So here I am in Guadalajara, revisiting a city I first tasted in 1965 with my parents. It has brought fresh memories of a road trip taken after I graduated high school. We had a brand new Oldsmobile – not the car to have brought to Mexico where mechanics knew how to fix Fords and Chevys but never an Oldsmobile – in 1965 that is. After Guadalajara, the car simply died in Tampico. It took a mechanic – who spoke no English, and my father – who spoke no Spanish, to read the English repair manual to a Mexican translator – who delivered the translated instructions to the mechanic – who finally fixed the transmission to get the car on the road. In the intervening several weeks it took to get parts, my mother nearly died, having eaten a fish that had dined on a toxin.
Through the good will of a prominent rancher, his drop-dead-handsome University of Texas sons (I’d met the day before the nasty fish episode) and their family doctor she lived to tell the tale. After a midnight distress call from yours truly, the sons delivered mom and their personal physician to a private hospital, forming friendships that changed the life of a 17 year old girl forever.
It was that trip that prompted mom to jerk me out of my plan to attend a small Baptist college in north Louisiana (music scholarship) – and command me to attend the University of Texas, which I did. Fortunately, UT wanted me and/or the money. The friendship with the sons fizzled, but I stayed in school there and forged a different timeline for my future. Magically, the inset is the one picture I salvaged from that trip.
It’s always interesting to look back at life and be able to identify pivotal events that change the course of one’s destiny – and that was certainly one of those. Along the way on this fateful trip, we would stop at 10 AM and 3 PM everyday whether we were in the desert, under a tree or on a deserted road and make coffee over a Sterno fire. My love of the coffee ritual and desire to re-claim my Spanish no doubt have roots and feeders in those moments, seared into my soul along with images of Saguaro cacti against the backdrop of red and orange formations and dramatic skies.
Almost 50 years later, I’m back. Friends’ fantasies of my snagging a handsome, rich Mexican man are greatly exaggerated and so far unrealized. So settle down girls. I have aged and along with me – Guadalajara. No longer the quaint, Bougainvillea draped city I remember, it has become a sprawling metropolis. The charm of the Mexican square, often anchored by a church – remains, however – along with couples holding hands at dusk, children squealing with delight and the ubiquitous shoe-shine stands lining the periphery The day I arrived, I set out to explore and found myself in a plaza spilling out in front of an historic cathedral, El Expiatorio. What drew me there was a stream of gorgeous young women and their mothers showing off in full evening finery as they strolled on the arms of their fathers or escorts. The final destination was this cathedral and it was extraordinary. As I arrived, one mass was ending and the voices that came from the cathedral were pure and sweet, resonating in a way that seems unique to those amazing structures.
You know I‘m not a church-person, but this ritual and music stir the soul, so I wandered around soaking it up as vendors arrived with hundreds of bouquets of fresh flowers and balloons to sell after the “big event” finished. It appeared that I’d happened upon some time of graduation mass. Seems the wrong time of year, but it wasn’t a wedding and the hint was the dolls dressed in graduation capes that gave it away.
More later – for now, “Hasta luego!”