Author: Lynda Jones

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Loca

Ernesto has two daughters by Loca, a woman from his neighborhood. He is adamant that he didn’t like Loca and never married her, but he has always loved his daughters. He calls them Princesa and Reina. In this essay, I call them Uno and Dos.

Loca’s mother owned the house that Neto and Loca rented when the girls were young. Most mornings, Loca’s mother would put her fat head in his bedroom window and yell, “Get up you good-for-nothing lazy ass.” When I first met Ernesto, he was working nights as a security guard at a parking lot. He had often just returned home from working overnight when his landlady appeared at his window.

The first year Neto worked for me, he was excited  about Christmas. He saved $700 from his paychecks to buy gifts for Uno and Dos, who were six and ten years old. It was the first time he had money to spend for gifts. He bought bicycles and art supplies. The girls were delighted when they saw their gifts on Christmas night. They called him Papí and gave him hugs and kisses.  After he put the girls to bed, he came back to the living room and Loca threw him out of the house. She told him never to return. He was too embarrassed to tell me or his mother what had happened, so he went to sleep on the beach. The girls woke up  the day after Christmas Day and he was gone.

When Neto came to work for me the next day, I asked him, “How was your Christmas?”

“It was nice,” he told me. “The girls really liked their gifts.”

Neto spent the next nine months sleeping in the sand. He slept on the beach until he moved into my house the following September.

Loca tormented me the entire time I lived in Mazatlán. She didn’t want Neto to live with her and the girls, but she didn’t want him at my house, either. Eventually, she chased me out of Mexico. She was not the only reason I left, of course, but she was one of the main ones.

Loca’s weapon was the telephone. She called my house at all hours, wanting to speak to Neto. If I answered the phone, she hung up and immediately called back. One night, when Neto was at his AA meeting, she called sixty-three times in a row. It was a landline so I could get calls from the U.S. After that, I unplugged the phone and only plugged it in when Neto was home.

Loca knew that Neto was devoted to his daughters, especially Dos. She would call late at night with alarming news:

“Dos has been raped. You need to meet me at the hospital.”

“Dos is choking. You need to take us to the hospital.”

“The girls have run away. You need to help me look for them.”

Neto would jump on his bicycle and fly out of the house. Of course, all of these were false alarms, but what father would take a chance? Certainly not Neto.

The five years I lived in Mexico, I noticed that the girls wore clothes that were dirty, torn and wrong for the season. They didn’t do well in school. Uno failed two grades in elementary school and didn’t move on to middle school until she was thirteen years old. Neto tried to get custody of the girls but was denied by a judge, who was bribed by Loca’s mother.

One day, I heard someone pounding on my front door. I opened the door and saw an armored truck full of police carrying automatic weapons.

“We have reports that you have kidnapped this woman’s children,” said a policewoman, who spoke English. “Where are they?”

“I did not kidnap them! They are not here,” I answered.

Loca was standing next to two policemen. She was speaking in agitated Spanish. I lost it. I started screaming in a mixture of English and tortured Spanish. “This woman is crazy! Because of her, I’m leaving Mexico and never coming back.”

“Please don’t leave,” the policewoman said. “We believe you. But we had to check this out.”

I left Mexico in 2010 and Neto went back to living at his mother’s house. They girls visited him every Sunday, asking for money and food.

Follow-up:

Uno is now 28 years old. She has a son and a daughter, by a man from the neighborhood. He is a known drug-dealer and is often in rehab. Uno lives with her mother-in-law and works full-time. She calls Neto about once/week.

Dos is 24 years old. She has two daughters. She lives with a man who is an Uber driver and she calls Neto only when the Uber car breaks down. She seldom calls, unless I am visiting. Then she calls relentlessly, just as her mother did years ago.

The parish priest recently came hurrying down the street to find Neto. A band a neighbors were close behind.

“Neto, you have to do something with Loca.”

“Why? What is she doing?”

She is standing outside my church, yelling, “The Virgin Mary is a whore!”

“Call the police,” Neto told them. “I’ve never been able to do anything with that woman. She’s Loca!”

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Auditions

I started piano lessons with Sister Aimee when I was six years old. We lived in a duplex across the street from St. Peter Catholic Church. The convent and grade school were a few houses away. My grandparents lived upstairs.

Because we didn’t have a piano, I practiced on an old piano in the church basement, where the church custodian lived. He drank whiskey from a bottle and smelled terrible. I thought he was creepy and I tried not to think about him as I practiced my lesson, alone in the church basement.

When I was eight years old, we moved into our own home two blocks away. My Aunt Margaret gave us a piano, so I didn’t have to practice in the church basement any more.

Sister Aimee was my teacher for the next eight years. She taught only classical music. Popular music was strictly forbidden. In addition to teaching seventy children to play the piano, she also taught music at the Catholic school and directed both the church choir and the children’s choir. She put on an elaborate Christmas pageant every December and an operetta in the spring. I don’t think she ever slept, which probably accounted for her demeanor, which was nothing short of terrifying.

Sister Aimee was tall and skinny. I don’t remember ever seeing her smile. She would check the length of our fingernails before every piano lesson. If they were too long, by her standards, she would grab our hands and forcibly cut the offending nails. The sound of fingernails clicking against piano keys drove her crazy. It was not the only thing that put her over the edge.

Every spring Sister Aimee scheduled an audition at the MacPhail School of Music for all of her students over the age of eight. We were judged by highly trained classical pianists. Thinking back on it, I realize now that Sister Aimee felt that she was the one being judged. If we failed, she failed. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

All year we prepared for our spring audition. We had to memorize ten songs, in varying degrees of difficulty. We had to come to the audition wearing our best clothes, not our tacky school uniforms. By February the pressure was palpable.

Every Monday, Sister Aimee reminded me that I was one of her worst students. Then she would recite a litany of her worst pupils. “You and your brother, Madonna and James Francis, and the Tracys. All of you have lessons on Mondays, so I don’t have to think about you the rest of the week.”

What a strange teaching technique! All of this came to an end when I was in the eighth grade. It was a Monday, as usual, and I entered the piano studio with a sense of dread. The audition was less than a month away.

“What did you work on special this week?” Sister Aimee wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I replied. I meant that I had worked on all my pieces. I didn’t work on anything special. She thought I meant I had not practiced at all.

Sister Aimee went berserk. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” she shouted. “Take off your glasses.”

I did as I was told. I took off my glasses and Sister Aimee slapped me across the face. Hard! And then she continued to slap me. Back and forth she slapped, until finally she caught herself and told me to go home.

My mother knew something was wrong when I came through the door. My face was red and I had been crying.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Sister Aimee hit me.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because I didn’t practice anything special this week.”

When my father came home from work that night, I heard my parents talking in their room.

And then a miracle happened. My father, who rarely spoke to anyone and never used the telephone, picked up the phone and called the convent. He asked to speak to Sister Aimee.

“Sister, this is Bob Jones. Mary Lynda and Robert will not be taking piano lessons any more.” Then he hung up.

The following Saturday, my brother and I were in the car, going to meet our new piano teacher, Hod Russell. Hod was one of the very best Dixieland Jazz piano players in the Twin Cities. He was a kind and gentle man. He told my mother that my brother and I were two of his very best students. I took lessons from Hod for the next four years. I never opened another book of classical music. I never had another audition or recital. Music was my joy and my salvation.

The moral of this story is obvious: Often the worst moments of your life turn out to be the best. In my case, that has certainly been true.

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Fire!

In 1968, when Jim and I were first married, we knew we wanted to move out of the city of Denver. We wanted to live in the mountains, but we both had jobs in Denver. Where could we go that was close to Denver, but not too close? We found the perfect town ~ Idledale, Colorado. A quiet, unincorporated village tucked just west of Denver, Idledale sits in the foothills along Bear Creek. It’s easily overlooked on the drive between Morrison and Evergreen.

Situated at 6,466 feet above sea level, Idledale gave us the right slice of mountain life. The population was about 300 people, more or less. The incredibly beautiful Red Rocks park is close by.

We found a great house. Located on five acres of land, at the top of Grapevine Road, the picture window in our living room provided a view of the entire valley. We had good neighbors. The home cost $15,000.00. We probably bought it with Jim’s GI benefits. Garth was born while we lived there. It was a good life.

Like most of the men of Idledale, Jim signed on as a volunteer on the Idledale Fire Department. The volunteers were a rag-tag group of men, young and old. Women weren’t allowed to join because it was considered bad luck to have a woman in the station. Women were allowed to make sandwiches and deliver them to the station after the fire, however.  No one complained or even questioned the rules. That’s how it was.

Idledale had only one truck when we lived there. The Denver Fire Department donated an old pumper in 1956 and the men built a station to house it. There weren’t any fire hydrants in Idledale. When a fire occurred, the chief drove the pumper into Bear Creek and filled it with water. It was a delicate task. Often  the chief filled it too full, and the pumper quickly became too heavy to climb out of the creek bed and onto the road. The chief then had to keep dumping water back into the creek, until the old pumper could be coaxed out of the stream and up the road to the fire. Meanwhile, women who were home taking care of children, sprang into action. They put fires out using garden hoses and buckets of water. They soaked small rugs in water and beat out the flames before the truck got there. Then they went back to making sandwiches.

For some reason, there were a lot of fires during the four years Jim and I lived in Idledale. The volunteers did their best, but often came home full of soot and ashes.

“How did it go?” citizens would ask.

“We saved the trees,” was the reply. That meant that the house had burned to the ground. The conversation was over.

Eventually someone caught on. It was obvious that only one firefighter was present whenever there was a fire in Idledale. A young man who lived in a small shack in the middle of Grapevine Road was a very enthusiastic firemen. He was often the first person on the scene.

People started asking each other if maybe he was actually starting the fires, just to watch them burn. Sad, but true! He pleaded guilty to arson, went to jail and the incidence of fires decreased dramatically in our small town.

Jim and I sold our home in Idledale and moved to Lakewood soon after Jason was born. We didn’t want to take Garth out of the mountains. He loved being outside, roaming up and down the hills. We had an old dog, with only one eye, who was his constant companion.

Now, as an adult, Garth lives in the mountains of Winter Park with his wife, Bethany. He is an engineer on the Aurora Fire Department. There are women serving with him in the fire station. The guys make their own sandwiches.

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Hero

My mother grew up on a farm in Minnesota during the Depression. There were eight children ~ two girls and six boys. My mom was the youngest. Uncle Bob, not quite two years older, was her best friend and ally against their older twin brothers, who conspired to make their lives absolutely frightful. The twins taught Bob to steer a car when he was five, and my mother, in the back seat, was three. On Christmas Eve the twins sat outside with their air rifles, threatening to shoot Santa out of the sky, while my mother and Bob clutched each other and cried. Bob consoled my mother from a very young age and spent the rest of his life taking care of people. He was a hero.

Uncle Bob was one of the few young men who didn’t serve in WWII. He desperately wanted to enlist but my grandfather wouldn’t allow it. Grandpa wrote a letter saying that all his other sons were married with children. Bob was the only one left to help him run the farm. Without Bob’s help, my grandfather wrote, he would lose the farm.

According to my mother, Bob was devastated. He wanted to go to war, like his friends. He was determined to leave the farm as soon as he could. Eventually my grandparents sold the farm and moved into town. Bob went to work as a mechanic at Thornton Motors, a local Chrysler/Plymouth dealer, one block away from the North St. Paul fire station.

During the war, Uncle Bob continued to help his family. Because my father was in the Navy when my brother was born in 1944, Uncle Bob drove my mother to the hospital. He was still her main confident and friend as she raised my brother and I alone until the war was over and Dad came home again. 

As he watched the other young men return home, Uncle Bob didn’t feel like a hero. Because he wasn’t a veteran, he wasn’t allowed to join the American Legion or the VFW, although he was always welcome to come inside and drink with his friends.

Until he met my Aunt Leslie, the fire station was Bob’s life. He drove the fire truck and made sure it was in good working order.

Because he worked just one block away, Uncle Bob was always the first person to arrive at the station when the siren sounded. He jumped into the truck  and took off. If another firefighter happened get there in time, he would hang onto the back of the truck for dear life as Bob raced to the fire. Other volunteers called the town telephone operator to find out where the emergency was. By the time the other volunteers drove themselves to the fire, Bob was already there, taking care of everything until they arrived.

Later, when the fire call was over, the men met back in the station, drank beer and rehashed what they had just seen. Bob always had a great sense of humor and a huge circle of friends. He was handsome and charming. He was hard-working and kind. He was the guy who drove the fire truck. He was the town hero. 

Eventually North St. Paul hired a paid chief of police. Uncle Bob wanted that position, but he didn’t get it. My family believed that Bob was the most qualified, but didn’t get the job because he wasn’t a veteran.

Unlike my mother’s other brothers who married young, Uncle Bob waited until he was in the late 20’s to get married. When he met Leslie Webster, the whole small town was buzzing. Leslie was the granddaughter of  the town doctor, Dr. Cowan, and the daughter of Bud Webster, the president of the school board. They lived in a big house near Silver Lake. Leslie was young and beautiful. Bob finally found the girl he wanted to marry. 

My brother and I were in Bob’s wedding. I was five years old and my brother was four. The reception was held in a big barn-like building. My only memory of the wedding was the shivaree, performed by Bob’s friends at midnight. Suddenly, in the midst of the celebration, there was a horrible racket outside. There were whoops and yelling like I had never heard before. Bob’s drunken friends were banging on pots and pans with spoons and other utensils in some sort of  mock serenade. My brother and I were terrified. Uncle Bob laughed as he comforted us and warned that we needed to keep his friends outside. If they came inside they might steal the pretty bride. 

Bob and Leslie had four children and lived in a big, beautiful home near Leslie’s parents. Uncle Bob was a devoted husband and father. He loved Aunt Leslie and very much enjoyed spending time with his children. Mom and Leslie were good friends. Dad and Uncle Bob had great times together. 

In 1963, Bob was promoted to branch manager of LP gas sales for Skelly Oil. The job was based in Barron, Wisconsin, near the Minnesota border. Bob accepted the job, but wasn’t happy about leaving North St. Paul. My grandmother was very ill and being cared for in the town nursing home. Bob drove his family back to North St. Paul most weekends to visit her.  It was hard for all of us to see Grandma dying in that small bedroom. I think it must have broken Bob’s heart. 

In 1967, Bob was transferred to Berlin, Wisconsin, a town much further from North St. Paul than his previous assignment. Bob’s job was stressful and he dreamed of returning to North St. Paul when he retired.  But that never happened. In 1977, at the age of 57, Uncle Bob had a massive heart attack. Everyone was devastated. We lost a hero. 

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Ransom

Two years ago, Ernesto qualified to compete in the Mexican National Surfing Contest. He was elated. It was the second time in his life that he qualified for the tournament. The first time was more than forty years ago, when he was 21 years old. That year the tournament was canceled because the waves were not high enough for competition.  Neto went home, disappointed and disgruntled. He had trained for a year and didn’t have his moment to shine. He decided to leave Mexico and go the United States. He wanted to learn to speak English and surf the California beaches. He didn’t return to Mexico permanently for almost twenty years.

Now, at the age of sixty-two, he had a second chance to compete in the Mexican National Tournament. He had accumulated enough points in two separate spring trials to compete in the fall. He was determined to get in shape and win. He surfed throughout the spring and early summer. He was a man with a mission.

Neto called me one night in July, 2022, clearly upset. “I just got the worst news of my life,” he blurted out.

“Oh, my God, what happened?” I figured someone had died or been in a terrible accident.

“Someone broke into the warehouse and stole a lot of surfboards, including my two competition boards.”

I was relieved that no one had died. I didn’t understand that this was traumatic for Neto. Without his boards, he couldn’t compete in the national tournament. He couldn’t practice. There was no longer a reason to get in shape or even get out of bed in the morning.

Dear readers, you need to understand that surfing is Neto’s life. It is his reason for being. His passion for the ocean is what has saved him all these year. This was a major existential crisis.

Neto and the other surfers who had their boards stolen mounted a campaign to get them back. They combed the beaches and notified their friends in surfing towns up and down the Pacific Coast. They visited every surf merchant and pawn shop in town, to no avail. The boards had disappeared.

Neto learned to surf when he was thirteen years old. He was a surfing pioneer  and is easily still one of the best surfers in Mazatlán. His style is smooth and graceful. He looks like a dancer on top of the water.

Neto’s surfboard is as easily recognized as he is. It is bright blue, and 6’4″ long. He’s had it since 2010. Looking out into the ocean, seeing that blue board bobbing in the water waiting for the next big wave, everyone knows that Ernesto Flores is about to take another ride. No robber could sell or pawn that board without getting caught. But it was gone. Nowhere to be found.

Without his board, Neto became more and more depressed. He didn’t want to go to the beach. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He started drinking again. He laughed and pretended that he was ok, but he wasn’t.

This winter, more than a year after his board was stolen, Neto stopped looking for his stolen boards and bought another board. His new board is yellow and black. It is a 7’4″ long-board. He was happy to be surfing again. His friends were happy to see him back on the beach.

Two weeks ago, the surfing community was buzzing. There were rumors that someone knew where the original stolen boards were being kept. They were still in Mazatlán, in someone’s garage. Publio, Neto’s best friend and surfing buddy, found the man with the garage. The man swore he wasn’t the person who stole the boards, but he was willing to return them ~ for a price. He wanted  Publio to be the intermediary. He didn’t want Neto to confront him in person.

Neto was willing to deal. He would do anything necessary to get his blue board back. He scraped together the ransom money and gave it to Publio. Last Tuesday night, Neto waited anxiously at Publio’s house, while his friend drove to the suspected garage. Two hours later Publio returned, the blue board strapped to the top of his silver Volkswagen station wagon. 

Neto’s board is back. So is he!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My New Digs

Where have I been for the past six months? Obviously, not writing my blog! Instead I was working on a new project. An interesting, fascinating, huge project. I moved to new digs. Again. Here’s the true story. Nothing is changed to protect the guilty.

Last summer I knew I needed to move to a different home. I thought I would be happy living in a beautiful condo in a 55+ community. My unit was on the third floor, overlooking a golf course. What’s not to love? For me, it was everything. 

I was so desperate to move that I asked my son, Jason, to negotiate a trade ~ my beautiful condo for a filthy, mouse-infested free-standing home occupied by an extreme hoarder. If you have ever seen a show about hoarders, I assure you that this place was worse. After a whole summer of drama, the hoarder and I finally closed the deal on September 15. And then the fun began! But not before the previous owner (P.O.) filed a police report, accusing me of stealing all her things and “ruining her life.” 

My renovation began by moving mountains of P.O.’s possessions. She took some things with her ~ a full Pod plus two U-Haul trailers full of things. What was left behind filled eighteen roll-off dumpsters. Ramón, who had no front teeth, oversaw a crew of ten skinny men, who worked tirelessly for six days filling dumpsters. Every time they thought they had cleared another room in my home, they opened a closet and found a mountain of smelly worthless possessions oozing out onto the floor.

My neighbors were overjoyed that someone new was moving in and that P.O. was moving out. They sat outside in small groups on their lawns and watched the action. They cheered when another dumpster rolled down the street. By the fourth day they were drinking champagne and toasting the dumpster drivers, as yet another dumpster lumbered down the street.

I bought the house, sight unseen because it was not possible for anyone to get past the front door, including an inspector who deemed the house, “the worse (he) had even seen.” When the last dumpster roared away, I was finally able to see the inside of my new home. I was overjoyed. It needed a lot of work and smelled terrible, but it was clearly a diamond in the rough. 

Some people rescue children. Some rescue the environment. I guess I rescue houses. I used more than thirty-five vendors in all. They were kind, funny, incredibly skilled tradesmen. They worked well together and sang while they worked. The put in long hours, and often came on Saturdays to finish a project. They were my loyal friends. I could never have moved into my new home without them. I am forever grateful for every one of them.

My story has a happy ending. I spent four months and a considerable amount of money rehabilitating my new home. It’s now beautiful and no longer smells of urine.

I love my new neighborhood and I have great neighbors. I rented the upstairs of my home to a delightful couple from Columbia. I feel like I am back in Mexico, sharing my large kitchen and living with friends from another country. I know I am lucky, indeed.

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Small Town 4th of July

The 4th of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town that covered one square mile when I lived there. Early in the morning, while my parents were drinking multiple cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, we kids washed out bikes and decorated them with crepe paper. We wove crepe paper through the spokes and tied streamers onto the handle bars. The boys put playing cards on clothespins and pinned them to their wheels. As they rode up and down the block, the noise from the playing cards sounded like motorcycles. Or at least the boys thought they did. We didn’t organize an actual parade. We just rode up and down the street, until our parents were moving and something more exciting happened.

One year, when I was about six years old, there was an actual parade down main street. The parade included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a convertible from Thornton Motors with Miss North St. Paul waving from her perch in the back. Because my Uncle Bob Hunt worked for Thornton Motors, he arranged for me to ride next to Miss North St. Paul. I wore a white dress and a silk sash that dubbed me “Junior Miss North St. Paul.” The parade route was short, so my reign lasted only about ten minutes.

The parade also featured a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride in the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick, pretending he was fishing. My brother Bob and other neighborhood boys, walked beside the float, along the parade route that stretched three blocks from the VFW club to Sandberg’s Mortuary. Bob remembers being exhausted by the time the parade was finished.

The family picnic began at lunch time. Before Highway 36 cut the town in half, the picnic was held in a large, beautiful park next to the railroad tracks. Later, the picnic moved to Silver Lake, where if you went early in the day you could snag a picnic table. My mother packed a lunch of potato salad, jello, coleslaw, chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the park. Our cooler was filled with soda for the kids and lots of beer for the adults.

Sometimes my Aunt Fran and my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and probably argued over trivial matters.

VFW members sold raffle tickets, as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood up in the back of a truck, and in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings. At about 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water-Ski club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest one-piece bathing suits, performing all sorts of amazing tricks on water-skis. Since we didn’t know anyone with a boat, I never learned to water-ski. Given my athletic ability, it’s probably just as well.

As the sun went down, we pulled out a bucket of worms and tried fishing off one of the docks until it was time for fireworks. Huge, loud, booming, once-a-year fireworks! Maybe they pale by comparison to today’s pyrotechnics, but to us they were absolutely magical.

Later, sometime in the 1960s, the 4th of July picnic became an Ice Cream Social in August. My Dad’s Dixieland band, the Polar Bearcats, played for the crowd from a platform in the park, as the Ladies Auxiliary sold ice cream cones. By August the lake had turned green from algae and “dog days” had arrived. Gone was the smell of hamburgers on the grill. I was in college and working at Camp Hitaga in Iowa, so I missed the party. I still love watching fireworks, and remembering the fun we had growing up. Like most things, the 4th of July will never be as much fun again.

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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.