Tag: Ernesto Flores

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Lobo

The years I spent in Mazatlan, running a home for snowbirds, are some of my fondest memories. The people I met were fun and funny,  thoughtful and kind. Some of them became my friends for life. With one exception. Because I can’t use his real name, I’ll call him Lobo.

The last summer I lived in Mazatlan, I was ready to sell my place and return to the U.S. I needed someone to house-sit while I was away. Someone who would sweep the courtyard every day and make sure the kitchen was clean. Two of my guests recommended Lobo. They met him at church and were impressed by his demeanor and intelligence. According to them, Lobo was an attorney with two daughters living in the U.S. He was a tennis player and a Spanish-speaker. He was about my same age. I thought Lobo was the person I was looking for.

I met with Lobo and explained his responsibilities. I had him sign a rental agreement that stated that he could use the guest quarters, but that the owner’s side of the home would be locked. I would not charge him rent as long as he lived up to our agreement.

Lobo had free rein in the kitchen, but my telephone was off-limits. Lobo pushed me to let him use my office but I held firm. I told him that a friend would be checking my home on a regular basis, to see if everything was ok.

I was back in Colorado for only a few weeks when i started receiving emails. Everything was not ok! Lobo was not sweeping the courtyard, which was now full of mango leaves. Lobo was seen urinating on the front door when he came home drunk at night. The neighbor complained that Lobo often walked around the courtyard totally naked, in full view of the neighbor’s young grandchildren. Lobo needed to go.

I called Neto and asked him to meet me at the airport to help me evict Lobo. When we arrived , Lobo was not yet home. We found a set of lock picks on the kitchen counter. The door to my office was wide open. We swept the courtyard, which was ankle deep in dead mango leaves, and cleaned the kitchen while we waited for Lobo to come home. He was surprised and not happy to see us.

When I told Lobo we were there to evict him, he went crazy. He bellowed like a bull. He pounded his fist on the kitchen counter and started spewing lawyer talk. He said he wasn’t leaving and we couldn’t make him. He grabbed the telephone off my desk and started running down the courtyard toward his room. Neto ran right behind him. When I told Lobo to stop, he threw the telephone at me, hitting my upper arm with full force.

Neto was a super-hero. He’s the most athletic man I know. His nickname is “Chanfles” because of the powerful left kick that was his trademark when he played soccer as a kid. Neto’s famous left kick landed square on Lobo’s testicles. Lobo fell to his knees and whimpered like a baby. We told Lobo to start packing. We were going to find a lawyer.

We returned with a lawyer and Lobo was still screaming. He hadn’t packed anything. We called the police, who arrived and said we needed to go before a judge. The police put Lobo in their car. Neto and I went in the lawyer’s car and we were off to see the judge.

Lobo sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom. The judge immediately pointed at Neto and said, “What has this guy done?” The lawyer said nothing. Neto explained that he was not the criminal. He was the owner. The criminal was the old man sitting quietly in the corner. We needed the judge to sign an order to evict him. Lobo responded that Neto had kicked him in the balls and he wanted to press charges. He offered to show his bruised balls to the judge, who declined to take a look.

The judge ruled in our favor and everybody trooped back to our house: Me and Neto, the lawyer, the policemen and Lobo. The police told Lobo to start packing. For forty-five minutes nothing happened.. The lawyer said he couldn’t do anything. Finally one of the younger policemen told Lobo he had five more minutes to get in the car. They would drop him off at a hotel up the street.

The young policeman then turned to us and asked if the room was now available to rent. He would like to live there. He would love to be our house-sitter. 

Lobo climbed into the back of the police car, looked at me and said, “Nos vemos.” (See you later.)

I replied, “Vete al Diablo.” (Go to Hell)

The lawyer approached us and said we owed him $1000.00. U.S.

I replied, “Besame el culo.” (Kiss my ass.) I was barely a Spanish-speaker but it’s always a good idea to learn the bad words first.

I still google Lobo’s name from time to time. He’s now living in a fancy retirement community in Florida, where he regularly terrorizes the residents with his obnoxious behavior. He recently spent six weeks in jail for impersonating a lawyer. I was lucky to get rid of him with only a bruise on my arm. 

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Osprey, Neto and Me

I love the osprey who spend summers on a tower at the edge of a pond at the Boulder Country Fairgrounds. The resident osprey pair fly in from separate far-away places about the middle of March. And the drama begins. 

Some of us follow the osprey every year, hoping for eggs to hatch and healthy baby birds who learn to fly.

 We don’t know where the osprey spend their winters and we wait anxiously for their arrival. We worry that they may not both arrive safely. Usually the pair arrives on different days. The fun begins as we watch them get to know each other once again. 

The osprey are bonded as a pair until one of them dies. Only then do they find a new partner.

It’s a policy not to name the osprey who return to Boulder every spring. But if they had names, they would be Lynda and Ernesto.

Neto and I are very much like the osprey. For one thing, I’m older than he is. We live far apart, in two separate countries, and once a year we meet up in a familiar place. We try to arrive on the same day, but never at the same time. When we get together, we trade stories about places we’ve been and people we knew together. I imagine that’s what the osprey do, too.

The birds spend time remodeling their nest and making sure they have food. The female shrieks, “Food… Food! I’m hungry. Bring me a big fat fish!” And Ernesto leaves the tower and swoops down to find a fish for them to share.

Nights are especially tender as they share space on their perch, high in the sky, and watch sunset together. 

This year both osprey arrived at the nest on the same day. That’s where mine and Neto’s story differ from the osprey pair. I arrived in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday, April 9, after an especially easy travel day. Friends met me at the airport and took me to lunch before I checked into Las Palomas, the sweet little hotel where Neto and I stay before going by bus to Mazatlán.

While my trip was easy and predictable, Neto’s journey was simply horrible. He boarded the bus in Mazatlán at 10:45 p.m., Saturday night, expecting to arrive in Puerto Vallarta five hours ahead of me. He slept all the way to the state of Nayarit. He awoke when two inspectors boarded his bus in front of a clinic, near the bus terminal in Tepic. It was 3:30 a.m.

“We believe some people on this bus have Covid,” the inspectors announced. “Everyone needs to be tested.” 

At 5:30 a.m., the inspectors allowed the young people to exit the bus, believing that only people over the age of fifty-five might be sick. A few elderly people in the front of the bus were coughing. Neto began to think he had a fever.

Passengers had to surrender their ID’s. They were not allowed to talk to each other or make calls on their telephones. Neto texted me to say he was going to be late. The passengers sat quietly on the bus for four more hours, until 9:30 a.m, when employees of the clinic boarded the bus and began testing people.

 At noon the passengers were informed that they all tested positive for Covid and would be quarantined for 24 hours. My plane was scheduled to arrive in ten minutes.

All the passengers were escorted off the bus and into the clinic. They were given a cot  and a sandwich. I received only sporadic texts from Neto, and most of them were too cryptic to understand. Was he really sick? Was he contagious? Should I catch a plane back to Denver?

I didn’t hear Neto’s voice again until noon on Monday, when he was allowed to make a phone call and leave the clinic. He was not allowed to get on a bus to Puerto Vallarta because, after all, he tested positive for Covid. 

Neto caught a taxi to a different bus company and decided to take a bus to Guadalajara. At 5:00 p.m, Monday afteroon,I received a text from Neto. He was in Guadalajara and expected to meet me at the hotel  in six hours, by 11:00 p.m. 

By midnight, Neto still wasn’t at our hotel. I called him. His bus was not the newer, faster, express bus that travels on the toll road. Instead, it was an older, slower bus that stopped in every small town to pick up more passengers.

At 3:00 a.m, Tuesday morning,  a lovely hotel security guard walked Neto to our room, where I was waiting for him. The trip, which normally takes less than eight  hours, took more than fifty-two. I was as happy as an osprey to see him again! It had been a long, hard flight!!

 

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Neto’s Knee

It started when Neto was running to catch a bus to go home after work. His phone was in his pocket and fell out as he was climbing the steps. The bus took off while Neto was still climbing aboard. Just like that, the bus ran over Neto’s cell phone. What happened since then is a typical Mexican nightmare.

I learned that Neto no longer had a cell phone because he called me from a phone booth two days later. I knew something must be wrong when I didn’t hear from him. Usually he calls me twice a day.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called but the bus ran over my cell phone. Don’t worry. I get paid today. I’ll buy a new phone tomorrow.”

Weeks went by. Neto called me every couple of days from the same pay phone. He could only afford to talk for one minute.

Finally I said, “Do you need me to send you money to buy a new phone?”

“Yes, if you could, please. I ran out of propane and I had to spend my whole paycheck on gas and electricity.”

Here is where the story takes a bad turn for the worse. Some of you will shake your head and believe that Neto is just plagued with bad luck. But this is not a story about luck. It’s a story about life in Mexico, away from the sun and fun of tourists and the resorts.

Neto called to say thank you for sending him money to buy a new phone. Then I didn’t hear from him for five more days. I prayed that he was in jail. It was better than the alternatives.

Sure enough, five days later Neto called me. He was still calling from the same pay phone to tell me he had been in jail. When he went to the phone store to buy a new phone, he was approached by two Mexican policemen. They demanded to know where he had gotten the money to buy a new phone.

“My friend sent it to me from the U.S,” he told them.

“Prove it,” they said. “Or we’re taking you to jail.”

Neto knew they were asking for a bribe. But he didn’t have any money to pay them. He had just spent all the money he had to buy a new phone. So the policemen took him to jail. He left the phone in the store to be set up with a SIM card while he was away.

Without a phone, there was no way Neto could call anyone to ask for help. When he finally saw a judge and was released, Neto again called me from a pay phone. His knee, which was giving him trouble before he went to jail, was now so sore, he couldn’t walk.

Neto hobbled around on the bad knee for a week, not able to go to his job as a night watchman. When he went to a clinic, the doctor told Neto that he needed to have surgery immediately, or he would never walk again. He would never swim or surf. 

“They said I have a ruptured ligament in my knee,” Neto told me. 

Do I know that’s what was really wrong with Neto’s knee? I don’t know anything at all, except that I don’t trust Mexican doctors. Some people swear by the Mexican medical system. I don’t. Unless they have been trained in the U.S. I have no confidence that Mexican doctors know what that are doing. They just make stuff up and convince themselves it’s true.

Neto had surgery that same night. He still had no phone. There was no way for me to get in touch with him. I was frantic, bordering on hysteria.  By now I was praying that the doctors hadn’t cut off his leg. 

Neto was in the clinic for five days. Every couple of days someone would push him in a wheelchair out to the street, where he would call me from another pay phone. Sometimes the calls went through. Often the phone would disconnect as soon as I answered. He kept reassuring me that someone was going to go to the phone store and pick up his phone “tomorrow.”

This past Monday, i was getting worked up again. I hadn’t heard from Neto for days. I didn’t know if he was home or still in the surgery center. I found Neto’s friend, Publio, on Facebook and sent him a private message. I explained that I needed him to find Neto. Publio agreed to go right away.

This week I finally heard from Neto. He is at home and has a cell phone that he’s borrowing from someone. He still hopes to have his own phone “tomorrow.” Because it isn’t an iPhone, I can text Neto but I can’t call him. I’m happy that he is able to call me. 

Here is what Neto is telling me now:

  • The doctor used a laser to fix his knee. Neto is in a lot of pain but the doctors tell him everything is going to be fine.
  • He’s still using a wheelchair and won’t be able to walk “for a couple more weeks.” 
  • He went back to the clinic Wednesday for a check-up. They gave him a shot of something in his ass. He went back yesterday for another shot and will have the final shot on Monday. He doesn’t know if the shot is for osteoporosis or for a yeast infection. Does Neto really need a shot of something every three days? Probably not. But Mexican doctors love to give shots and patients love to get them. They make everyone feel better
  • I pray that Neto will eventually get his job back. I pray that he will surf again.

The moral of this story is this: Being a poor man in a poor country is a curse. That is true, wherever you are. It’s true in Mexico. Let’s not fool ourselves. It’s, likewise, true in the United States.

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Old Guys Rule!

 

Many of you wrote asking if Neto won the surfing competition in La Ticla last week. I want to start with the good news:

Neto came in fourth in the senior’s competition on Friday. Because he was in the top six, he is eligible to compete again today in Mazatlán.

But Neto’s big win came last Saturday afternoon, when he placed second  in the over-all competition. Second in a contest of more than fifty surfers of all ages! Second place for an old guy who hasn’t trained for competition in forty years. He won a new rash guard, some board wax and a set of fins for his board. Most importantly, he scored more than 800 points for the day.  “It was a wonderful day!” Neto proclaimed, as he told me about his big win.

I was wrong last week when I said this was the Mexican National Surf Competition. Actually, it was a preliminary qualifying tournament. The Big Tournament will be held sometime next winter. Meanwhile, Neto will surf again today. He wants to win. He wants to keep earning points.

Neto talked constantly about surfing when I first met him. He watched endless, back-to-back surfing videos until I thought I’d lose my mind. I had never seen actual surfers until I moved to Mexico. My house was two blocks from Olas Altas, one of the many surfing beaches in Mazatlán. I watched scores of teenagers ride their boards over the waves until they inevitably lost their balance and plunged into the sea. At the end of the day, they staggered out of the water, looking beat up as they headed for home.

When I finally was able to see Neto surf, I knew he was no ordinary surfer. He was graceful and sure-footed. He rode wave after wave, gently steering his board away from rocks and swimmers. The bigger the wave, the better! He occasionally turned his board backwards so he could catch the same wave twice. People on the beach stopped what they were doing to watch him. When he came out of the water, some of the younger surfers shook his hand. They seemed to recognize Neto. I was just getting to know him. 

Neto learned to surf when he was thirteen-years-old. It is his passion. It is what feeds his soul. He needs to live near water, and preferably near high waves, in order to feel fully alive.

Now the Not-So-Good-News: While Neto was competing in his age category, someone stole his backpack. ¡Carumba! It was in a pile of backpacks that all looked pretty much alike. They were all black, dirty, well-worn packs heaped into a pile. Surfers take excellent care of their boards but trust that their backpacks will be safe wherever they land. 

At first Neto thought that someone picked up his backpack by mistake and surely would return it. That’s what he would have done. But, oh no! The thief looked inside and found an envelope of money along with Neto’s bank card and some clothes. The pendajo decided to keep both Neto’s backpack and his own. Luckily, Neto left his phone and his charger back in the motel.

With his money stolen, Neto had no way to get home. His Mazatlán buddies left without him on the bus. A lot of surfers came to the tournament with only their surfboard and very little cash. They were busy pan-handling money for their return home.

Neto found a sport-fishing company and offered to scout for tourists who wanted to fish for tuna, marlin and diablo in return for a “finder’s fee.” When he still didn’t have enough money, he called his boss in Mazatlán. His boss sent him some money to go to Toluca (near Mexico City) so that  Neto could pick up an auto part for him there. Neto took a bus to Toluca, stayed with friends, and eventually made it home. 

Now The whole episode is behind him. He can’t wait to compete again today in Mazatlán. It’s all he can think of. Buena Suerte, Neto.

Good luck! Ride like the wind! 

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Not All Sun and Fun

After two years of telling you all the wonderful things about living in Mazatlan, I need to tell you about a truly horrible experience. A nightmare. A lesson for all of us.

The year was 2009. I decided to sell my home in Mazatlan, but I wanted to come back to Colorado for the summer. I thought I could live in Mexico all year, and quickly learned that the heat was more than I could bear. Even me ~ who can tolerate more heat than most people and who is known to never sweat ~ had to come home to the deliciously cool Colorado air.

But first, I needed someone to watch my house for the summer. Neto was out of the running because the previous summer was a disaster. His sister, Alma, moved in. So did a whole downtown full of party-goers. And four harpies from Finland. In 2008, I returned to Mazatlan, fresh from a horrific cancer treatment, to find my house dirty and torn apart.

In April I told Neto the news. I was going to find a different house-sitter. Someone who would sweep up mountains of mango leaves from the patio every morning. Someone who would make sure I returned to a clean house with no scandal. I should have known better. 

Two previous guests recommended someone they met at church. A pious, elderly man about seven years older than me. who needed a place to stay. Because this man is still alive, I will call him by his initials ~ M.W.  

I felt there was something fishy about M.W. from the beginning. He never picked up a broom. He had a tantrum when I told him that the private wing of the house was off-limits, including my office with the only telephone. However, he was all I had. I met with him in early May and turned over the keys.

By the end of May I was getting emails from friends with reports of behavior much worse than a few wild parties and dirty bathrooms. The courtyard was knee deep in mango leaves. M.W. was seen urinating on the front door one night, after getting out of a cab. My neighbor had seen him walking around the courtyard naked. The neighbor’s grandchildren had seen him, too.

I called Neto. I told him I was flying to Mazatlán the first week in June. Neto agreed we needed to evict M.W. immediately. But first Neto reminded me that I should have allowed him be the house-sitter and not taken a chance on someone I didn’t know. He was right. Neto is almost always right.

M.W. was not home when we opened the door. The first thing I noticed, besides the pile of dead leaves, was that the door to my private living quarters was open. M.W. arrived a little later and was horrified to see us. 

I told him he had to leave. He refused. When my back was turned, he followed me into my office, screaming like a banshee. He snatched the telephone from the wall. Suddenly he whirled around and threw the telephone at me, leaving a huge bruise on my arm.

Neto’s nickname is “Chanfles” because of the wickedly fast left kick he perfected as a soccer player. He reacted immediately. Bam! Neto’s left foot pounded M.W.’s testicles. M.W. was on the ground, grabbing his crotch and screaming like a baby. He limped back to his room. I knew getting rid of him wasn’t going to be easy. 

“We’re going to need an attorney to call the police,” Neto declared.

M.W. stayed home while we went to find an attorney who knew Neto and worked with Neto’s brother. The man had a terrible reputation but I wasn’t about to be choosy. The attorney called the police and told his assistant to meet us back at the house.

We arrived home accompanied by a squad car, driven by a heavy-set policeman, and six young policemen with assault weapons riding in the back of a truck. The policemen told M.W. they were taking him to see a judge, and ordered him into the squad car. 

Neto and I followed in our own vehicle. When we arrived at the courthouse, M.W. sat in a chair in the corner, playing the “wounded old man” card, whimpering about his sore testicles. The judge pointed at Neto and assumed he was the guilty party.

“What has this man done?” the judge asked, pointing at Neto.

“Nothing. The crazy old white man in the corner is the criminal.”  

The judge ordered M.W. to leave my house immediately. We all went back home ~ M.W. in the police car, the attorney in a fancy black SUV, Neto and I in our vehicle, and the truck full of policemen and their AK-47s. 

It took M.W. two hours to pack up his meager belongings, while we all waited in the courtyard. Finally, the attorney and the police agreed it was time to usher him out. The policeman put him in the squad car, while Neto and I went to check the room. There we found every sharp knife from the kitchen, hidden in a desk drawer. A set of lock-picks was on the window sill. 

One young policeman stayed back to ask me if he and his girlfriend could move into my house for the summer. They said they would take good care of it.

“No, I’m sorry,” I told him. “Neto is coming back. He’s staying here now. He’s my house sitter.”

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Rain, Rain Go Away

While I was watching Hurricane Ida, I was also in touch with Ernesto, who was dealing with a major tropical storm in Mazatlán. His boss told him not to come to work because it looked like the storm would be serious. Neto didn’t need to man the guard shack. All of the residents were hunkered down in their houses, waiting out the storm.

The next day, Neto described the destruction throughout his neighborhood. Gutters were clogged and overflowing, flooding the streets. He was awake most of the night, sweeping water out the door. Shutters and doors were banging in the wind, allowing even more water to come inside.

Because Neto spent a lot of time this summer waterproofing his roof, his was one of the few homes that didn’t have water pouring down inside. Now he’s getting phone calls from friends and neighbors, asking him to help them deal with the aftermath of the storm. But it’s too late. Everything is too wet. Paint is peeling off the walls and the ceilings are dripping water, leaking from the roofs.

When Neto told me of the destruction from this tropical storm, I was reminded of my first week in Mazatlán. As we listened to news of Hurricane Katrina, Neto pointed to my roof.

“Your roof is a mess. A serious mess. See this paint bubbling off the walls? That’s proof.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Yes, but not until October 15th.”

“Why October 15th?”

“Because that’s the day the rain stops.”

When I told my new friends about this conversation, they laughed. They said that Neto was making up a date because he didn’t want to work. They said that no one could predict the date of the last rain of the season.

On October 12th, there was a huge thunderstorm in Mazatlan. The flat roof on one wing of my new home leaked black water into every bedroom. Lightning and thunder crashed all around us. Water bubbled up out of the sewer. Tile blew off the roof of the hospital across the street. 

“Why is this water black?” I wanted to know.

“Because the pendejos who lived here before tried to fix the roof with tar paper. That black stuff is tar. That’s why we need to fix the roof.”

On October 15th, Neto arrived at 8:00 a.m. with his crew: Publio and Pepe, the same guys who helped him build the fountain in my courtyard. The weather was hot and steamy. The rainy season was over and they were ready to get to work.

First, Neto set up the ladder, of sorts. It consisted of a scaffold with a long board attached diagonally on one side. Small sections of 2×4’s  were hammered onto the board, to create crude steps up the slope.

The men ran up and down the board, as agile as cats. The wood bounced with every step they took. It was terrifying to watch.

Then he asked if he could use my big beach umbrella, the one that looked like a giant watermelon. He took it to the top of the roof, along with a bucket a sand Next he asked if he could borrow my CD player. He plopped the umbrella in the bucket of sand, so the guys could work under the shade of the umbrella, turned the music up loud, and they got to work.  

For a week the guys were on their knees, scraping old disgusting, wet tarpaper off the roof, using metal spatulas. I’m sure it was toxic. They didn’t wear masks. 

They scraped without taking a break. They piled the rubble into buckets, attached to a pulley system and lowered the trash to the ground. Full buckets were emptied into the bed of a borrowed short-bed truck and returned to the top of the roof. 

At the end of the day, Neto drove the truck to dump the trash, and came back to collect everyone’s wages. As the boss of the job, Neto paid everyone $20/day and they gladly tipped $2.00 back to him, to show him they were grateful to have a job.

Pretty soon two more guys showed up: Francisco and Vera Cruz. They heard there was work going on at my house.

“Do you need two more men?” they asked Neto.

“Only if you do what I tell you. It’s hard work, but you get paid every day. The boss gives us lunch.”

That’s right. I provided lunch for my workers every day. As a special reward for showing up on Mondays, I took orders and bought tortas from Tortas Kuwait, the sandwich shop down the street. The rest of the week I cooked. I bought a Mexican cookbook and worked my way through the pages. Tortilla soup, flautas, tacos, quesadillas, rice and beans, Kraft macaroni and cheese with marlin, whatever I could dream up. The only worker who was fussy was my housekeeper,  Christina, who told me early on that people in Mazatlan never eat black beans. “That’s for the poor people from the South.”

Most days work continued until 6:00. After a week, all the old tarpaper was gone and the original concrete roof was shiny and clean. The next week the guys carefully applied a mixture of white cement and sealer to the roof and let the sun bake it in.

Voila!! Problem solved. Five men. Countless buckets of debris. A watermelon umbrella in a bucket of sand. And music turned up loud. I had arrived in Mexico.

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Feliz Cumpleaños, Mamacita!

Neto’s Mamacita, Zelmira Flores Aguilar, turned 94 last week. It’s a very long time for a woman to live in Mexico. Last year, when she turned 93, no one expected her to live another year. It’s not that Zelmira is sick or in pain. She is simply very old.

Zelmira lives in her house on Papagayo Street with Neto, his daughter, Vannya, and Vannya’s children, Danya and Emanuel. Neto isn’t sure how old the children are. He thinks that Danya is four and Emanuel is two. But he thought the same thing last year. I’m sure Vannya knows, but age just isn’t something that Neto thinks about unless he has to. 

Zelmira has had a long and interesting life. She raised seven children and provided for them by turning her living room into a neighborhood grocery store and breakfast cafe. Later, she followed Neto to California, worked as a housekeeper for a Cuban family in Echo Park, and ran an illegal business on the side, transporting clothes from California to Mazatlán.

Zelmira is no longer the terror she was when she threw Neto’s surfboard in the trash when he was fourteen. She’s no longer the young woman who made trips to the Vatican to see the Pope and to Portugal, to see the famous shrine to the Virgin of Fatima. Or the woman who went to Mexico City for the blessing of the Basilica. Or the woman who cried when JFK was assassinated. 

Zelmira is no longer the feisty woman I knew when I moved to Mazatlán. Back then, Zelmira would come by city bus, uninvited, to my house nearly every day. She rang the doorbell promptly at 7:45 and announce she had come to sweep my courtyard, even though I told her over and over, that I didn’t want her to sweep my courtyard. In fact, I paid someone else to sweep the courtyard. In fact, I was just waking up. I was happy to have Zelmira come in for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, but only if she put down the broom. Sometimes that worked. Usually it didn’t. Zelmira was a woman who was always the boss.

Now, Zelmira is no longer in charge. Her husband died in 1993. Two sons and one grandson have died. All of her brothers are gone, except Uncle Mon, and almost all of her friends have died. At this point, Zelmira doesn’t know who is alive and who is not. She often mistakes Neto for her husband and wonders where her friends are. 

Neto’s father was right when he told Zelmira long ago, “Don’t hassle Neto. He’s the one who will take care of you when you are old.” Zelmira is not able to get out of bed and Neto and Vannya provide around the clock nursing care, including changing her diapers, washing her and getting her dressed every day.

As an old woman, Zelmira’s world is closing in around her. Her son, Franco, is not allowed inside the house, because he sold his mother’s cemetery plot to buy cocaine. Her daughter, Rosa, was recently asked to leave town after repeatedly screaming at Neto and Zelmira and then faking a seizure. 

Always a tiny woman, Zelmira is physically shrinking away, according to Neto. She weighs less than seventy pounds and sleeps most of the time. Once in a while Neto puts her in a wheelchair and takes her for a walk around the block. Sometimes he takes her to church, where the neighbors are delighted to see that she is still alive.

Zelmira likes the taste of food but her diet is extremely limited because she has no teeth. She lost her false teeth five years ago, when she visited Rosa. No one knew what happened to the teeth and there was no money available to replace them. Now Zelmira eats tiny amounts of watermelon and feeds herself watery oatmeal with slivers of bananas every morning. Neto makes her chicken broth with fideos (tiny noddles), but he has to be careful she doesn’t pour the broth on herself when she tries to lift the bowl to slurp the last few drops. 

Last week Neto bought his mother a small cake from Panama Bakery. Zelmira forgot it was her birthday.

“Who is this cake for?” she asked. 

Her eyes lit up when Neto said, “It is for you, Mamacita. Feliz Cumpleaños!”

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Clean-Up Week At Punta Burros

Selling my home in Mazatlán allowed Neto and me to explore other parts of Mexico ~ Ensanada, Cuernavaca, Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, and my favorite place, La Cruz de Huanacastle, a beautiful, small fishing village known for its friendly local residents and marina full of fancy yachts belonging to rich tourists.

In March, 2010, we rented an elegant apartment in the La Jolla condominiums. The cost was so reasonable, we stayed there for six weeks, often walking to the marina to buy fresh fish or to the shore at night to breathe fresh, salt-water air. We went to yoga class in the morning and swam every day in a gorgeous on-site swimming pool, built with an island of palm trees in the middle. We felt like movie stars!

Neto met me at the airport in Puerto Vallarta in his truck ~ a bright blue Ford Ranger with big tires ~ that he drove from Mazatlán. One of the first things Neto wanted to do was to find a nearby surfing spot, Punta Burros, known for its high waves and secluded access. I went along to check it out.

We parked the truck near the entrance to the Grand Palladium Resort, on the highway to Punta Mita. From there, we walked through the jungle until we reached Punta Burros. Neto walked, carrying his board, as sure-footed as a cat. I lurched and stumbled over fallen trees and muddy streams. The hike took twenty minutes. It felt like an hour. 

The beach was indeed deserted. We set up our blanket and towels by a pile of rocks, away from the shore. Only a few other surfers and paddle-boarders were in the water. The waves were enormous. Neto was in heaven. Again, he was the best surfer in the water. He took ride after ride, for about thirty minutes, before coming in to rest.

That was the first time Neto saw what I had seen from the beginning. The beach was disgusting! The water was pristine. The beach was horribly polluted from years of neglect. A beaten-up trash barrel was tipped on its side, spilling its contents on the sand. Bottles and cans, food and wrappers, dirty diapers and abandoned clothes were everywhere, as far as we could see. Seagulls screeched overhead, dove to the sand and gleefully picked through the garbage. 

Neto turned to me and said, “We’ve got to do something about this.” He was right. He loves the ocean. It is his home. It’s where he belongs. 

On the way back to La Jolla in the blue truck, Neto noticed a jeep trail going toward the ocean. We followed it and found a private entrance to Punta Burros. We made a pact to come back the next day and begin the clean-up.

And that’s what we did. We came back the next day, and every day for a week. We brought big canvas bags, the kind made for hauling discarded chunks of cement, and garden gloves. We filled bags, about four bags each day, tied them shut, and loaded them into the truck. At night we surreptitiously put the bags out in the street, where the trash man would find them and haul them away.

By day three, the beach was beginning to look more like a beach and less like the city dump. Other surfers jumped in. A few guests from the Grand Palladium hiked along the shore from their hotel and joined the efforts. By the end of the week, we had hauled away twenty large bags of garbage. The shore was beautiful. This is the way it was supposed to look ~ like someone’s home. 

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Neto ~ A Mexican Champion

Neto was fourteen years old, the first time he saw someone surfing. 

Walking along the beach one afternoon with his girlfriend, Luci, three boys glided across the ocean in front of  them, standing on something that looked like a long, flat ironing board. The boys, not much older than Neto, resembled giant birds, flapping their arms as they stood on top of the water. The ocean was alive with huge swells from an incoming storm. Neto was transfixed with the magic of people dancing on water. 

Neto and Luci had been fighting.  She thought that if  Neto was her boyfriend, he should want to hold her hand all the time. He told Luci that if she would let him kiss her, then he would hold her hand.  Finally, Neto turned to her and said, “See those guys in the ocean? I’m going to do that. And if I like it, I’m going to do it forever.” 

“I knew she didn’t believe me. I wondered if she loved me, even though she said she did,” Neto told me. “If you don’t love me, then leave me. I will join those guys and love the ocean instead.”  

Neto walked Luci home, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the boys he saw riding the waves.

“I pictured myself, flying on top of the ocean, my feet planted on the board beneath me, arms stretched out, holding me steady against the wind.”

 Finally, Neto turned to Luci one more time and said, “If I am going to leave you for something, it will be for riding waves in the ocean.”

That was the beginning of Neto’s love affair with surfing. He was one of the first surfers in Mazatlán. He’s still riding the waves today.

When Neto was twenty-two years old, he hitchhiked to Guerrero, Mexico, to compete in the Mexican National Surfing Competition in Pentacalco. He was the only surfer from Mazatlán, competing against men from Alapulco and Iztapa-Zihautanejo in El Libre, a free-style event for surfers of all ages and all levels.

Neto remembers that the waves that weekend were “perfect” ~ fifteen feet tall in the front and eight feet in the back, “with lots of barrels” to ride through. He came in sixth place, overall, and was eager to compete again the following year.

For the next ten months, Neto stayed in Guerrero, training for the next competition. He bought a bigger board and surfed every afternoon. He worked as a deep-sea fisherman at night. 

“We caught swordfish, marlin and sharks in huge nets. We were in small. motorized fishing boats called pangas, not the big sport-fishing boats that tourists rent today.” Some of the fish were forty-feet long, and weighed between 500-1000 pounds. 

“How were you able to get those fish back to shore in your small boats?” I asked.

“Oh, we beheaded them so they would fit inside our boat. We threw the bloody heads back in the water.”

“That seems like an awful mess,” I commented.

“Oh, yes. When the Great White sharks smelled the blood, they came looking for us. We’d leave them to feast on the fish heads, while we headed for shore to the congelador (freezer) for processing. The next night, we’d do it all over again.”

“So, what happened in the surf competition the next year?”

“It was cancelled. The waves weren’t high enough. I still wonder if I might have won first place, but it was time for me to go back home.”

Neto still surfs every day when the waves are high enough. One of the oldest surfers on Mazatlán’s beaches, young surfers often come up to him and want to shake his hand. They affectionately call him “Ruco.” (Old Man) They tell him that he’s the “godfather of surfing” in Mazatlán. The ocean is where he belongs.

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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.