Author: Lynda Jones

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A Minnesota Monster Storm

It was March 1, 1965. My friends and I were looking forward to graduating from college in St. Cloud, Minnesota. We were studying for our third quarter finals when the blizzard struck. We were used to snow, but totally unprepared for what was coming. 

I lived in an off-campus house with five other women. Most of us had turned twenty-one, the legal drinking age in Minnesota, and we liked going to the local college bar, about a mile away. It didn’t take much for us to take a study-break and head for the bar, to eat hamburgers and sometimes have more to drink than we probably should have. 

That night it started snowing while we were at the bar. I was the only person with a car, but I left it at home. We were used to walking a mile and usually we weren’t in any hurry to get home. Besides, I knew I would rather spend money on bourbon than on gasoline. The bar was crowded and noisy. We were having a lot of fun, when my roommate came and yelled in my ear, 

“We’ve got to get Sonia home.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the bathroom, throwing up. She’s so drunk she can’t stand.”

Oh, my! We looked outside and saw that the weather was getting serious. We bundled Sonia into her Minnesota parka, hat, scarf and gloves, and started the trek toward home. Sonia kept falling into snowbanks. No amount of cajoling could get her to walk more than a couple of steps. This was 1965 in rural, college-town Minnesota. There were no cell-phones. Everyone was hunkered down inside their homes, as the blizzard howled and quickly covered everything in snow.

That’s when we spotted a toboggan on someone’s porch. We weren’t going to steal it. We just wanted to borrow it. We needed to get Sonia home. We pulled the toboggan off the porch and into the street. We dumped Sonia onto the toboggan and she immediately passed out. 

By the time we reached our front door, we were wet and cold. We knew we were lucky to have made it home. It took four of us to drag Sonia off the toboggan, into the house and onto her bed. We peeled her out of wet clothes and  into warm pajamas. We covered her up in extra blankets and knew she was going to have a terrible hang-over the next day.

Meanwhile, the blizzard was getting worse. I went outside, tied a bandana to the antenna of my car, and hoisted the antenna as high as it would go. That was a signal to the snowplow that there was a car buried in the snow, in case drifts covered my car. Which they did.

That weekend, it snowed twenty-two inches, with drifts over three feet. The following weekend, it snowed again ~ another eighteen inches, with drifts again over three feet. And on St. Patrick’s Day, the third weekend in March, there was a third blizzard. School was cancelled. My car was hopelessly buried and even snowplows couldn’t get down the street. One of the drifts was higher than our front door.

A few resourceful students managed to cascade out second-story windows on sleds made of cardboard. They walked to the liquor store ~ the only business open ~ to buy cases of beer. They sold it to thirsty students who tunneled their way to the street to celebrate that finals were cancelled. 

The National Guard was called to load snow onto trucks and pile it in vacant lots. That year, St. Cloud went sixty-six days in a row without seeing the sun.

That was the last winter I spent in Minnesota. By September, I was on my way I way to Denver, where even when it snows, we know it won’t be long before the sun shines again.

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When Irish Eyes Are Smiling!

Next Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day. I’m writing this story in honor of two strong, amazing, Irish women in my life: My grandmother, Irene Fay, whose mother came from County Sligo, Ireland, and my mother-in-law, Dorothy Gorman, whose mother was born in Hannibal, Missouri.

Irene and Dorothy had a lot in common. Both lost their fathers at a young age. Dorothy’s father died in the flu epidemic of 1918, when she was eight-years-old. Irene’s father was crushed between two train cars, while he was working for the railroad. Irene was in high school at the time. 

Both Irene and Dorothy grew up poor, raised by single mothers, at a time when jobs for women were scarce. As adults, they were hard-working, brave women who loved their spouses, their children and their grandchildren. They also loved to drink, now and then. Dorothy drank wine out of a pretty wine glass. Irene drank whiskey out of a porcelain cup.

I don’t know if Irene Fay was proud of her Irish heritage. My Welsh grandfather didn’t approve of her Irish family. I loved all of them, however, even though they were often in trouble with the law. Grandma died she was seventy years old.

Dorothy, on the other hand, was enormously proud of being Irish. St. Patrick’s Day was the most important day of the year to her and her sister, Margaret. They had their own booth at Duffy’s Shamrock Tavern in downtown Denver. They arrived early and stayed all day, wearing green from head to toe. Dorothy died just before her ninety-eighth birthday, still strong-willed and determined to live on her own terms.

One of the sweetest love stories I’ve ever heard was the story Bill Hein told about meeting his Irish sweetheart, Dorothy Gorman, at church, one night in the rain. Here is his story, told in Bill’s own words:

“My Uncle, George Hein and Aunt Mim had already moved to Denver. I stayed with them when I first moved to town. We used to go to church at St. Francis De Sales on South Sherman Street and we always attended the Tuesday night services together. Very quickly I noticed that six young, pretty girls always sat together in the front pew on Tuesday nights.

One Saturday afternoon, I came into church to go to confession. When I was finished, I saw one of the pretty girls from the front pew, praying in the back of the church. And then I noticed that it had started pouring rain outside. 

I ran as fast as I could, through the rain, the two blocks to where my sister, Anne and her husband, John Kastle, lived. I ran right in their door shouting,”Where’s the car keys!”

I jumped in their car and went back to church, dripping wet. When I saw the girl I was looking for, I said, “I wonder if I could take you home? It’s raining outside.”

“Is it?” she answered, as she looked at me, dripping wet from the downpour. She agreed to let me drive her home.

That night we got lost all over South Denver. Dorothy said turn one way, and I turned the other. I didn’t want to take her home just then. I wanted the ride to last forever.

Later, I took Dorothy to Canon City to meet my folks. We were married at St. Francis De Sales Church on June 2, 1937.”

~ Bill Hein

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John and Euphrosina ~ Early Westcliffe Pioneers

I love learning about family history and documenting stories, especially stories from long ago.

I learn to tell stories by listening to storytellers. My father’s family were a very quiet bunch. They were reluctant to talk at all, much less share their history. On the other hand, my mother’s family, the Hunts, were good storytellers. I hope to tell you some of their stories later.

But the best storyteller, by far, was my father-in-law, Bill Hein. Born in 1901, he had an excellent memory and a treasure chest of stories from his family tree.

I can still see my father-in-law, pipe in his hand and sometimes a drink on the table, as he told stories after dinner. He loved hearing his own words as they came out of his mouth. He’d laugh before he even got to the punch line. In the tradition of good storytellers, he’d re-tell the same story many times, using the same words over and over. That way, his stories were carried down from generation to generation. until, eventually, I started writing them down.

Here is one of Bill’s stories, just as he told it to me.

“The year was 1873. Colorado was not yet a state.. That was the year my grandfather, John Hein, arrived in Denver with a team of big mules, a large wagon, and his bride, Euphrosina.

John was a bridge builder in the German army. When the army got too close to Holland, he decided it was time to split. John left the army, came to America and went directly to a German colony in Illinois. Before long he convinced his parents, Nicholas and Catherine Hein, his brother Conrad, and his sister Christina to join him.

John, a Lutheran, met  Euphrosina Schneider, a Catholic, in Illinois. They were young and brave and very much in love. They wanted to take advantage of the Homestead Act, leave Illinois and start a new life in a beautiful place. 

John’s family decided to tag along. They signed on with the Colfax German Settlement and headed for Colorado. Soon they were joined by Euphrosina’s brother and his wife in what is now the town of Westcliffe.

To be part of the settlement, men had to be of good moral character, between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five. They had to be in good physical and mental health, and pay a huge sum of $250.

John, Euphrosina and the rest of the Hein family traveled together across the prairie by covered wagon, pulled by two big mules. In Denver they loaded their belongings onto a train going to Pueblo ~ the wagon and mules in one boxcar and the family in another. They unloaded in Pueblo, and once again traveled by covered wagon to their new home in the Wet Mountain Valley.

John and his neighbors were among the first settlers in this early German farming community of one hundred families. The first thing they did was to throw up a big, long barn. In the beginning, everyone lived together in that great big barn.

Farming was tough for people coming from Illinois. The elevation was 7000 feet, and the growing season was short. Frosts came early and many of their crops died.

John was a woodsman and fine carpenter. One of the first things he did was to build a sturdy cabin about eight miles out of town. Next he decided to keep cattle, in addition to farming. He started with longhorn, but with their long horns and skinny behinds, there wasn’t that much meat on them.  

One day, John went to the state fair in Pueblo and bought a big Hereford bull for $600.00. He hooked the bull on the back of his wagon and pulled him back to Westcliffe. At first his neighbors thought John was crazy. But when he started to breed his bull with the longhorn cows, everyone saw why he had done it. He soon had the finest beef cattle in all Westcliffe.

John and Euphrosina had three children, each two years apart: Pauline (Lena), John Edward (my Dad, known as Ed) and George. On the morning of December 16, 1891, John went outside to ride his horse. The horse reared and John lost his balance. The horse fell on top of him and crushed him. The saddle horn went right through his spleen. 

The family hurried outside to see what had happened. My Grandmother, Euphrosina, yelled to my Dad, “Ed, run for Father Servans. Then get the Lutheran minister and then the doctor. Your father is hurt bad.”

My Dad found the priest who volunteered to go after the minister while my Dad ran for the doctor. By the time they returned, my grandfather was nearly gone. He died with Father Servans holding one hand and the minister holding the other. He was fifty-two years old.”   

~ told by W.E. (Bill) Hein

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My Godmother ~ Margaret Jones Maher

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a godmother like my Aunt Margaret. The oldest of my father’s three sisters, she was the picture of love and patience. She was thirteen years older than my Dad and she doted on him. When I came along, the oldest of her nineteen nieces and nephews, she doted on me, too.

Like all four children in my father’s family, Margaret was programmed to go to college. She studied to be a teacher, but her career came to an abrupt halt because she couldn’t discipline even one child, let alone a whole classroom. So she left teaching and went to work as a secretary for the Northern Pacific railroad, the same railroad where my grandfather worked. From all accounts, she was a good secretary because she didn’t have to discipline anyone but herself.

Margaret was a great cook and an exceptional knitter. I have pictures of clothes that she knit for me and my brother ~ skirts and shorts with matching sweaters. Margaret’s knitted afghans sold for the most money at the church bazaar. To my knowledge, she never dropped a stitch.

Margaret, like my Dad, didn’t say much. She was content to sit quietly, smile and murmur her approval of whatever was being said. I loved sitting next to her on the couch, holding her hand, and resting my head on her arm. I know she liked that, too.

Margaret didn’t marry until she was in her late-forties. (More about that later.) She never had children of her own. Given her inability to discipline anyone, that might have been a good thing. 

As I was going through old family photos last summer, however, I stumbled on a batch of pictures showing Margaret with a man, labeled only as “Margaret with her Gentleman Friend.” The pictures show a young, very happy Margaret, with a very handsome man, on vacation somewhere in Arizona. I will never know who he was, where he came from, or what happened to him. I believe he gave her many happy moments. I wish there could have been more.

As I mentioned, when Margaret was in her forties she met Patrick Maher. They were both members of the St. Paul Hiking Club. They shared a love of the outdoors and both could walk for miles. They fell in love and wanted to be married. 

Grandma and Grandpa never approved of Uncle Pat. They were genteel. He was uncouth. They were intelligent and valued education. Pat never fit in. He was a savant. A man who knew the statistics for every sports star and sporting event ever held. My brother would ask him questions that no one knew the answers to, like:

“Uncle Pat, who won the World Series of 1938?”

Pat would answer (trust me, I looked this up!) “The Yankees beat the Cubs in four games in the 1938 World Series.” Then he would go on to recite the statistics for every player in the game. He was a walking encyclopedia of sports. My brother loved it. Pat put the rest of us to sleep.

Margaret and Pat were married in 1952, without the approval of my grandparents. I was at the wedding. Margaret and Pat were beaming. My grandparents were not.

Margaret and Pat rented their own small house after they married. They lived there for only a few years, however. When Grandpa died in 1954, they moved into my grandparents house to take care of Grandma. Grandma died two years later and Margaret and Pat were the new owners of the house at 731 Delaware Avenue.

I stayed in touch with Aunt Margaret when I was in college. She sent me letters and money. Every holiday she sent me boxes of Fanny Farmer candy. 

Margaret’s life took a turn for the worse when she retired from her job with the railroad in 1967, at the age of sixty-two. By this time Aunt Ruthie, had moved into the house with Margaret and Pat. She, too, had little tolerance for Uncle Pat, but she appreciated having a place to live and learned to tolerate him.

I moved to Denver, was married and had my first child when I got a call from my mother.

“Margaret isn’t doing well.”

“Oh, no. what’s the matter?”

“She’s in the mental hospital.”

“For what?”

“For being scrupulous.”

Who ever heard of such a thing? I looked it up. It’s called scrupulosity and Margaret had it. She was convinced she was an evil person, when in fact she was a saint. She was convinced she would go to Hell and there was no way for her to repent. The treatment for scrupulosity, at that time, was electric shock. 

I came home from Denver as soon as I could. I went to see Margaret in the hospital. My sweet, smiling godmother was not smiling. She was in tears. Constant, copious tears. She grabbed my hand and pleaded with me.

“Please, you’ve got to get me out of here. They’re going to give me more shocks. They are going to kill me. And then I’m going to Hell.” There was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do.  

Margaret died when I was back in Denver. My Dad got a phone call from the hospital. He turned to my mother and said “Margaret is dead. I need to go to the hospital. You stay here.” 

Margaret was buried in the Catholic cemetery. I wasn’t able to come home for the funeral to say goodbye to the sweetest, most loving, tender-hearted godmother anyone could wish for.

Rest in Peace, Dear Aunt Margaret. Rest in Peace!

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Zelmira Returns With A Broken Heart

In December, 1993, Neto and his brother, Cachi, took a train from Nogales to Mazatlan to see their father. Three days later Jesús was dead from a sudden heart attack. Neto and Cachi were despondent.

“When my father saw how messed-up and raggedy we were from drugs and alcohol, my father decided to take the ride to the other-world in our place.”

Neto has told me the story so many times over the years, I know he’s still haunted by the memory.

Zelmira was living in Los Angeles at the time. No longer working full time as a housekeeper in Echo Park, she was cleaning houses throughout her neighborhood in Inglewood when she got the news.

No one could believe that Jesús was gone. He was seventy-five years old, working full time as a security guard and fixing cars in his spare time. The family waited for Zelmira to return to Mazatlán before they held the funeral and buried Jesús in the Panteon Renacimiento Para Nacer a la Vida Eterna (The cemetery where people are reborn into eternal life.)

“I loved that old man,” Zelmira told people at the funeral. “I always thought he’d still be here when I came back home.” 

Zelmira was a widow at sixty-six years old. She had been married for forty-three years. She put on the black clothes of a Mexican widow and has never taken them off.

After the funeral, Neto stayed behind in Mazatlán for three months to take care of  his mother until she was ready to return to California.

“I wanted to make sure she was all right before I went back to the U.S. I didn’t want to leave her alone. The responsibility I had on my shoulders as a kid, earning money to help her provide for us, came back to me.”

Zelmra appreciated Neto in a different way after the funeral. “Your father always told me you would be the one to take care of me when I was old. I should have listened to him.”

“It’s ok, Mamí. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. If I can redeem myself, even a little, by taking care of you now, that makes me happy.”

But an even bigger blow to Zelmira’s heart was still to come. On May 2, 2002, Cachi was killed instantly in a car accident, driving on the road from Hermosillo to Caborca in his Dodge Caravan. Cachi was her second youngest child. Charming and sweet, he often traveled from Tucson to California to visit her. Neto believes that Cachi was his mother’s favorite. “Mamí may have loved him the most and she was crushed.”

 Zelmira immediately came back to Mazatlan for the funeral services. She never went back to California again. “I’m going to let my visa expire,” she told everyone. “I can’t care for other people any more. My heart is too broken.” 

Zelmira’s mother died when she was seven years old. From that moment, she learned to take care of herself. But losing her husband and, nine years later, her son was too much. She wanted to come home to live in her own house, near her friends from long ago. She renewed her friendship with Padre Lalo, and went to daily Mass at the simple Church of the Sacred Heart, down the street.

She took charge once again of her house on Papagayo Street, sweeping the sidewalk and the street in front of her house early every morning so people knew she was awake. 

Now, at age 92, Zelmira is an old woman with hardly any teeth left in her mouth and blind in one eye. She has discarded her armor and become an easier, more compassionate person. She lives with Neto’s sister, in the mountains outside Guadalajara, most of the year. She weeps openly every time Cachi’s name is mentioned. Tears spring from her eyes so readily, people are warned never to talk about him.

There are times that Zelmira is visited by ghosts. She sees her Aunt Petra, who raised her, and her brothers who have died. Some days she talks to Cachi as if he is still in the room with her. Once in a while she thinks Neto is her husband, Jesús. When he walks through the door, she calls out, “Hola, Papí. You are home from work early today.”

But in many ways Zelmira is still a warrior woman  ~ tiny, weighing less than 100 pounds, with fierce black eyes and a head full of wild curly hair. Her voice, low and growly like an angry dog, still commands attention. She will always be the matriarch. The most important hen in the hen-house. The glue that holds the family together.

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Zelmira Moves to California and Sees the Pope

Traveling back and forth, from Mazatlán to California, Zelmira got an itch to move to the U.S. full-time. She still wanted to collect clothing to sell in Mazatlán, but she decided that her main home would be California. At least for a while. 

In 1981, Zelmira left her husband, Jesús, in charge of their two youngest sons with strict orders that they needed to finish high school. Zelmira’s daughter Alma, age twenty, was already married and having babies. Zelmira didn’t want Norma to get in the same trouble at age eighteen, so she got her a visa and dragged her along.

Zelmira moved to Los Angeles, a city she already knew. There was a well-worn trail from Mazatlán to California, established long ago by her brothers and other braceros looking for work. Her brothers, Gero, Chendo, and Ramon all worked as braceros, picking grapes in California in the 1950’s.

Three of Gero’s children, Delia, Mercedes and Jesús, moved to Calfornia in the 1970’s. and Zelmira often stayed with them when she went on her clothes-buying missions. She knew almost enough English to get by. 

Zelmira quickly adapted to life in California. She liked working and sending money home to her family. She and Norma lived with her niece, Delia, in Inglewood near the L.A. airport. Norma went to work right away, working in the same airplane parts factory that Delia did, and later working in a ceramics factory.

According to Neto, “California felt like Mazatlán to Mamí and the other immigrants. People spoke Spanish on streets lined with palm trees. Smells of chiles, cooking in oil, and meat roasted on backyard grills, greeted people as they came home from work. Her neighbors stopped at local tortillarias or frutarias before walking up their sidewalks and opening their doors.”

Zelmira quickly found work, as a full-time maid and nanny in a big home in Echo Park, where she had her own live-in apartment. She moved to Echo Park and left Norma in Inglewood under Delia’s supervision.

Zelmira continued to come back to Mazatlan three or four times a year to sell clothes and check on Jesús and the two boys left at home.  Somehow she managed to get visas for the two youngest sons but not for Ernesto.

“I was always the black sheep. I think that’s why I was left behind,” Neto told me. By this time he, too, had discovered California and was able to jump the border easily, even without legal papers.

In 1984, Zelmira called Ernesto to tell him she was going to Italy to see the Pope. Padre Alvarez, pastor of  the Catholic church in Inglewood, sponsored the trip and Zelmira was the first person to sign on. She was fifty-seven years. She came back with stories of everything she had seen and done. For a working woman from tiny Hacienda del Tamarindo to go to Rome and see the Pope was a huge adventure.

“Neto, that airplane was more than a block long,” she reported. She slowly shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “We walked all day. Some people got tired but not me. I could have walked all day and still walked home at night.”

Two years later, Zelmira signed on for another trip to Europe with Padre Alvarez. This time to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal. She also traveled to Mexico City, to the Basilica of  Our Lady of Guadalupe, when Pope John Paul II appeared there in 1999.

When the Pope visited Los Angeles in 1987, Zelmira was there in Dodger’s Stadium, cheering along with 6000 people as the Pope rounded the bases in his Popemobile.  Zelmira was ecstatic as she told Neto, “You should have come, M’hijo. He spoke in Spanish and English. He told the priests and the bishops they should work to help illegal immigrants become citizens.” 

A picture of Pope John Paul II hangs in Zelmira’s house to this day, along with pictures of John F. Kennedy and Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Pope is a reminder of all she has done in her lifetime. She considers him one of her good friends.

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When Zelmira Ran The Store

Neto’s mother, Zelmira Esther Aguillar Rodriguez, grew up forty miles south of Mazatlan, in La Hacienda del Tamarindo, a small land-grant village new Rosario. She was the only girl in a family of all boys. 

Zelmira’s mother, Maria Aguillar, died in childbirth when Zelmira was seven years old. According to family legend, the doctor told her father, Ignacio Rodriguez, “I can save your wife or your son. I can’t save both. What should I do?”

“Save the boy,” Ignacio answered. Zelmira’s youngest brother, Antonio, lived but all six of the children were left without a mother. Ignacio remarried soon after his wife died, which infuriated his older sons. 

Soon after his wife died, Ignacio showed up with his new wife who was already pregnant. Gerardo, his oldest son, was fuming. He hated his father and refused to let him in the door.

“This house isn’t yours any more. It is our house and it belongs to our mother. You stepped on her when she was alive. You’ll never step on her again.” From that day forward, Ignacio was never allowed inside the house. 

Zelmira was raised by Ignacio’s sister, her Aunt Petra. She grew up to be fiercely independent. With blazing black eyes and a wild head of black curly hair, she was known as “the commander.” It was a role that suited Zelmira when she was young and later, when she married sweet Jesús Flores, who grew up the only boy in a family of three sisters.

Once they were married, Jesús allowed Zelmira be in charge. She was a shrewd businesswoman with high expectations for her children, most of which spiraled downward into disappointment.

Neto was twelve years old, working nights cleaning a downtown bakery, when Zelmira began selling groceries out of their house to earn extra money. It started when Neto’s boss, a good-hearted man named Memo, asked him,  “How would you like to take some bread home for your mother to sell? I can give it to you for half price.” 

Zelmira liked the idea right away. Nothing was better then a piece of bread from the bakery to go with her morning coffee. Pretty soon she was happily selling delicious, day-old bread to her neighbors along with tomatoes, avocados, bananas and fresh mangoes from the neighborhood market.

Soon there was no stopping her. Zelmira greeted Neto at 5:00 a.m each morning, as he walked in the door after work. She was in a hurry, on her way to the big Pino Suaréz market downtown. The market opened early to accommodate retailers and restaurants. She rode the bus to the Pino Suarez market and came home in a taxi loaded with pineapples, apples and guavas, celery and carrots, onions and garlic and chiles, rice, potatoes, beans, milk, cheese, and eggs. Dozens and dozens of eggs.

Zelmira continued to buy day-old bread from Memo and enlarged the store in what was once the family’s living room. She started taking orders from her neighbors, adding meat and poultry delivery to them for an extra charge. 

Soon she was also cooking, making tortas, molletes and juices to sell for breakfast. The house became a neighborhood grocery store and small restaurant. Zelmira was the store-keeper and the cook. Jesús didn’t like what Zelmira was doing but she was a woman with a mission and she was the boss.

Not content with running the store, in 1975 Zelmira started crossing the border into the United States to buy boxes of clothes to sell out of her house. Four times a year Zelmira transported two huge boxes home on the bus. Neto remembers that “some of the boxes were as big as a baby’s crib.” Boxes full of footwear and clothing. Zelmira sold half the clothes and saved the other half for Neto and his six brothers and sisters to wear. 

Zelmira’s biggest trip to the U.S. was always the trip before Christmas. She obtained a valid visa and bribed officials when she needed to, in order to meet the demand for American-made goods. 

“I put something for your little girl in the pocket of the red coat on top,” she would tell the guard at the border. He checked the pocket of the red coat, pulled out a $20 bill, and let her pass.

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A Saga of Shrimp Salad

I moved to Mexico on a whim. I was bored and looking for adventure. The next four years were a whirlwind of new experiences, new people, and enough adventure to last a lifetime.

Neto was the first person I met in Mazatlán. It was April, 2005, the same day I bought my house. He was selling seafood on the beach and I was thinking, OMG ~ what have I done?

Neto was friendly and charming. He asked me why I looked so sad. I told him that I had just made a big mistake. I bought a house that needed a lot of work and I didn’t know what to do next.

Neto smiled. “Don’t worry. I can do whatever you need. I can fix your house just the way you want it.”

I returned to Colorado to sell my house, pack up my belongings, and move to my new home.

Christina was the first person I met after I moved. She knocked on my door and asked me if I needed a housekeeper. I hired her on the spot. By this time it was September.

I arrived before the moving van, to a huge house that was run-down and dirty. I bought a bed, a small outdoor table and two chairs at Sam’s Club. The kitchen had a lot of potential but no stove. Christina came on Tuesdays and Fridays to help me clean and sweep up dead cockroaches. It was that bad.

Neto spoke perfect English. Christina’s English was worse than my Spanish. While I knew a few beginning phrases in Spanish, Christina refused to even say, “Good morning.” But we got along by smiling and pointing. In a pinch, I pulled out my Spanish-English dictionary.

In addition to cleaning, Christina told me she could teach me to cook “real Mexican food.” One day I told her that I wanted to make shrimp salad. Mazatlán is famous for its world-class shrimp fleet. I heard from a neighbor that fresh shrimp was available on a street corner next to the downtown market. What I wonderful new experience for me! I thought.

Back then, everything was wonderful and new. I learned that the changeras are a small group of women who sell shrimp out of large, plastic washtubs on a corner of Aquilles Serdan Avenue. They are named for the chango nets that are used on the shrimp boats to measure the amount of shrimp in the water. They sell shrimp fresh from the boats, the rivers, and the estuaries from September until April. In the warm summer months, the shrimp is frozen but just as tasty.

Christina and I set off to buy shrimp. She told me she would take charge. That was fine with me. She bought 1.5 kilos (about three pounds) of medium size shrimp for 200 pesos (about $20.00.) The changera put them in a plastic bag. 

We didn’t go more than a few steps before Christina turned to me and said, “I forgot. You don’t have a stove.” 

“Is that a problem?”

“Yes. We can’t eat these raw. They have to be cooked first.”

Christina had a solution. She said we could take them to one of the restaurants on top of the market and they would cook the shrimp for us.

That’s what we did. That’s when the real adventure began. 

The restaurant was willing to cook the shrimp. Christina didn’t ask what the price would be. Just like she didn’t ask me if I had enough money to buy the shrimp in the first place. She assumed that because I was an American, I was rich. After buying the shrimp, I had 20 pesos (about $2.00) left in my purse. Christina had no money at all. 

The restaurant owner cooked the shrimp, then turned to me and said the charge would be 50 pesos. She, too, assumed that I was rich. Ordinarily she would have charged much less. 

I looked at Christina and said, “I don’t have the much. I only have twenty pesos left.” 

Christina looked at me and the restaurant owner and promptly walked out of the restaurant. She left me standing there!

I was paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do. I showed the owner how much money I had and she just shook her head as she stood there holding the bag of steaming hot shrimp. Neither of us knew what to do. I had no idea where Christina was. I was on my own. 

Luckily there was an American couple eating in the restaurant who stepped in to help. They told the owner in Spanish that I was honest. They assure her that I would return that afternoon with the rest of the money I owed. 

I walked out of the restaurant with my bag of hot, cooked shrimp and saw Christina waiting for me at the end of the row of restaurants, hiding behind a wooden column at the top of the stairs. She took the steaming bag out of my hands and we walked home.

That was the beginning of many lessons in cultural shock. And the importance of learning a new language. It wasn’t the last.

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The Pino Suárez Downtown Market

The Pino Suárez open market was one of the first blow-my-mind experiences I had when I first moved to Mexico. It is a spacious, 19th-century market, filled with reasonably-priced food, crafts and souvenirs. After a while, it was a place I always brought my guests, knowing they would either love it or hate it.

Love it ~ for its “real Mexico” experience. It is an entire block of open air stalls selling everything you can imagine. Food is sold in one corner. Clothing, crafts, and souvenirs are in the middle-section. Statues and rosaries, tarot cards and even “spells” are sold in one far-off corner of this huge building teeming with people.

Hate it  ~ because it smells of fish and freshly butchered meat. People push and shove their way down the aisles. Vendors accost you at every turn, insisting on bargaining with you rather than letting you move on. The noise can be deafening.

I had mixed feelings about the market. In the beginning, I was lost in the maze of aisles and the crush of people going every direction. After a while, I realized the market’s charm. I discovered my favorite souvenir venders and was eager to introduce them to my guests. Often it was easier to walk to the market for a few items, rather than ride the bus forty-five minutes to shop at Walmart. But I never got used to some of the exotic meat and poultry items, or the smell of blood on the floor.

Fresh fish, chicken feet, lots of intestines, pig’s skins and hog’s heads are all available in the market’s meat section. These were all things I’d never seen before. Some of them are actually scary to look at.

One day a friend asked me if I would walk to the market with her. She wanted to make pozole. According to her cooking teacher, she needed to buy a bag of hominy and a whole pig’s head. We located the items with no problem. The problem was we had no idea how much a whole pig’s head weighed. A lot! Especially if you have to carry it home, along with a five pound bag of hominy. 

The pig’s head weighed at least fifteen pounds. It took two of us to get it home and we stopped many times along the way. Because our Spanish was so elementary, we could only imagine what the Mexican people said to each other as they saw two old white women, walking a mile home from the market, taking turns cradling the head wrapped in plastic as if it were a baby. We were gringas locas (crazy women) for sure.

My friend’s cook showed us how to make pozole in a huge soup kettle. I helped cut up vegetables and we shared this wonderful soup with our friends. It was probably the best pozole I’ve ever eaten, thanks to the pig’s head we carried home in our arms.

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Make Way For Bananas

Ah, January! It is such a beautiful month in Mazatlán.  Although the nights are chilly, daytime temperatures are often in the mid-70’s ~ warm enough for shorts and t-shirts.  Just south of the  tropic of Cancer, Mazatlan enjoys sunshine in January from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Watching the sunset over the ocean, wearing only a light jacket, and then taking a walk through town before going home to cook dinner is only one of the things I miss on these cold, dark Denver days.

When my home was full of guests, January mornings were delightful. I loved sitting outside enjoying a cup of coffee with Eunice and Gordon, our guests from Saskatchewan. They joined us from every year for three months, from early January until late March. By December we couldn’t wait until they were back with us again, sitting at our outside glass table, laughing and talking about what we planned to do that day.

A small pack of other January snowbirds also stumbled out of their rooms to greet us every morning. Students from Finland and Australia waved goodbye and hurried off to their Spanish classes. Others, in no hurry, poured themselves a cup of coffee and joined us as small birds sang and showered in our fountain. 

Queen Mary, who once gave Neto a “gift” of a dead cockroach in a matchbox, was quick to pull up a chair at our table. Dr. Imposter, who wore a diaper on his head as a make-shift turban, listened intently to Neto’s stories of growing up in Mazatlán and moving to the United States. When the sun began to rise in the sky, it was time to start our day.

January brought interesting guests to our home. It also brought gorgeous tropical flowers. Hibiscus, bougainvillea and plumeria blossomed in our courtyard. Our mango trees, overwhelmed with blossoms, promised a huge fruit crop in the spring.

Yet, nothing gave me more joy than seeing our banana trees wake up in January and produce the most incredible flower I’ve ever seen. The first time I saw the banana tree flower outside my office window, I didn’t know what it was ~ a big, reddish-purple bulb that looked like a womb. And that’s exactly what it was ~ a womb full of baby bananas. The flower grew larger and larger until it finally peeled open, revealing an enormous bunch of tiny, green bananas.

I sang the silly Chiquita Banana Song to myself as we waited for the bananas to ripen:

I’m Chiquita banana and I’ve come to say

Bananas have to ripen in a certain way.

When they are fleck’d with brown and have a golden hue 

Bananas taste the best and are best for you.

Finally after months of waiting, it was time for Neto to cut down the bananas with his machete. His friend, Publio, stood nearby, ready to help catch the heavy bunch so it wouldn’t fall on the ground. 

Make way for bananas! A bunch of fifty bananas, or more, spread out on the patio table. Fifty fragile bananas that needed to be given away before the house filled with flies. 

For the next two weeks, I made banana muffins and cakes, banana pancakes and pie. I gave bananas away to anyone who would take them. My neighbor insisted that I should sell them on the street corner, but I preferred to give them to the nuns across the street. 

Now, when I go to the store and see small bunches of four or six, long perfect bananas, I remember the tree in my backyard and my short, fat, sweet bananas. And I wish I were there.