Go Ahead and Rain (on my parade)

Go Ahead and Rain (on my parade)

Filed under Blog Notes

Jun 20

I fear that I must be harboring unconscious hostility toward my husband, buried deep below the tickled affection that is all that I’m aware of when I look at him. What other explanation could there be, if not a wide streak of passive aggression, for travel plans that year after year either bring us home the day before the village fiesta begins, or have us scheduled to depart the day after it ends? This year Bruno looked at me, unbelieving, when we got home just in time for the first barrage of cohetes in the plaza a block from our house that announces the beginning of the nine day spectacle. I couldn’t believe it myself. After a week with two college girls in Puerto Vallarta and a long drive home, the last thing we wanted to hear was the communally owned loudspeaker system crackling to life with brassy ranchero music .

Yes, I know I sound like a party pooper. But listen, a Mexican village fiesta doesn’t have romantic guitar trios on the stage playing “Cielito Lindo.“ I wish. No, to get the village whipped into a party mood, thirteen or fourteen flashy Mexican men decked out in leisure suits over nylon shirts depicting lurid desert sunsets will take the stage and arrange themselves into a big brass section that features, for the love of God, an effing sousaphone. And that is along with trombones, trumpets, clarinets, saxes, snare drums, cymbals, and an accordion, and the music they play is….well, if you can imagine a salsa band and a polka band both playing simultaneously, you’ll be in the ballpark. I like guitars and I like Mariachi music. I like Cumbia and Salsa and Bolero. I’m actually kind of a Mexican music aficionado. But Jesus, when they get that sousaphone involved, and the squeeze box, when they start mixing the traditional Mexican folk music with German oom pah pah, I draw the line.

My friend Anita gave me a pitying look at my birthday lunch yesterday— I showed up wearing all the largesse showered upon me by my darling friends, the earrings and fans, rebozas, a necklace to hold my reading glasses. Wanting to show my gratitude, I draped it all on myself until I looked like a dowry being delivered to some far eastern court, but the finery couldn’t hide my exhaustion. When she heard me describing how I had heard the rattle of the Aztec dancers outside my gate, and been too apathetic to even investigate she nodded wisely and observed that “The bloom is off the rose.”

But no. My love affair with Mexico is as passionate as ever, it’s just that I’m getting old. This curmudgeonly attitude toward music signals my age more powerfully, I think, than the network of creases and lines on my face that bear witness to a whole lot more than sunbathing. But even if I still had my taste for loud discos and rock concerts, a Mexican fiesta patronales is in a class by itself. It not only the music. The whole nine days of fireworks, rides, the peddlers stalls filled with smuggled and pirated goods in colors that make you squint and throw your hands to your eyes in the manner of shielding them from a nuclear explosion, the barking dogs. By the time the parade danced down the street outside my house, I was numb.

In my defense, it was the last day of this annual jamoboree, and it had been extended for tw0 days to accommodate the weekend. I was sitting lethargically on an ottoman in my living room, too exhausted to think of anything to do when I heard the gourds rattling–from their sound, I guessed they were at the top of our block. There was plenty of time to get to my gate to see the desfila, and I felt guilty for not being able to muster up the energy to go look. I love the miniature Friar Tucks in their brown robes that represent our St. Anthony. I love the teenage beauty queens in hoop skirted prom dressed waving from the back of some uncle’s pick up truck. I especially love the indigenous dancers wearing feathered headdresses and moth eaten leopard skins and, bringing up the rear, our village band with it’s beloved tuba playing a bouncy mash up of who knows what. Really, I love all these things, but on this occasion, I had just had it.

Not to worry! In high school, my Dad would comfort me during the meltdown of one of my great loves by reminding me that boys were like buses , another one comes along every twenty minutes. Had we lived in Mexico then, he could have freshened up the analogy by using parades. And there is indeed, another one coming along, if not in twenty minutes, certainly very soon. I might organize one myself, just to celebrate the end of the fiesta.

16 Comments

16 Responses to “Go Ahead and Rain (on my parade)”

tancho said on June 20th, 2010 at 10:31 am

I’m hoping for some selective deafness. Not that I am pushing 100 but there is something rewarding about quiet……
That’s why our house is 7 km outside of town and the only thing I hear occasionally is a party , just when the wind is just right. There are a lot of positive things about living in town, but peace and quiet is not one of them…..
Elliott said on June 20th, 2010 at 12:45 pm

Ha, what an understatement!
Arlene Cooney said on June 22nd, 2010 at 3:14 pm

Hi Elliott
Well suffice it to say you article is scaring the crap out of me – I am at that stage of my life that I treasure peace and quiet – and I used to be one of the biggest party girls around – but those days are gone – so I will need to find a place well away from all the noise – for sure. We are booked at the hotel you recommended – the Nuevo Poseda(??spelling) to arrive on November 21st – a Sunday. I realize now I want to look at everything up to about $160,000.
The gated new developments are so small and right on top of each other so we want to look at everything. I am in the process of transferring money from our
poor beaten up portfolio into American funds (am waiting for the day they predict our dollar to be at parity so I don’t lose too much.

Hope you recuperate from all the festivities!

Cheers
Arlene
TW said on June 22nd, 2010 at 6:16 pm

Fiestas & parties are like lobster. When you don’t have them too often, they’re a treat.

If you’re forced to eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week, it gets tiresome.
Elliott said on June 23rd, 2010 at 3:14 am

Well put TW! I should add that this fiesta –and every village that’s worth anything has one– is only 9 days of the year. Not that Mexican village life is ever what you would call silent, but usually I don’t even notice the sounds of village life. People with experience plan a cruise for the time their village has it’s party.
Ginger said on June 23rd, 2010 at 11:41 am

Many years ago, a DJ in the city where I was born organized a “Parade for Everyone Who Had Never Been in a Parade.” It was a roaring success.

Maybe we gringos should do the same & end up in a square with chicken salad booths, pie eating contests & a checkers tournament. Maybe I could find an old Lawrence Welk tape to blast out of speakers in a Canadian-plated SUV.
Elliott said on June 23rd, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Ginger! Haha, that should do a lot for community relations, especially the touch with the Laurence Welk blasting out of the SUV speakers. Ah, you know we love it.
Chris Rogers said on June 23rd, 2010 at 3:12 pm

Elliott,

Si, si, si. I live, technically, in Riberas, but actually much closer to San Antonio. I was counting the days till the fiesta was over. My Spanish teacher and my cleaning lady hate the fiesta. But my gardener slept happily one night while his pregnant wife took their 3 children to the plaza.

I love the comment: “Fiestas & parties are like lobster. When you don’t have them too often, they’re a treat. If you’re forced to eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week, it gets tiresome.”

There is ALWAYS a fiesta somewhere at Lakeside.

Chris
Elliott said on June 23rd, 2010 at 3:37 pm

So true! I’ve actually just been visiting your site, it’s lovely.
TW said on June 25th, 2010 at 12:37 am

In reference to the drill team of ants you see marching up and down your wall, here’s a simple thing that seems to work.

Put some granular corn meal in a bottle cap near their entry point, and leave it there for them to feast on. They bring it back to their nest, and share in the great meal, only to die from it. Apparently it’s a poison to them, and it isn’t something that will cause concern for allergies.

My wife does that both at home, and at our lake home, to get rid of the little buggers, and it works.

Of course I have a secondary theory on how it works. I think it’s like alcohol to them – they get drunk, and stone each other to death with the corn meal that’s left.

My wife just shakes her head, and walks away, saying things like I’m about 10 minutes ahead of the guys with white coats, and I might want to make a run for it while I still can.
TW said on June 25th, 2010 at 2:30 am

Oops! Sorry about the ant post. I went over to Chris’ site, after reading how Elliott enjoyed reading it, and saw the post about ants…. I reacted, posting it here.

When you get old, the second thing that goes is memory.

I wish I could remember what went first….
David Krug said on June 25th, 2010 at 4:09 am

Peace and quiet is all we have and cherish. Thanks for this article. I can’t wait to get back down south.
Elliott said on June 25th, 2010 at 12:16 pm

TW, I’m glad you went over to visit Chris! Soon you’ll have to start your own blog about Mexico….maybe?
TW said on June 26th, 2010 at 2:46 pm

Thanks for the complement, but I don’t think I’d do well with my own blog. I do a better job replying to a post by someone else. I’d do better as a “Dear Juan,” or something like that.

We have our fingers crossed on getting down there this winter, but it might be one year off, depending on how things go towards getting our house ready to sell. We want to be well on our way towards making a sale before we light out for Mexico.

It’s possible that we’ll just spend two or three months down around Mission, TX, where we can enjoy warm weather, then head back north.

Anyhow, that’s the plan. I hope you don’t mind my putting in my two-cents worth on your blogs. I enjoy them.
Elliott said on June 27th, 2010 at 5:51 am

You and your 2 cents are welcome anytime
Chris Rogers said on July 18th, 2010 at 2:33 pm

“I might organize one myself, just to celebrate the end of the fiesta.” Great idea – a gringo fiesta to celebrate the end of a fiesta.