TomG
Jan 13, 2004, 7:56 PM
Post #5 of 6
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Dear Geezer Extroadinaire;
Aside
I find it hard to believe that one who discusses issues as clearly as you do much of a geezer in the sense we used the term "old geezer" in Iowa. An "old geezer" there is usually one who parrots local prejudices and parochial thoughts as if they were his recently discovered original thoughts; and he always speaks ex cathedra. Keep up the good work; I enjoy your carefully made point of view.
To clarify
Growing up in the small city of Dubuque, Iowa in the 50’s when it was 85% Catholic and filled with real old geezers was good training for the present 6 months of living in Oaxaca, Oaxaca. There are differences: in Dubuque there were low paying factory jobs for men willing to work, drink their beer and keep their mouth shut. Here in Oaxaca they can drink their beer if they can afford it, keep their mouth shut; but a low wage factory joy is hard to come by. Dubuque was run by a few old families who passed on their wealth, power, and provincialism; and intermarried to keep the blood lines clean. The hills and bluffs along the Mississippi River helped protect the masses from potentially disrupting electronic communication and the bad influences modern roads could bring. Surrounding villages like St. Catherine, St. Donatus, looked to Dubuque as if it were Rome. People had families of from 4–12 kids. Outsiders couldn’t get an even break on real estate and couldn’t readily buy into certain neighborhoods. The local factory owning establishment crowd kept John Deere Co. from buying real estate in the city to build a factory because their wages were going to be higher. After some time John Deere bought and built outside the city in the country. They had to build a whole subdivision themselves to house their shipped in from the outside professional staff who had trouble with establishment controlled real estate. To this day 50 years later there are some raw feelings from those early Deere employees. We had many special customs (old buildings, advantageous local tax structures, clergy cooperation) in Dubuque. Poor Mexico! So it is.
Water
The water from the pipe flows here in the Oaxaca Jalatlaco barrio en el centro two time a week for a few hours each time. It does not flow up to the gravity pressure reserve tank on the roof on top of a second floor bedroom. It flows at our house into a cisterna below ground level and we pump it up to the tank on the roof with an electric pump (manually switched).
Here in the Valley of Oaxaca there is hardly any irrigated agriculture during the dry season. A very fit pueblo farmer with a whole hectare of farm and sons working up north in California, Washington State, and New Jersey told me that irrigated farming is out of the question because the cost of electric pumping is so outrageous. He is right: I got my electric bill a week later and it is scaled. It costs 5 cents for the first 150 kwh (a modest refrigerator probably does this), 8 cents for the next 100 kwh, and a whopping 18 cents kwh for the rest (all prices US). Therein explains the 60w bulbs hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. In Iowa at 8 cents I feel free to weld seams in thick steel; at 18 cents I’d turn the machine off between each ½ inch spot weld and would not consider welding the whole seam – who could afford it?.....even in the USA? How cheap does labor have to be to make up for the costs of electricity in a factory, I wonder? In irrigation the deeper the water the more pumping costs, he explained. You can’t get there from here.
Back here in the city, there are water tank trucks selling water for human use (this does not mean drinking). You can buy it, so one could patch together a life of heavy water use with money (if heavy water use is a good life).
None of the water I’m talking about is considered drinkable by locals or outsiders. My wife is taking an immune suppressant medication. Avoiding consuming the piped water in small quantities with the cooking, cleaning of fruits and vegetables, and dishwashing is a constant trick in an unhandy indoor kitchen. A kitchen outside would make a lot more sense in the daytime with sunlight for seeing clearly and drying, as well as more space.
Bottled drinking water is priced at 11 or 12 pesos with my two vendors.
No water talk would be complete without bathroom talk. Bathrooms are heavy users. Given the density and layout of the typical individually owned city property can you imagine how anyone could find enough wiggle room to do anything but spot patch public utility systems.
Water and Politics
In the thick of Christmas fiesta season the Governor of the State came to the barrio one night and gave a speech. My Mexican-American son-in-law, Louie, had worked in Washington, DC for Senator Paul Simon on education and labor issues and later for the Secretary of Education in the last administration. He was present for the Governor speech. He ranked the Governor, Mayor and President of the barrio on a smoothness scale in that order. He thought the Governor said all the right things. I was not present for the speech (held in front of our house), as Dorothy and I were at a competing fiesta – the fiesta after baptism of the son of the daughter of a friend’s uncle.
Now here is how the speech went: The day before the speech I woke up and stuck my head out the door after breakfast to see if the garbage bell ringer was around (he doesn’t bother to walk down far enough for us to hear him). But what to my wondering eyes should appear but the whole assembly of barrio activists (the united ones) sweeping and pressure hosing down the whole cobblestone street (callejon or alley). But wait a minute, you say, the water only passes here in Jalatlaco two nights a week for a few hours and doesn’t have enough pressure to get up to the roof tank. So now neighbors who come over and beg for a shower are out there in the morning shooting water 20 feet out of a hose – Que milagro! Pressure USA Style! It just goes to show you that knowing how to work a pressure hose comes naturally, as no one had any prior experience. And to beat that, there was another noise – water was running into my cistern, on Sunday morning, on a non-water day, in the morning and not the evening, and at a pretty peppy rate. Now this was after the dates of all the Virgins (la Virgin de Juaquila, la Virgin de Guadalupe, and la Virgin de Soledad, if I am keeping it all straight), so we were not experiencing a miracle that Rome would count as qualifying – and it was not really natural water anyway, this was pressurized tube water – a man-make water-product. For the first time since I meet him, Jesus was busy, too busy to talk even, “the Governor is coming to speak” – sweep, sweep, sweep, SPRAY, sweep, SPRAY. Under the direction of el Presidente del Barrio they made up for the fact that a street sweeper never comes on this street even though it is supposed to happen regularly. Then a tent goes up from house wall to house wall starting at Ernesto’s and going all the way up past Pedro’s to the corner. Pedro, who was drunk the whole time of his government job vacation (Posada time to January 7) did not join in. Thanks to natural Zapotec cuerpo cleansing powders Pedro still does not have diagnosed diabetes. But he does have excellent tastes in music – and about this I don’t kid you. Gracias a Dios, none of the big metal tent supports went up in front of our garage door, so I was able to get the pickup out to take Dorothy to the baptism Mass and fiesta (she is incapacitated). We returned at night right after the speeches and just in time for the food – nope, not fried chicken…..it was tamales, atole, and coffee. Otherwise Louie and my daughter, Jenny, thought it was pretty much in line with political rallies of 19th Century America. Jenny and Louie, having not gone to the baptism, were out there for the whole rig-a-marol. Louie is quite at home in his mother’s state of Guanajuato; but he might as well have been on Mars as here in Oaxaca. Sure he speaks Spanish, sure he is moreno and has black hair; but he is not Zapotec: worse yet, he is not from this barrio, or that pueblo…. . But here in the barrio during the big Governor’s speech and event he was in his element. We were able to find a parking space a block down the callejon when we returned and I was able to push Dorothy over the cobblestones down to in front of the house in her wheelchair. A good time was had by all.
The next morning the Governor and the mayor were gone. In their place were tamale wrappers, Styrofoam cups, and general fiesta debris. The metal chairs and tables had been promptly removed, but the tent was still up. Jesus had no more screwy ideas like the impromptu Christmas Eve neighborhood potluck in the street while blocking the callejon off at each end with cross-way cars. “Peace on Earth” hasn’t diddle to do with lack of noise; it’s being together in a bunch without job obligations. It’s bunching, that’s where it’s really at. Only Pedro, drunk and with his music can stand to be alone. Well not really: after weeks of being drunk morning to night, Vicki said she was leaving him. That got Pedro to crying about how his mother had left him by dying and now he was all alone in the world. Vicki got him to give her 20 pesos for comida and she stays on to this day. She hit me up for 50 today, but not for comida. I saw her with new gift wrapping paper, so someone is sure to be getting a present.
Folks were on their own with cleanup, no more pressurized water, no more united ones. In the afternoon came the tent company guys and down came the tent. They bent the neighbor’s electric service entry conduit a good bend which left his 70 feet of wire to the pole hanging about 6 feet off the ground. You could reach up and grab it, which no one did. Neighborhood folks with pickups swung wide to the high side and left the wire hanging, as did the “~GA-a-aS DE OAXACA~” truck. But a tall Englishman from San Felipe came around the corner in his yellow VW vintage van with a pop-top and “SNAP”. He hadn’t a clue what connected him to the Governor. He rolled the wire up, I told him the sequence, and he left before he got any more attention. The neighbor was without service for a week and a half (well he ran a wire over to the other neighbor’s). None of the “united ones” found his lack of official service during the Holidays odd. On the day he put up a new conduit and head and had new wire installed he burned the insulation off his old wire in the privacy of his compound to recover copper value. It really stunk for 8 hours or so. I closed the house and Dorothy took a nap using her supplemental oxygen supply.
I forgot what Louie told me the Governor talked about, but I think it had something to do with the future.
tom (I'm Irish and Catholic) - that accounts for the lack of manners.
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