The bank sitter

She doesn´t beg and she doesn´t sell pistachios. She just sits alone at the entrance of the ATM machine on the plaza.

Peeking above the old green sweater is the collar of a brilliant Purépecha blouse, but everything else is drab. The shoes are worn, dusty. There are cloth stockings like old ladies wear.

And she is an old lady. There´s a bib apron, but we doubt she has work of any sort. She´s a people-watcher, and alone.

She´s killing time, the time that remains for her.

Her long gray hair is tied together and hangs down her back. She was cute when she was young. You can see that.

Her face is neither sad nor happy, but resigned. An optimist might say beatific, but we would not say that, not about her.

She sits for hours on the concrete step up to the ATM machine. She´s there when we arrive -- and when we leave.

Our sidewalk coffee shop is next door.

No one speaks to her, and she speaks to no one. Once or twice, we have seen her walking solo in our barrio, probably going to -- or returning from -- her ATM machine.

But she has no money in that bank. We imagine she has no work. We imagine she has nobody at all who cares.

Bananas and bullets

We needed bananas, avocados and, to make green pozole, spinach.

So we headed down the highway less than a mile to the nearest street market just past the police station.

It´s a federal highway patrol outpost, across a narrow street from a gas station and next to a school.

Sitting in front of the police station were two patrol cars, shot all to Hell. Our Hellacious Honda blanched. There were bullet holes in the bodies, windows and tires of the patrol cars.

It looked like Baghdad.

There were bullet holes in the police station, the windows, the walls. Across the street, sitting next to a gas pump where some poor sap was likely getting a fillup, sat a silver Meriva like the one we once owned. Full of bullet holes too, shredded metal.

Police of every stripe were everywhere, as were soldiers.

We heard later that this event had taken place about two hours earlier. Casualties are unknown to us. A friend who lives near there heard the considerable commotion.

We drove by slowly and sadly and continued on to get our bananas, avocados and spinach.

You cannot let violence detour you from green pozole.

(Note: For these situations, you can Blame the Puritans.)

Mud Street revisited

As mentioned some days back, the street behind the Ranchito is getting a cobblestoning. Right now they are excavating.

This stretch is only two blocks long, and it runs from the plaza to a ravine just past the Hotelito de Mal Reputito. Far end.

Since we moved into the new Ranchito in 2003, and long before, the street was just pure dirt and dust during the dry season, and mucho mud during the four months of downpour.

The guys have excavated down about a foot and are depositing a base of gravel. All of this is great fun to watch.

As you can clearly see, this ain´t San Miguel de Allende. There´s nary an art gallery nor fusion restaurant in view.

The hanging vine

The old boy turns 65 soon.

Irrefutably in better shape than most coots of this ripe vintage, we still definitely feel it on occasion.

At our last full physical, two years ago, the doctor rated us 9 on a scale of 10. We missed the 10 due to slightly high cholesterol.

We have lowered that (niacin), and we no doubt now would rate a Perfect Ten, a male Mexican Bo Derek. Con pelotas.

But we do feel it on occasion, and it´s almost always while gardening. Swinging naked from the chandelier in the bedroom on dark nights with La Guapa Señora, howling like a graybeard Tarzan on a wet jungle vine, we hardly feel it.

But pulling weeds, we do feel it. Quite a bit. Perhaps this is psychological because we remember a former coworker who, in his early 50s, dropped dead mowing his lawn.

We mow our lawn too, and we feel it a bit, but not like weeding, which is strange, ¿no? Maybe it´s all that bending over.

Of course, that former coworker smoked like nobody´s business, probably drank too much, and we doubt he would have rated a physical 5, much less 9 or our Bo Ten. He now rates zero.

There isn´t much you can do to push back the years. We´re just grateful the slippery jungle vine hasn´t snapped.

Riding the bomb

Our party bombed.

We raked in just 1.03 percent of the national vote.

This means the Social Democratic Party loses its registered status, and that appears to mean we cannot even run candidates. We´ll need to affiliate.

We came in dead last of all parties. We would have had more impact tossing the bomb instead of riding it.

Yours truly feels like Slim Pickens riding the bomb out of the jet. We would wave a Mexican sombrero instead of a cowboy hat.

So much for being a Godless Lefty.

Where shall we turn? Back to the right of the National Action Party (PAN), hand in hand again with La Guapa Señora?

We´ll likely go with the Greens. They favor executing really bad guys, and so do we. Where else but Mexico can you do that and be environmentally active at the same time?

In what other political party can you hug a tree trunk while some baddie is swinging from a big branch on the far side?

There is poetry in that.

(Note: The Mexican Green Party was booted from the international Green Party movement due to its support of the death penalty. Ecology and executions make odd bedfellows.)

Dawn of the Working Man

The incipient Commie* stood in line at the polling place down on the plaza of his hardscrabble barrio two hours after the Socialist Sunrise had peeked pinko over the Sierra.

He and La Guapa Señora held their voter cards and waited, but not for long because the line was short as AMLO´s brain stem.

The polling place was out on the sidewalk. The air was cool, moist and full of political possibilities.

The polling station was staffed by about 15 officials, mostly representatives of the political parties keeping an eye on one another, a good idea. All were young and hopeful.

You show your voter card, and they look you up in a large book of names and photos. Yes, they have your photo. No fooling these folks. Then you are handed a ballot.

Walking a few paces to the left, we entered a voting booth that contained . . . a pencil! The ballot, a regular-sized sheet of paper lists the parties and their emblems in full blazing color!

You put a large X across the emblem of your party. You depart the voting booth, fold the sheet of paper and slip it into a sealed cardboard box that has clear plastic on all sides to show there are no shenanigans going on inside, maybe with elves.

Your thumb is inked black, your voter card is notched, and your civic duty is done. Though yours truly has become a Social Democrat, La Guapa Señora is sticking with the PAN.

This evening, the votes will be counted at each polling station with representatives of the various parties keeping an eye on each other. The results are written on a big poster, which is tacked outside for all to see for a couple of days.

The results from each polling station are called into or transported to an Election Central, and they are added up.

It´s a straightforward, low-tech system that is superior to that of the United States and probably Canada to boot.

* Of course, the Social Democratic Party in Mexico is NOT Communist, but we´re having a little fun here. The Communist Party in Mexico is called the Workers Party and, like Commies everywhere, they´re no fun at all.

The big switcheroo

Tomorrow is Election Day in Mexico, and we´ll head to the polls.

It´s on the plaza just a long block away, so we´ll go on foot.

And we´re switching from Religious Right to Godless Left.

We got our voting card in 2006 and voted for the first time in that presidential election.

Felipe Calderón, the candidate from the National Action Party, was our man. The party goes by its Spanish initials: PAN.

Pan is also the Spanish word for bread, so it sounds nice to peons and other have-nots, of whom we have many.

The three primary choices in 2006 were the PRI, the PAN and the leftist PRD. The PRI is the party that ruled Mexico for 70 years by payoffs and stiff-arming, so that was out.

Incredibly, seemingly smart people still vote for the PRI.

The PRD candidate, a barely literate character called AMLO,* is a demagogue, so that was out too, leaving us with the PAN.

The PAN is the conservative party and the party of the Catholic Church. No matter. Felipe Calderón looked and sounded good, and we´ve been mostly happy with him.

Tomorrow´s vote is the mid-term election, and we´re switching to the PSD, which is the Social Democratic Party, formed in 2005.

We´re doing this because of one issue only: legalizing drugs, ending the moronic War on Drugs, which has brought nothing but mayhem to this hemisphere for four decades.

(Blame the bloody Puritans.)

This is a principal platform item for the Social Democratic Party, and it´s our main concern. We´re a match.

Other issues on the Social Democrat agenda are abortion rights, women´s rights and children´s rights. We favor abortion rights in Mexico. Too many babies.

And Mexican women deserve more than the right to be beaten and left in the kitchen while their menfolk bed their slack-jawed girlfriend of the moment. There´s lots of that.

We hope children´s rights doesn´t mean kids have much say-so over their lives because children will invariably choose candy.

But that War on Drugs has gotta go.

* Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been moving about Mexico claiming to be the real president since he lost the election by a hair. That he came so close to winning demonstrates the peril of democracy in countries with dismal education levels.

Concrete dreams

When yours truly was a lad living in Florida in the 1950s in a ticky-tacky subdivision, one homeowner cemented his yard and painted it lawn green. The neighbors snickered.

Eons later, just after buying a Houston house, we went outdoors and mowed the lawn. A neighbor passed, and we mentioned it was the first time we´d cut a lawn in 25 years.

The neighbor chuckled and said: Hasn't changed any, has it? No, it had not. It was still sweaty, grueling labor.

And now we have the Ranchito, almost 25 years later again, and it´s the largest lawn of all. We bought the vacant double lot in 2002 from a local lawyer who used it for family barbecues.

He sodded the whole shebang to make a playing field for the kids, and there were lots of kids because Mexican families seed kids and fertilize them with tortillas, both corn and flour.

Our dream is to remove 95 percent of this grass and replace it with rocks and concrete in varying designs. Probably would not cost that much. It´s just a matter of determination, focus.

Just an expansive patio rolling up, down, here and there with open spaces for the fruit and other trees and bushes we already have and love. But no grass. Por favor, no grass.

But having written that, the truth is that every Thursday about noon, after we have mowed and edged with the gas trimmer, it sure looks summery sweet out there. But still . . .

* * * *

Six hours later we sit on the Jesus Patio alone. La Guapa Señora´s at the gym. It´s 68 degrees. Nice.

We´re reading a collection of Civil War short stories with names like Four Days in Dixie and What I Saw at Shiloh. It´s overcast, as are most days now. Gray and green, above and below.

The lawn, cut and edged this morning, is like verdant velvet and damp. Everything is happy, and that includes you-know-who. A hummingbird enjoys a red-hot poker nearby.

A bougainvillea branch on the far Pumpkin Wall strokes a giant ceramic mask of some unknown god from San Miguel whose wide-open mouth shows shock due to something or other.

White sweet alyssum blooms here, there, everywhere. For most of the year, it lies quiet, brown and gagging. But the rains come, and it´s reborn like a West Virginia sinner.

We set the Civil War aside and think: Our work is done.

Till next Thursday. Grass never surrenders.

(Note: The photo is yours truly´s feet, covered in wet grass cuttings. It´s almost always wet in the yard during the rainy season, adding another challenging element to mowing.)

The little vaquero

He was born in a town up the highway, and was given away at birth.

The little vaquero is now 6, and his adoptive dad shot himself recently.

That leaves him with Mama, a questionable element at best.

He loves to visit the Ranchito, which he did yesterday with his mom to eat barbacoa, Sinaloa-style.

He´s clearly above average in brights, and we don´t say that because he´s our nephew. It´s just a plain fact as obvious as that nose on your face.

He´s handsome and has a beautiful smile, which we paid for, and it was cash well-spent.

In a few months he will start First Grade. With the nuns. And that´s going to be quite a shock for him, and will be interesting to see. He´s been in a Montessori kindergarten.

When he returned to the plaza yesterday, he left his vaquero hat here for his uncle. Sometimes it´s hard to figure little boys.

He really doesn´t want to be a vaquero. His career choices over the past couple of years have varied from priest to veterinarian to train engineer to carpenter.

So the pint-sized cowboy hat will sit on the hewn-log bench, in the living room corner, next to the big antique sombrero that looks like something General Zapata would have sported.

The placid plaza

We´re sitting on the plaza this quiet afternoon with a black espreso touched with Canderel. It is cloudy, cool and nice.

On the opposite table, Don Raul reads Conversations with God, Spanish edition. Don Raul is an acquaintance, a friendly, talkative guy talking with God at the moment.

Up the hill is the fruit stand of Don Maca, whom we can just see from down here. Don Maca and yours truly are the same age, but he looks a decade older.

He´s been selling fruit concoctions from his business on wheels for about 40 years, 30 of which have been in that same spot outside the unromantically named State Museum.

We are regulars of Don Maca, buying Diablitos, which are chili-flavored snowballs, three times a week after gym, and sometimes in-between times too. One of his two daughters assists.

A woman enters the bank next door. She and her husband have a store selling TelCels, which is the most common form of cell phone in Mexico. We look at her butt.

The plaza gossips say it´s surgically augmented, that butt. It does look uncommonly perky for her age, so perhaps it´s true. Or maybe she´s just held up well. Some women hold up.

Don Raul stops reading at the nearby table. He stares into space, and we imagine God has the pulpit at the moment. Raul listens attentively. God expects you to pay attention.

La Guapa Señora and her sister step out onto the sidewalk, give greetings and sit at a table just across, leaving yours truly in sweet solitude, caressing the black cafecito.

They can talk for hours about nothing much, their own Seinfeld Show but with less laughs, but they do laugh enough, and sometimes they howl. Women possess a talent.

This is a perfect afternoon on the plaza. Tranquil, occasional diversion (wish we´d brought a book), good-looking women passing (some with questionable butts), cool, overcast, and the women kin are entertaining themselves.

Leaving us in blessed peace.

The immigrant

My name is Felipe. I´m an immigrant.

After living in Mexico almost a decade, building a house, marrying a native, becoming a citizen, and having no plans to return to the United States ever, a light bulb finally lit up in the mental attic.

This old boy is an immigrant.

We went to our online dictionary to see the difference between expatriate and immigrant, and it says this:

An expatriate is someone who is voluntarily absent from his home country. Well, that applies, and yours truly has considered himself an expat since moving south.

But an immigrant is someone who moves to another country in order to settle there. Sounds like an expat is keeping his options open. And an immigrant has made up his mind.

Yours truly is an immigrant. Mind´s made up.

Now it´s difficult to get a grasp on this notion. Don´t immigrants eat matzah balls? Don´t they dance the Barynya?

Don´t they hail from places like Minsk or Killarney?

Don´t they look goofy?

Like this guy to your left?

It seems that almost all Americans who have moved to Mexico think of themselves, as we did, as expats. You never hear the word immigrant.

And looking at Gringos who live in Mexico, you see they keep their U.S. license plates on their cars. I imagine you´d find U.S. driver´s licenses in most of their wallets.

Their cars are insured with inexpensive tourist coverage they buy up north of the border.

Many think becoming a Mexican citizen is spooky, so they live here with visitor visas. Or even tourist visas.

Clearly, they are expats. And that´s okay. They are voluntarily away from their home country, but they have not really decided to settle here. They don´t dance the Barynya.

We do dance the Barynya, and we´re gonna make some matzah balls this very moment. Swimming in salsa. ¡Andale!

The return process

In April we purchased an optional part from the Honda dealership.

What it was, and what the ensuing problem was, matters not.

What matters is the process of returning it, and that´s where the fun begins.

First off, we had tossed the receipt, always a very stupid thing to do in Mexico because businesses will not take your word for anything at all. You gotta prove it!

We emailed the woman who sold us the Honda in January, and she contacted a friend in bookkeeping who found the sale in the computer. She printed it out, and we picked up the receipt.

We walk to the Parts Department with the problem part in hand, and we point out the part´s defects and ask for a refund.

We are told we will need to speak with the General Manager, the top Honcho of the entire dealership. We walk upstairs to an elegant office and are introduced to the Honcho.

We sit in a soft chair before the executive´s desk.

No problem, he says, but a cash refund is out, even though it´s how we originally paid. It´s only possible to issue a check, and that can only be done via the Accountant of Honda Morelia.

Forms must be filled out, and then a three-day wait follows. Yours truly has an idea: How about a credit that can be used for the next servicing? Better solution, says the Honcho.

A flunky from the Parts Department, who had been skulking in a corner, is told to get the appropriate form. Off he dashes.

Five minutes later, during which we make chitchat with the Honcho, the flunky returns. No, says the Honcho, this form will not do. He wants something different and prettier.

What he wants is a long, typed letter permitting a credit.

This must be typed by a secretary somewhere, and then it must be signed with typically Mexican flourishing signatures not only by the Honcho but by the Manager of the Parts Department.

Flunky vanishes again, and we are stuck with the Honcho for about 45 minutes trying to make chitchat, something yours truly does lamentably in English. And pathetically in Spanish.

The Honcho starts to talk about sports till he discovers yours truly knows nothing of sports. Sports, of course, is the male default topic. We never talk about feelings. It feels bad, and makes us squirm and sweat. Girly stuff.

(Well, most of us. Yours truly began talking easily about feelings in 1997. It started in Florida . . . )

So we talk about trips to Japan that the Honcho gets to make now and then to meet with Honda execs.

We chitchat interminably on various topics as yours truly gazes to the door, praying silently to the Catholic God and Mother Mary for the return of the flunky. Where is that boy?!

Finally he returns with elegantly typed letter in hand, already sporting the flourishing signature of the Parts Manager. The Big Cheese before us puts his elegant name to the letter.

We stand, shake hands, give gracias all around and leave with our credit for 1,700 pesos, about $130 bucks.

Plus, useful knowledge regarding:

1. Sumo wrestlers. Did you know most die young? Of course. Look at them! And, although most of the biggies (so to speak) are Japanese, there was one famous guy from Bulgaria.

2. Honda execs from Japan spend 2- to 3-year stints here in Mexico, and they usually want to stay because they get a big house here, unlike in Japan. But they have to go back.

3. Honda in Mexico has more customers than new cars because factory output has been reduced. This appears stupid.

4. Japan has a very different business culture. You gotta bow to your boss there. Wow.

5 to 30. Let´s skip them.

* * * *

In Mexico, whom you know usually matters more than what you know. We now know the General Manager of Honda Morelia.

He is our pal, our bosom buddy. We could easily hit the cantinas and cathouses together if yours truly did such things.

We are like this.

(Note: We apologize for the length of this item, but it is nothing compared to the time we spent with the General Manager.)

Sun and pintos

We had a cold day (yes, in June) yesterday accompanied by rain, all (we imagine) caused by the storm in the Pacific Ocean about four hours down the autopista from the Ranchito.

But today dawned very bright and sunny, and it´s cool as usual, which is wonderful. Sometimes it just pays to get outa the sack. Well, around here, it always pays.

Pesos, bucks, glee, whatever . . .

The rainy season, which finally quit fooling around and arrived in force about two weeks ago, has perked up the biology within the Pumpkin Wall. The humanology too.

To celebrate this fine day, we´re cooking a big pot of pinto beans from scratch. That would be yours truly, who is the chief cook and bottle washer. La Guapa Señora irons, dusts and mops.

It´s all valuable and worthwhile labor. Never think otherwise.

The darkening night

It happened a bit after 8 p.m. The lights went out. Just like that!

This is not rare here, but normally it only lasts a few minutes.

We had heard the transformer go POW down on the corner post. Uh-oh.

We were alone because La Guapa Señora was at a yoga class downtown. Alone in the darkness.

Not quite dark actually, but getting there. We walked out onto the upstairs terraza. There were bats soaring. The whole block was smothered in shadow.

Gentle rain was falling. We went downstairs, found and lit two candles, both scented. There was a small flashlight.

Like a Boy Scout, we were prepared.

When the lights go out, you really can´t do much of anything. You can´t read. No music. You can´t laugh at reruns of Two and a Half Men on the Warner Channel.

You can´t watch The Wild Bunch video for the 100th time.

Sitting and thinking is about the only option. A variation is meditation, but that requires a certain mood. Sometimes you got it. Sometimes you ain´t got it. We didn´t have it.

We sat on the downstairs terraza, on a rocker, and listened to the rain as the night grew darker and darker and darker.

La Guapa Señora sent a message on the cell phone. Coming home. It occurred to us at that point that the Big Red Gate would not open when she pushed the button inside the Chevy-cito.

The doorbell would not work either. So we got the ladder and walked out there in the rain. We opened the small door and looked out. Young people loitered down at the corner.

We were wearing a black shirt-jacket bought a decade back from Robert Redford who sells clothes like Paul Newman sold salad dressing. On our head was a stylish felt fedora, color of cafecito, ordered from San Francisco, California, years back too.

We were looking mighty fine, but in the dark, who knew? We could have been buck naked or decked out like an Alabama farm hand for all the good it did us. Sheesh!

Car lights appeared down the street, coming closer. It´s her! We had disconnected some bolts, and pulled the gate open by hand. Soft rain was still falling on the black-rock sidewalk.

Moments later, we were both lying on the bed eating red apples. We didn´t want to open the refrigerator door.

We talked of the Eggman, a topic she has more trouble releasing than does yours truly. There were no flowers at the wake, none at the Mass, she said, just one small bouquet brought by hand by an old crony. Nobody loved him.

The lights came on! It was 10:30, over two hours of darkness. We went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door.

We ate pineapple. Hers with chili powder. Ours was neat.

Dirt to stone

The street out back is gonna get cobblestoned. Right now, it´s dirt.

During the rainy season, we call it Mud Street. Or Calle Lodo, if you think the Spanish sounds sweeter.

Here´s how they do this, or at least how it´s gonna get done in this instance:

We got asked if we wanted to participate, so it´s not obligatory. Now keep in mind that we do not use that street. We have a door that steps down to it, but other than that, we don´t use it at all.

Our street is out front, and it´s potholed asphalt with the occasional horse and donkey patty. Some cobblestone would look snazzy, but that´s not in the cards right now.

We said we´d participate "if it didn´t cost a fortune." Of course, the guy who solicited us said it would not. Turns out it will run us about 4,000 pesos minimum. That´s about $300 or so.

That's no fortune to us but it is to him, so he lied. He lives on Mud Street, our self-serving neighbor out back.

Of course, we could pull out, but we believe in progress for the pueblo, and we also (unlike most of the natives) believe in the "common good." So we´re gonna cough it up.

We have to buy three truckloads of stones. Last time we did that, about five years ago, a load ran about 600 pesos.

Probably more now.

And we have to pay labor costs of 26 pesos per square meter. Our half of the street section that runs behind the Ranchito is about 20 meters long by 4 meters wide.

City Hall provides the cement.

Over the years, we have noticed streets, mostly in nearby Morelia, in which one side is paved, and the other side is dirt. Now we understand why. Neighbors on only one side paid.

We believe in doing our civic duty.

Unemployment dawn

At 6:30 a.m., a jobless man stands on the upstairs terraza. It is 55 degrees in June, but he´s in thin pyjamas. No matter.

He has a camera and a hot cafecito.

Just 90 minutes later, the mountains were buried in fog, demonstrating the desirability of rising early even if there is no workplace awaiting. No boss. No nothing.

It rained a lot last night, though the jobless man heard none of it. He was sleeping like the proverbial log or a fence post or an old oak tree. There are puddles outside. Grass is smiling.

Everybody and everything on the Ranchito is smiling.

The inner Zapata, Part 2

We decided to take our homemade check-up to another level.

Both La Guapa Señora and yours truly got chest X-rays.

Here´s how it works: We went to a Pátzcuaro clinic* that specializes in X-rays and ultrasound.

You just walk in and say you want an X-ray.

No Act of Congress required. We were in and out, both of us, in half an hour. Total cost was 660 pesos, which is about $50.

We walked across the street where there is a doctor´s office, an internist we´d never used before, but he had been recommended by two friends. No appointment.

After waiting about 30 minutes because he was seeing a patient, in we went. He cast his expert eye on the two X-rays, and pronounced us A-OK. Total cost was 225 pesos, about $17.

So we got the X-rays for both of us, plus the doctor visit for the expert eye, all for $67, and we spent an hour on the entire process. If only the U.S. system worked so well.

But it doesn´t, and it never will.

* Ultrasonido de Pátzcuaro, Calle Navarrete #39, corner of Calle Romero, a block from the Hospital Civil.

Smells of Mexico

La Guapa Señora gives off the best smell, always.

The best touch too.

The night datura just outside the bedroom window isn´t far down the list, and it has a musical accompaniment of crickets and wind chimes.

The smell of blood would be sweet coming from those who ignite skyrockets and man loudspeakers at daybreak.

But that might lead to prison and the smell of Big Juan´s breath just behind us. Or perhaps not. Big Juan would prefer fresher, younger flesh. One advantage of aging: prison security.

In springtime, there´s the smell of smoke as farmers torch the fields. There´s the smell of grease in the mercado.

On Fridays there´s the oven smell of pastries in the cocina as La Guapa Señora prepares her plaza sale.

There´s the smell of rain. We got a little of that last night, but we want more, much more. There´s the smell of cool air every morning of the year. We usually lacked that in Houston.

Burning wood often. And dog doo-doo on the boots after a morning walk. The donkey patties are big enough to dodge.

Every Thursday in the rainy season, there´s the smell of cut grass, accompanied by the joyous sensation of not having to do it again for a week. Plus, it looks fantastic.

The smell of Near Beer and limón after cutting that grass.

But, due to the lack of heavy industry in these mountain realms, the best smell is clean air. Just stand in either terraza and inhale most any time. Now that is good.

But the smell of blood we mentioned above, that sounds really lovely . . . if we could only get away with it.

The inner Zapata

One of the many beauties of Mexico is the medical system.

We have beat this drum quite often, and it remains true.

We just received a low-end physical that did not entail a doctor visit. Can you do that up north?

Now we admit this checkup did not cover everything by any means, but it was simple, fast, inexpensive, and it covered most things that concern us.

Which are:

1. Cholesterol level, both total, high-density, low-density and very low-density. Yes, four results.
2. Blood sugar.
3. Triglyceride level.
4. Blood pressure.
5. Pulse rate.
6. Blood in the poop, a colon cancer indicator. And, yes, we know it´s an old-fashioned technique. Peor es nada.

Here´s what you do: Stop by a lab* downtown at 8 a.m. (before cafecito and croissantito), and have blood taken.

No waiting nor appointment required.

Leave the poop sample in the little plastic jar picked up the previous day.

If you get there at 8, your results can be picked up beween 1 and 2 p.m. that same day. Total bill: 520 pesos, which is about $46. We check pulse and blood pressure with an electronic gadget we keep at the Ranchito.

The results show that everything is A-OK.

Amazingly, this lab will actually send a nurse to your house to collect your bodily fluids and products. How about that?

Yes, laboratory house calls! But we drove there.

We also could have gotten a PSA test for the prostate, but the last two full checkups, done in Morelia at Star Medica in 2004 and 2007, indicated that little baby was a happy button.

Fit for a rampaging teenager. Well, almost.

The PSA test is highly controversial in the medical community with many believing it may open a can of worms, especially in older men, that perhaps should be left unopened.

We'll take a look at that next time, in six months. Bragging moment: Yours truly, age 64, weighs what he did at 21 and has been doing exercise in a gym regularly for almost 30 years.

And La Guapa Señora, 16 years his junior and a regular gym visitor herself for 20 years, keeps a nasty gleam in his eye.

* We prefer Laboratorio Montes de Oca, which has a number of outlets here. We use the one on Calle Ibarra. Nice folks.

The death house

We stepped into the narrow, dusty stairwell from the street.

The building is 400 years old, and the Eggman spent his final three years upstairs before shooting himself.

Let´s go take a tour.

The stairs open onto a well-lit patio . . . but wait! This is the wrong website. Click here instead.

Watching birds brawl

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who watch birds fight.

And those who do not.

Those who notice if hummingbirds thrust their thirsty bills directly down the flower throat or lower, straight into the vein, like Count Dracula.

Those who notice a solitary tree on a far mountain and wonder if it´s lonely or has pals too small to see from here.

Those who notice that the tinaco on a house construction across the way is off-center on its brick base and wonder if anything will be done about it.

Those who notice the air inhaled at a certain temperature is superior to air that´s a bit warmer or colder, that there is a near-ideal air temperature for high-class inhaling.

Those who notice that a galvanized watering can looks beautiful doing absolutamente nada on a black-rock sidewalk.

Those who notice such things are one kind of people. The other kind wonders whether Tia María really said those awful things about her Comadre Lupita.

Love hurts

The sun sank behind the City Hall clock on the Plaza Grande.

And an old couple stood from the coffee shop table next to us and crossed the street, holding wrinkled hands.

. . . proving love can last.

Moments later, we followed, crossing the street and stepping onto the plaza. It was cool, and the sky was streaked darkening pink. The early June breeze blew.

We headed counterclockwise, which is the nontraditional evening direction, just to mess up the universe a bit.

There are plenty of people touching one other, mostly the young and mostly sitting tight together on the hard concrete benches. It is the weekend lovefest in Old Mexico.

Finishing a full plaza circle, we encountered two relationships that are going poorly. The girls were weeping.

And the boys were talking.

Ay, mamacita, that´s not true what Lupita told you. I was not kissing that girl. We were just talking. Anyway, she´s my cousin from Apatzingán, Tia María´s daughter.

The girlfriend, one of many we imagine, was unconvinced, though she wanted to be. We kept walking.

We neared another dark case. The two were upright, leaning against the back of a bench. She too was weeping.

Ay, mamacita, I´ll send money from Phoenix. And I´ll be safe. I´ll be back in no time, six months at most. And you take good care of little Antonio. We´ll be rico!

Balancing these two couples were others, smiling and brushing one another´s faces with fingertips. Everything is going grand for them right now. They are young, fresh and unblemished.

(Hair-challenged Nazareth sings Love Hurts.)

A disgusting guy

Yours truly is severely flawed, without merit, disgusting even.

In May, an anonymous comment was left on a post titled The Rain God.

Here it is in its entirety:

Hey, Zapata! Your contempt for Mexicans disgusts me.

Comments here are moderated, so we could have simply blocked it, but we did not. We shared. Our tent is big and diverse.

The comment was notable for a number of reasons:

1. It was anonymous. We believe strong opinions should have a name attached, and this one did not. A big tsk, tsk.

This means it was an emotional outburst, unsupported by a clear train of thought.

2. In the 4.5 years of The Tales, the lack of negative feedback has been remarkable. There has been virtually none.

Our sister site Peeks at Mexico is chockablock with negativity. Yet, even there, the negative feedback has been nonexistent. We attribute this to the difficulty of arguing with clear thinking supported by facts.

3. We would lay money on anonymous being a regular reader of The Tales. This is because ugly stuff draws us like flies to dog poop, and this particular anon finds it smelly here.

But oh! . . . so irresistible!

Why do we slow down as we pass a car wreck? We hope to see something yucky because it gives us a thrill.

What prompted the anonymous outburst? Because we do not consider Mexico a lovely land populated by friendly, simple people who play guitar. We see it for what it is: conflicted.

Our anon, by the way, is surely a Gringo living in Mexico.

Almost all Gringos who live here want, oh so badly, to think well of their new land. They have a romantic and simplistic notion of where they are. And of the people.

And they get quite snippy at contrary opinions. Not really knowing any Mexicans apart from a smiling maid and grinning gardener contributes to their lamentable confusion.

But we say gracias to anon. We have added the response to our reader reactions that flow down the right-side column. For the sake of space, we paraphrased it but retained the tone.

And gracias again for giving us material for a new item on The Tales. Material sometimes falls into our laps. A good example was the ex-convict we ran into last week in Valle del Bravo.

For more on that, go to our new website The Bierce Account. It´s the top item. So anon has done three good deeds:

1. A juicy new item on the Reader Reaction list.
2. Material for a new post. This one.
3. An opportunity to point folks to two of our related websites.

Muchas gracias, wherever and whomever you are!

Capital-bound

We´re off to Mexico City shortly. We haven´t been there since late February.

Usually, we don´t wait so long.

We will sit in traffic jams. We will slurp caldo de gallina in that joint just south of the bus station norte.

We will eat hamburgers on the dark-night median of Avenida Margarita Maza de Júarez just off the Eje Central.

We will try and get our deed for the condo from the appropriate government office . . . if we can find it. We paid that baby off in March, we think. It´s hard to know.

We will sit in more traffic jams.

We´ll probably go to The Theatre, dahlings.

We´ll spring for at least one high-end meal, perhaps two, the kind of grub you can´t get here in the pathetic provinces. And they better not add a pinche cubierto to the tab.

We´ll see progress on the new condo complex they´re building just outside our living room window, the one that will block our lovely view of the Cerro de Chiquihuite.

We´ll try to pay our 2009 property tax. They wouldn´t let us in February due to some mysterious Mexican computer snafu.

We´ll hear gossip from neighbors who will tell us, accurately, what dismal deadbeats our other neighbors are.

We´ll pray that the Hellacious Honda doesn´t get towed or involved in an accident that would break her cherry.

We´ll go to the Centro Historico to see how the anti-noise campaign is playing out. That´ll be good for a chuckle too.

Of course, Mexico City is ground zero for the swine flu plague. We'll see oxcarts laden with bodies going to the city dump.

This will be disturbing, but we must stay strong.

Maybe El Popo will pop its top.

But one thing is dead certain: We will sit in traffic jams.

The eternal monk

Half a century ago, a cracker boy lived part-time in a county of red clay.

His granddaddy´s house was another half-century older with a wrap-around porch and an attic the boy never managed to explore, but he yearned to.

A ten-minute stroll behind the house, through a cow pasture on one side and a pecan grove on the other, was a very large pond.

That pond, over 10 acres, was filled with tall cypress trees on which hung Spanish moss. Sunlight filtered through the moss at midday, but mostly it was an eerie and shadowy world.

Filled with snakes, trout, minnows, ghosts and crows.

The boy would pole an old rowboat to all hidden corners of the pond, which was called Wavering. Wavering Pond.

He dreamed of living among trees on the shady hillside that ascended from the bank. He wanted an underground home dug deep into the earth, with just a hint of habitation showing.

It would be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. He would watch morning birds and evening squirrels, or perhaps the other way around. He would live alone. He would eat somehow.

But it never happened.

Five years later, as a very young man, he walked into a monastery on the Pacific coast of California. It was beautiful, quiet, with a sound of the sea. He dreamed of living there too.

But it never happened.

Forty-five years later, he lives almost alone on a Mexican Ranchito that is beautiful and often quiet. Sometimes you get most of what you want if you wait long enough.

Ranchito contrast

Sitting with a glass of fresh orange juice after mowing the yard, we looked over in that direction and noticed the Pumpkin Wall contrasts nicely with a part painted Seacoast Red.

Alas, much new construction in Mexico, where the natives are buying, is moving away from the traditional bright colors.

This is a sorry turn of events.

Gringos in Mexico are following the traditional schemes while the natives are going beige.

The Ranchito will never go beige.

Nor will its residents.

What the hey?!

Something´s gone haywire.

The rainy season debuted prematurely this year, in early May instead of early June.

It poured daily about two weeks, altering our warm, dusty, dead world into something cool, fresh and green.

We didn´t know why the rainy season had come early, and we didn´t really give a rat´s patoot. We just rejoiced.

And then it quit! Totally.

It hasn´t rained in about a week. Now a real rainy season doesn´t give you a full week´s vacation. A day off now and then, sure, but a week? It just don´t happen.

We´re back in blue May, and we´re not happy about it.

We blame Al Gore.

The Rain God

If you don your Crocs below your flannel jammies* and circle the Romance Sidewalk at dawn, you can hear the call better.

It´s almost still dark at 6.30 a.m.

That call would be the firecrackers and the frenetic clanging of the church bell down on the plaza a short stumble away.

It´s a brisk, beautiful morning, and our corner of Mexico is urging the Rain God into action as we do every late May.

Only problem is that the Rain God awoke a couple weeks back. There is no need for this dawn activity, not this year.

The grass has turned green and the dust has fallen. These party animals could have slept in this morning, but you´ll never find a Mexican who´ll skip a fiesta. No way, José.

No matter the calamitous hour.

There´s a little plaza band playing right now. That´s the morning music. Later, they´ll throw up a monster stage for the night music, which will put the morning music to shame, cacophony-wise.

By 8 a.m., they´ll have settled down, which is the odd thing. It´ll be pretty quiet, a grand time for hot cafecitos, some warm crossantitos and feet up on the Jesus Patio. Come join us.

We´ll try not to think of tonight.

* That´s the advantage of the Pumpkin Wall. You can walk in the yard in your jammies, and nobody can see. You could walk naked, and nobody would call the cops.

You´d catch a nasty cold though.

Aspects of darkness

If you sit for a whiz at 5 a.m. you can see the starry sky through the window.

When, on finishing, you stand, you can see the Alamo Wall darkly outlined before the street lights.

You think of the Texas Heroes who were killed at the Alamo at the hands of a horde of Mexicans, and now you are one.

A Mexican, that is. But only legally, not in spirit. It´s a constant conflict of interest.

It´s usually silent at 5 a.m., too early for religious fireworks and too late for even the worst of stumbling drunks and howling adolescent glue-sniffers.

Last evening, about 8 p.m., we were eating roasted peanuts on the Jesus Patio. The sun had set, but there was still light. At a certain point, the ochre of the Pumpkin Wall assumes a terrific tone.

Flying beetles started to swarm. They´re not really beetles, but you get the idea. Little beetles that are resurrected somehow by the recent rains. It´s the same every year.

They buzz drunkenly about, occasionally bumping yours truly. Then a bat sails out of the terraza tiles, hanging a hard right and whizzing near our peanut-munching noggin.

It´s not a dull environment. And it´s not Kansas.

(Note: That´s the real Alamo Wall, not our Alamo Wall.)

The first cut

There are wicked clouds over the red roof tile, and the grass is green and soft.

The lawn will get its first trim of the year tomorrow.

On occasion we awake under the red tile in the middle of the night, not green and soft but strangely unsettled.

When that happens we pop a small chocolate mint in the mouth, and that alters everything, soothing an unsettled soul.

We keep the mints on the bedside table for that purpose, dodging night spooks. Then we sleep easily till morning dawns.

There´s nothing unsettling at all about a Ranchito morning. It´s a happy time with good company in a lovely place. That´s particularly true during the interminable rains.

You get a very cool world here at 7,200 feet. The dust of springtime becomes dirt again, often mud, but that´s okay because mud doesn´t get on shelves and tabletops.

It´s just a shoe-and-floor issue, the mud.

There´s the fun of thunder and seeing black clouds gather on mountaintops, ideally from the hammock. You can´t beat that, especially if lightning doesn´t strike you dead.

There´s always that little edginess to the situation.

* * *

Speaking of night spooks, one of our former wives (It matters not which) on occasion would awaken with a start. Hungry dogs were nibbling her toes. Even after we flicked on the light, she was still unconvinced of their dream nature for a spell.

* * *

Fresh, damp, cool air will make you open the window and toss the curtains totally aside, giving you the full breeze of the rains´ aftermath. This is particularly sweet if you´re sweaty.

That´s what some customers in the Hotelito de Mal Reputito did recently, figuring that was just a high brick wall opposite, not knowing of our second-floor terraza.

Yours truly strolled out there to the edge, enjoying that very same ambiance the lovers believed they had all to themselves. We glanced over the side, and they were in the nearest room.

Both asleep. Post-coital, one supposes, 15 feet away.

The guy´s unshaven face was up, but angled in the other direction. He had a paunch on him and white briefs, which was puzzling but welcomed.

The female of the two was face down but nuzzled against her loverboy´s side, quite sweet if you want to think that way.

She was topless but, as we say, face down and the sheet covered her keister, which was sizable too.

This was not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Had it been that lovely couple, we may have lingered longer than the nanosecond it took for us to hit reverse, stepping back.

* * *

It´s thundering at this moment and raining. The bamboo chimes on the upstairs terraza just outside the open window here are making the sounds they were bought to make.

. . . and realizing their destiny.

Today´s rain will make the grass even greener, even higher and even more in need of that first cut it will get in the morning.

The season begins!