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Bubba

Jan 29, 2006, 11:52 AM

Post #1 of 13 (1127 views)

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Name This Country

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One is driving a dangerous and crowded principal highway between two medium sized cities in a rich agricultural state in a well-known third world country. Nearly everyone is driving as if an idiot because the highway department thought it wise to put in highway shoulders locals consider to be extra traffic lanes. One happens upon two road signs. The first supplied by the state and the second supplied by an entrepreneur.

I translate:

DO NOT DRIVE WHILE TIRED

and about two kilometers later:

REVIVE YOURSELF WITH SOME TEQUILA AT OUR FACTORY. 1.5 KILOMETERS.

About 10 kilometers from these incongruous messages one happens upon three borrachos in their 50s dead as doornails in their pickup truck as a consequence of having pulled in front of a garbage truck and, at that point, quite content.

And so goes life.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Jan 29, 2006, 2:00 PM)

wendy devlin

Jan 29, 2006, 12:15 PM

Post #2 of 13 (1119 views)

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Re: [Bubba] Name This Country

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So did you, Bubba.
Revive yourself:)

Putting black humor aside. (coming from a career in what seems another lifetime)

A few years back, we were van travelling in tandem with a young German couple and their child on a major coastal highway.

U had a tire go on his van so arbon and he took our van five miles back to get a new tire. M and I and the four collective kids, took some food from the vans and went to some shade beside a long wall.

Just after the men left, men, women and children came running towards us down the road margin.

Some had bottles of coke in either hand, some were running with plastic deposit cartons full of coke, some were hauling multiple cartons of coke between them.

A group opened the huge wrought-iron gate beside us and quickly stashed several cartons. As they ran back the direction they came from, they shouted that we should get some coke too.

M stayed with the kids and curious as a cat, I walked to the curve in the highway ahead. A semi-tractor trailer lay overturned on the road margin. The driver, crushed in the cab, appeared to be dead. I was told by bystanders that an ambulance was on its way.

Meanwhile despite the popping and phinging of exploding coke caps, the multitudes were looting the semi.

Could it have been the same country?

sfmacaws

Jan 29, 2006, 1:39 PM

Post #3 of 13 (1107 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] Name This Country

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Good one Wendy! I've seen that quick emptying of a turned over truck several times along the road in probably that same country. Another one I saw was on the hair raising, 2 narrow lanes with no shoulder, switchback mountain road from San Cristóbal down to Chiapas del Corzo. An open truck full of sacks of rice had turned over on a curve, breaking open most of the sacks and spilling rice several inches deep across the road. It was very dangerous as there was no way for oncoming traffic to see cars going around it or people in the road before they came around the curve. There were at least 4 cars stopped with the occupants out sweeping the rice into buckets and bags, I figured it would be for sale in the market by evening.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

Bubba

Jan 29, 2006, 2:33 PM

Post #4 of 13 (1098 views)

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Re: [sfmacaws] Name This Country

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Jonna & Wendy:

You folks are not trying to convince me the veneer of civilization is thin now are you?

The highway of which I speak is between La Piedad, Michoacan and Irapuato, Guanajuato but I came as close as I ever could come to killing my wife and myself on the road from Tuxtla Gutierrez to San Cristobal that Jonna refers to by falling asleep at the wheel adjacent to one of those terrifying drop-offs..

I was also a banker in Oakland, California in the 1970s when Patricia Hearst's family brought up the food trucks demanded by the Symbionese Liberation Army to West Oakland and I still vividly remember how quickly people lost all pretense of civility when they started throwing out the bags of gruel that most would never have actually eaten.

During those days, hippy friends of mine would offer me rations of refined white flour that were presented to them gratis by the state because they would never stoop to eating refined flour. They still took it.

I guess the country to which I refer is universal.

And, yes, Wendy, I definitely fortified myself with some booze after seeing those wretched clowns lying beside the road near La Piedad but I still feel no better.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Jan 30, 2006, 7:55 AM)

wendy devlin

Jan 29, 2006, 4:41 PM

Post #5 of 13 (1068 views)

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Re: [Bubba] Name This Country

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>trying to convince me the veneer of civilization is thin now are you?

Not necessarily.

More swapping a story for a story.

If going to editorialize, might suggest the universality of opportunism.

(BTW. the ambulance still hadn't arrived when we left over an hour later.
The accident happened maybe fifteen minutes surface time from the nearest sizeable town.)

>on the road from Tuxtla Gutierrez to San Cristobal that Jonna refers to by falling asleep at the wheel adjacent to one of those terrifying drop-offs..

That is indeed some highway. Have only travelled it from the coast to the highlands. Imagine it's even more exciting going downhill.

Do remember frequently, cars, buses crossing the center-line to negotiate those curves and the dizzying views off the precipices.

> Oakland, California in the 1970s when Patricia Hearst's family brought up the food trucks demanded by the Symbionese Liberation Army to West Oakland

Funny you should mention that little bit of history. Saw a 2 hour TVdocumentary about the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, and the food trucks etc. just last week.

Realized that the documentary described a situation about which I knew very little of the details.

sfmacaws

Jan 29, 2006, 4:54 PM

Post #6 of 13 (1063 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] Name This Country

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That is the most frightening road I've ever driven over, not once or twice but three times! Another lovely thing about it is that there are refineries down in Salina Cruz and a lot of double trailer gasoline trucks zooming up that road. Due to the tonnage right-of-way, they take up as much road as they feel like. Nothing like coming around a hairpin turn and there is a flying bomb headed straight at you! Then you get to the bottom and the straightaway and think all is well until you notice the semis blown over along the road and start feeling that old wind pushing you from lane to lane.

**Patty Hearst note, I was close to her age and fit her general description during those times, I also had a white van and lived in SF. I was stopped several times, everyone out on the ground prone. It was interesting.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

Bubba

Jan 30, 2006, 8:02 AM

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Re: [sfmacaws] Name This Country

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Two things, Jonna:

Those of us who lived in the Bay Area in the late 60s and 70s lived in interesting times. I still remember the surviving relatives of the Jonestown victims opening an account in my bank a week before Dan White shot Mosconi and Milk. Jim Jones was a big buddy of Mosconi and all the other ultra-liberal SF pols 'cause that dude could deliver votes by the bus load.Thank God there were a number of bars nearby where I could have a drink or two with all my stock broker buddies at the Pacific Stock Exchange who got off work at 2:00PM PST.

More importantly, they have now opened a freeway between Tuxtla and San Cristobal so there is no longer any need to drive the beautiful road from hell. By the way, the freeway is also spectacular. What a beautiful state.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Jan 30, 2006, 8:04 AM)

sfmacaws

Jan 30, 2006, 8:44 AM

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Re: [Bubba] Name This Country

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Our friends just came up that road, they met us in San Cris on NYE. They were not allowed to use the new freeway because they were towing a 5th wheel trailer, though it is small by US standards, less than 30'. They didn't understand why but part way up they saw the reason, which I think was the place where the new road entered the old. I can't remember the details now and they are on Cozumel today. Anyway, RV's, trailers and all the trucks were still having to use the old road so unless something has changed in this last month, we would still be on the old road with the gas trucks. I'm not anxious to travel that way again. I doubt we will come across that on our return from Guatemala, as much as I enjoy San Cristóbal I prefer approaching it from the east.

Yes, interesting times. Jim Jones was the Pat Robertson of the left, he also would have appreciated that swami guy with the Rolls Royce who took over the NoCal town by moving every derelict from SF up there and registering them to vote. There are many lessons in all that, the main one being that the gullible will believe anyone who tells them they can fix it all and give them pie in the sky. Personally, I preferred the comet people. Nice and clean, no children involved and they just went away.

To keep it Mexico related, I have often thought from observing the rapid gains of the pentecostal religions among the rural poor here that they are ripe pickings for a Jymie Jones of their own. I hope it doesn't happen.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

kwschopf

Jan 31, 2006, 12:13 PM

Post #9 of 13 (966 views)

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Re: [sfmacaws] Name This Country

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"...he also would have appreciated that swami guy with the Rolls Royce who took over the NoCal town by moving every derelict from SF up there and registering them to vote."

Actually, that town was in high-desert Central Oregon and was called Antelope before and after it was called Rajneeshpuram. The homeless people were from Portland. Quite an interesting bunch, those Rajneeshis, who wore reddish-purple robes and finally fled after committing a number of crimes, not the least of which was sprinkling salmonella bacteria over the salad bar of a nearby town (The Dalles, OR). This is the ONLY documented case of domestic bioterrorism in the history of this country.

(Sorry, I know this is off-topic, but, being an Oregonian, I could not resist.) Karen

Bubba

Jan 31, 2006, 12:44 PM

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Re: [kwschopf] Name This Country

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Thank God Bubba is here to set the record straight.

Rajneeshpuram was indeed in the miserable little town of Antelope, Oregon. I do believe that my friend Jonna was confusing her freaks but since she was busting heads as a San Francisco County Deputy Sheriff for a number of years, it is understandable that she has a tendency to want to throttle anybody who exits a public toilet in any large city on the planet.

I believe Jonna was referring to Booneville, CA where The Reverend Moon set up a Moonie headquarters in the 1970s. The Bubba happened to be a denizen of this area at the time and will tell you that the Moonies were not by any means the oddist folks hanging around that region at the time.

If I am not mistaken, a woman in Guadalajara just recently found a likeness of a bleeding Jesus in a a ham and cheese sandwich she bought in a sandwich shop in that city. I guess I can go to heaven anytime I wish up until the time I don't get there.

(This post was edited by Bubba on Feb 1, 2006, 8:03 AM)

DoDi2

Jan 31, 2006, 1:37 PM

Post #11 of 13 (949 views)

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Re: [Bubba] Name This Country

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I was living in a house in Berkeley and I remember the mysterious neighbor accross the street. No one knew who they were but we'd occasionally see people going in and out and then nothing for a long time. We tried to guess what it was and decided maybe it was a rest home.

Then the Jonestown massacre happened.

I was sitting in the living room watching the news when out our picture window I saw heavily armed swat teams take over our street. Then later news crews arrived while I watched the Jonestown report on TV I saw the same (well known, but now I forget who) national reporter giving his report both on my TV and from the street in front of my house.

It turned out that the house across the street was being used by families of Jonestown escapees to hide and for deprogramming them.

sfmacaws

Jan 31, 2006, 5:40 PM

Post #12 of 13 (926 views)

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Re: [Bubba] Name This Country

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You're right Bubba, if you live in SF long enough it all just becomes a big soup of religious nuts and their doings. We even start assuming that Oregon's nuts must be our nuts.

Give me a break! I'm only a few weeks from my 60th birthday and I should not be expected to remember all these weirdos individually - I need the brain cells for other things like when is dinner and is it 5 o'clock somewhere.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán

kwschopf

Jan 31, 2006, 9:21 PM

Post #13 of 13 (904 views)

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Re: [sfmacaws] Name This Country

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We are happy to share our nuts with California - there is, in fact a free flow between the two states. Soon, there will be two fewer nuts as my husband and I make our way SOB in a few months. I doubt they'll miss us.