Mexican Vacation

 Once you see the drivers in Mexico you understand why religion plays such an important part in their lives.

                                                               Erma Bombeck

 

There are two classes of travel--first & with children.

                                                                Robert Benchly

 

Ah, springtime. The time when a young mans fancy turns to.....Mexico.

 Now everyone in this town has a Mexican vacation story to tell, so this week only, Mr. Mark Reamon, Editor, has agreed to buy everyone that submits such a story 2 round trip tickets to our neighbor to the south. Of course they must be true, as is this one.It goes like this.

  We, my brother, sisters, & I, grew up on a semi large sheep ranch in Oregon. My father, a semi large ex-Marine & sheep rancher had also grown up in the same small town in Oregon. But for a 4 year stint in the service I don't believe my father had ever left the state. "Why"? he would always say, "Never leave one good time for another." He was full of bits of wisdom like this & in my book the smartest man in the world.

 My mother on the other hand had been an American born in China. She had been raised in Europe & schooled on the east coast. In other words her mind often wandered past the mud & poison oak of our ranch.

 Consequently we children were raised on a steady diet of sheep dip & National Geographic, a well rounded, if not confusing upbringing.

And so it was at the end of one particular long & soggy Oregon winter my mother started to go stir crazy. Travel posters of the leaning Tower of Pizza, & Eiffel's Tower started replacing the Frederick Remington replicas. Our usual steak & potatoes dinners were becoming unrecognizable....

 "WHAT IS THAT?" My father would inquire about the nights fare.

 "Calamari...My mother would say. "Squid, they eat it in Greece."

 "SQUID! THEY EAT IT IN GREECE CAUSE THEIR STARVING IN GREECE!" My father would try to straighten her out.....or..

 "WHAT'S THIS?"

 "Pasta, they eat it in Italy."

 "PASTA? THEY EAT PASTA IN ITALY CAUSE THEIR STARVING IN ITALY!" & so on.

 My mother wanted an international vacation bad, & what my mother wanted she eventually got.  However the last time my father had been to Europe he had been dropping bombs on them & he wasn't quite sure even after 15 years they had completely forgiven him. It appeared to be a standoff. But in a marriage there is no such thing as a long term stand off so it wasn't to shocking to have my father arrive home one night & announce to us all we were about to embark on a great adventure...we were going on an international vacation.

 "How?" asked my mother, as if she cared.

 "In that!" My father motioned us to the front door & pointed to the parking lot. There glistening in the rain under a pale flood light was the most incredible car I had ever seen. A brand new 1960 Plymouth station wagon.

 It was shocking white with a blue & chrome racing stripe running the length of it's block long body. The front fenders swept up into two massive chrome bulges that held the headlights in something that resembled the face of a 5 ton crocodile.

 But the most impressive thing about the 1960 Plymouth Station wagon were the fins. Now, fins were big back then...the 1959 Chevy had fins you couldn't see over, but no car had fins like these. They seemed to reach for the sky..."Why it looks like one of those Albatrosses' trying to take off you see in the National Geographic!" said my mother, & the name immediately stuck.

 The fins ended four feet above the car in a point you could have cleaned your teeth with. They then swept down widening a bit to encompass eight pointed taillights that looked the same shape of those things dangling from the bare chests of the African women my brother & I stared at in the National Geographic. You could have landed a jet in the light they put off.

" Now that's not all," Beamed My Dad. My buddy Bill Bean is gonna loan us his new travel trailer, so we'll have beds for everybody!"

 We kids stared at each other....Everybody knew Bill Beans travel trailer. He would drag it through town even if he wasn't going anywhere. Even the threat of going somewhere made a person worldly in Roseburg Oregon.

The trailer was perfectly round...it looked like an aluminum pumpkin on wheels. But what gave it the look of soaring down the highway, what gave it a space age aerodynamic feel were the two tiny chrome fins attached to its rear corners. Without those two tiny fins in fact it would have been all but impossible two distinguish the front from the rear & in turn which way to pull it.

 Mr. Bean was very proud of his trailer...he called it the 'Tiltin Hilton"

"And where internationally might we be going?" Asked my now worried Mother.

 "BAAA-HA!" MY DEAR! OLD MEXICO!!"

"BAAA-HA Howled us kids."BAAA-HA!"

 Now my mother had no desire to visit Baja, but she had a tremendous desire to escape the smell of 2000 wet sheep so she gamely went along.

 "Has Baja any symphonies?" she would ask as we packed the Albatross in the following days.

 "Kinda." my father would say.."Their called Mariachis."

Finally we stood ready, the gleaming Albatross hooked to a polished Tiltin' Hilton. A block long & 10 tons of chrome & aluminum poised for an international assault.

 But dear old Dad had one more surprise in store.

 "We gotta make one stop to pick up Aunt Jane, she's never been to Mexico & the poor old girl is just dying to go."

 "AUNT JANE!" we howled in dismay. Aunt Jane was my Dads only Aunt & she was older than dirt. All semblance of fluids had left her body years ago & in the wettest state in the union Aunt Jane was dried out like those Egyptian mummies we had seen in National Geographic. She even smelled like a mummy. But for all our protests, my father could not be swayed & soon the brittle dusty body of Aunt Jane sat jammed between my brother & I.

"HOWDY SONNY!" She would yell.

 "It's Steve." I would remind her.

 "WHATEVER!"

We drove down through the Redwoods where my father took great pains to unhook the Tiltin' Hilton so we could drive through a car size hole cut in a huge old tree. The albatross all but didn't fit.

 We visited San Quentin in San Francisco..."You boys will probably graduate college here." My father told my brother & I. We stopped by Disneyland.

 "It figures that the Mecca of American culture would be the kingdom of a 6ft rodent." Mused my mother.

 Then finally we passed over that international boarder, & found ourselves stuck fast in the traffic of 'colorful' downtown Tijuana. A friendly native by the name of Raoul was trying to sell my father a deck of 'naked lady" playing cards through the window. He looked like Biggy Rat.

 "Why would anyone want to see a naked lady?" asked my brother.....he was very young back then.

 The entire city smelled like the Roseburg city dump, with wonderfully nasty looking inhabitants screaming what I assumed were friendly salutations to their neighbors from the north.

"Are you sure we're safe here?' whispered my mother sitting way low in the front seat.

"Of course dear, these people love us Americans." Said my Dad. He wasn't afraid of anything.

 Just past the seaside town of Ensenada the road ended into what looked like a sheep trail.

 It was beginning to get extremely warm.

 Now the Albatross had no air bags, no air-conditioning, no stereo, & no seat belts. But we really didn't need seat belts, as my father had had the foresight to install clear plastic vinyl seat covers to protect the upholstery. And now that the temperature was passing 110 one found themselves stuck firmly to the seats. You could have run that car into a brick wall at 80 mph & none of us would have been dislodged from those seats....not without parting with all the skin on the back part of your body anyway.

Aunt Jane was drooling now & babbling incoherently.

"She's having a great time!" Dad reassured us as he fought for control of his 10 tons of American Steel. My two sisters were fighting like cats in the dusty rear portion of the careening Albatross.

 Then one day after a particularly tortuous stretch we rolled into the dusty town of La Salad, only 100 miles from our goal of Cabo San Lucas.

 The albatross was sputtering to a stop when suddenly Aunt Jane sat bolt upright, yelled something about those God-damn Yankees & fell over dead.

 

      to be continued

 

Dont forget to pick up a copy of Steve Church's 'African Road Trip' at Hegs Place today.

 

 

 

 

 

                                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                   Mexican Vacation II

Old age is the only disease you don't look forward to being cured of.

                                                                        Citizen Kane

 

I want it so quiet you can hear a mouse dropping.

                                                                          Dad

As we learned in last weeks fascinating oracle, 100 miles from Cabo San Lucas, dear old Aunt Jane dropped dead. This of course created a series of problems. First for Aunt Jane herself, who had lost an important part of her life. Second for us, her only immediate family, who were now stuck in a broiling station wagon with her, 1000 miles from the United States border.

 Now my father, a U.S. Marine had no intention of leaving any kin buried on foreign shores, & it was apparent even to myself, a 7 year old Future Farmer of America, this was no place to call in the authorities. The police in Mexico back in1960 were little more than Poncho Villa clones....a fact that is just being discovered now, in 1997.

 "What if we mailed her home?" Suggested my mother. whom obviously did not relish the idea of vacationing with a corpse.

 "The mail goes out of here on burro's, my dear." We're still 20 years ahead of overnight mail." said my father, a very astute man.

 Now Bill Bean's travel trailer, The Tiltin' Hilton was equipped with a tiny bathroom. The room was so small in fact one could use the toilet, shower & brush your teeth all without moving an inch. The entire bathroom floor, slightly larger than a dinner plate, was stainless steel surrounding a tiny drain.

 "We'll put her on ice! Exclaimed my old man. "We'll turn that bathroom into cold storage. Aunt Jane on Ice." It was the perfect solution.

 We stuffed her in a floral print swimsuit, put on her sunglasses & jammed her in the tiny bathroom. Then we packed in the ice....tons of it.

 My father then hung a 'occupado' sign on the door, and gathered us about for a short service.

 "Here stands Jane, on the bathroom drain.

 Not one to complain, as she's feeling no pain.

 Lord keep her safe in the hopper,

till again we can pop her,

back on the earth of her birth.

 Our Aunt we will plant,

when we stand on the land..."

"OK! OK!, Already!" said my mother & cut short my father's eloquent eulogy.

 My father saw no reason not to continue our vacation at this point, after all we were but 100 miles of our goal.

 Cabo San Lucas in the 60s was no more than a sleepy little fishing village. A huge spine of bizarre rock formations ended in an amazing arch through which the Pacific churned & surged. We rented a decrepit rowboat & ventured out to the very tip. It was a wild place where two seas met in confusion, thousands of sea birds soared on the winds & whales & sea lions met for romantic interludes into the calmer Gulf Of California.

 "Their going off to mate." Explained my father.

 "What's that mean?" Asked my brother & I.

 "I'll explain that to you guys later in life." He said....we're still waiting.

Next to the trailer park was a beautiful stretch of beach with a "Por Vende'

 sign stuck in the center of it.

 "We really ought to buy this little piece of paradise, I've got a feeling this place might really take off some day." Said my Dad.

 "That's ridiculous." said my mother." besides where are we going to get $1500.oo dollars?"

 "Your probably right dear." said Dad.

 Apparently, 20 years later, the Hyatt Regency came up with the money.

 Then one hot afternoon after returning from a successful beachcomb, we noticed a huge pool of water beneath the Tiltin' Hilton. Every cat & dog in Cabo lay under the trailer in the cool water. Two vultures perched on the aluminum fins. Aunt Jane was thawing out. It was time to go.

 A thousand miles of hot dusty track stretched before us with little shade & even less ice. I dare say we purchased every ice cube in Baja on that return trip.

 "Digame dos cerveza, and.... dos hundred kilos ice....por vavor." My father would order from every tienda we came across.

 As none of us would now sleep in the Tiltin Hilton it became quite a curiosity to our fellow trailer park neighbors when each night we would drag all the mattresses out into the dirt & set up house keeping.

 "To stuffy in there." my father would explain to the on-lookers. "Aunt Jane's dead in there!" my stupid little brother would blurt, whereupon we all would laugh nervously. A huge circle of vultures had gathered high in the sky above us, & each night they would descend to perch on the trailers roof. Bill Beans once pristine Tiltin Hilton was now caked in Buzzard poop & dust. The interior smelled like.....well like something had died in there.

 Finally after a week of crashing across Bajas rock & sand we again rolled onto the pavement at Ensenada.

"Time to get Aunt Jane ready for the Border." said my father.

 After 2 weeks on ice Aunt Jane was the color of a robins egg. She was also stiff as a board, a reality which made dressing her most difficult. But finally

 she lay in the trailers 'double bed', nightgown on, covers up to her chin, sunglasses perched on her nose, & a sequined sombrero pulled low on her brow.

 As we approached the Tijuana border crossing my mother sat mumbling in the front seat...."Were all going to jail...We're all going to jail.'

 A swarm of blue-shirted Mexican Border guards descended on the car & started pawing through the trash & dirty laundry that was the interior.

 Another group entered the trailer.

 We stood alongside in frozen silence watching them.

 Moments later they erupted from the trailer door gagging & coughing.

 "Mother of Gawd, Hombre, dat is one stinking trailer house!" Gasped the head honcho.

 "It's been a long trip." said Dad, cool as a cucumber.

 "And ze ol lady senior?' She don look so good." Said the Honcho.

 "She's very tired," said Dad, "Just resting."

He eyed us suspiciously, my mother gripped us kids protectively....

 "Get dat ting out o here." Said the Cop.

 We all jumped in & crossed to the American side.

Again they descended on us. Again they emerged gasping for breath from the Tiltin' Hilton.

 "The woman in bed?" Asked the officer. "You sure she's feeling all right?"

 "Oh yes sir." Said Dad, " It's been a long trip, she's just dead tired."

 The officer stared at my father a long time....my father stared back, obviously something he had learned in the Marine Corp.

 Finally the border guard stepped back and said...."Well I guess you better put her to rest then." He winked & smiled & into the good ol U. S. of A. we drove.

 A sense of great relief swept over the Church Family, like we had just pulled off the great train robbery.

"First thing we're gonna do is get some good old American cheeseburgers!"

 Howled my father. As we kids yelped in agreement he guided the huge Plymouth Albatross into a San Diego Bob's Big Boy parking lot.

 "This is the first time I've felt safe in three weeks," said my mom. " Boy it's great to be back in America."

 It was the best cheeseburger I had ever tasted & for an hour we laughed & stuffed our faces with American Junk food., till finally, to full to think, we waddled back to the parking lot.

 Something was horribly wrong. Where the car & trailer had once been, now was an empty space. The Plymouth was gone, stolen. So was the Tiltin' Hilton, & so was Aunt Jane.

 And you know something else?  We've never seen any of them again.

                                             The End