows. He and my grandmother sold bunches of flowers and whole peony bushes to people who stopped by his cabin. He became renown throughout the country and was a prominent member of the Minnesota Peony Society. I’m sure that many of his peonies are still growing throughout Minnesota and are in full bloom as I write this story.

Sometimes my brother and I were sent to the cabin for a week in the summer to help Grandpa work in the peony gardens. There were flowers of every color ~ pink, red, white, and magenta. It’s what Heaven must look like, with just a few angels floating around on clouds for special effects. Our job was to sit in the wheelbarrow, on top of weeds and debris that Grandpa dumped onto the trash pile away from the house. We laughed when the ride was over and we were dumped in the trash pile along with the weeds.

The cabin was tiny, with just a living room and one bedroom on the main floor. In the basement there was a small kitchen and the only bathroom. The steps from the bedroom to the bathroom were steep ~ too steep to navigate at night. If we needed to use the bathroom, we peed in a coffee can, which my grandmother carefully emptied the next morning.

My grandparents had only one narrow bunk bed in the bedroom. Grandpa slept in the top bunk with my brother, Bob. There was no railing on the bed, but Grandpa’s body kept him safely next to the wall. I slept with Grandma on the bottom bunk.

One night Bob and I went to sleep early. When it was time for her to come to bed, Grandma changed into her nightgown and was kneeling beside the bed, saying her nightly prayers, just as Bob rolled over and fell on top of her.  In my Catholic family, it was considered a miracle. Grandma’s prayers saved his life.

Grandpa’s most famous peony was a soft pink, double show peony, the Shirley Jones Peony (Seedling # P127) named for his daughter, Shirley. For her wedding, Aunt Shirley carried a lovely small bouquet of white flowers. The pink peonies named in her honor were on the altar and throughout the church.

Bob and I were in Aunt Shirley’s wedding. I think we were four and five years old. People commented on the beautiful bride and all the gorgeous flowers.

Most of the guests also murmured as my brother walked down the aisle sporting a big black eye. It was my fault. The day before the wedding, we were chasing each other around the yard. I came through the front door first and slammed the screen door shut, right in Bob’s face. It was too late to get another flower girl and ring-bearer. The wedding went on, as planned, 

Grandpa sold the cabin sometime in the early 1950’s. After my grandparents died in 1954 and 1956, my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Pat moved into their home at 731 Delaware Avenue. Grandpa’s office was still  in the basement of the home.

I loved going to the basement and seeing Grandpa’s big ledgers, where he kept careful records of all the flowers he owned and sold. One whole wall was covered with ribbons ~ white, red, and blue ribbons with the year they were awarded in the Minnesota Peony Show. And right in the middle were the biggest ribbons of all: the purple Best of Show ribbons

Robert and Irene Jones, two quiet people who raised children and flowers, left their mark throughout Minnesota with their gentle spirits and their beautiful peonies.