The Quint House Ghost Story.

The Quint House got it’s name from an enthusiastic group of historic preservation lovers who created the “Rural on the Crystal” historic district in 1986. Rural is a small hamlet about 4 miles south of Waupaca, Wisconsin. It’s heyday was in the 1850’s and 60’s as property owners speculated on real estate in anticipation of the railroad coming through. The track veered north to what is now Waupaca leaving the few square blocks of mostly Greek Revival homes suspended in time like a bee in amber. Up until the 1960’s there was little development and the original architectural features of the district were pristine and mostly intact. But the rapid suburbanization and hip infatuation with “country living” took a toll. Infill, new homes of unflattering shapes and sizes, have diminished the integrity of the area such that only the learned would recognize it’s origin and history.
Radio Waves: Life and Revolution on the Fm Dial
We ended up in Rural because we simply had nowhere else to go. Having been fired from my big city Milwaukee) rock radio dj job, I had decided to abandon the trade all together. The move into what was once our weekend home was life changing. It resulted in two more kids and twenty years of “the good life.” My meeting with the ghost came just after our purchase in 1981 and was five ears before we would make it our permanent home.

We were 22 years old, my partner Kay and I. We had a two year old daughter and were still four years away from making a marriage commitment. We were both full of youthful exuberance and had boundless energy working double full time jobs during the week and then making the two hour trip north every Friday night to “relax.” Our idea of relaxing back then was simply going gonzo in an alternate space. In Wisconsin, that was often “up north.” There the air was fresh and the landscape green. We didn’t actually see much of that as we had purchased a dilapidated 1853 house on Mainstreet. There wasn’t any recognition of the historic district yet and we chose the place mainly because it was cheap. $200 per month on a land contract for two years at the end of which the $20,000 purchase price would have to be paid off. Thus, the race was on to fix the place up and build enough equity such that even my poor credit would be able to secure a loan.

We were risk takers just out of plain old naivete’. We didn’t know it couldn’t be done so we proceeded to spend all our money and weekend time on what was ostensively somebody else’s house.

Dilapidated doesn’t begin to describe all the problems. The house had been owned by an auctioneer who had acquired it as part of a death and estate sale. It had been home to a long series of renters who were white country trash. Of the ten rooms, only three would be used in winter because it was too difficult to heat the porous balance of the space. Thus, much had been closed up for many years. That included all of the upstairs and a east wing that had an oil stained drop ceiling that nearly hit my head as I walked through the room. After some initial homework, we decided to completely gut the house down to the true width 2 x 4’s and start from scratch.

The walls were made from lath and plaster. The lath was unusual in that it was not the precut strips that became popular later but instead was wide 3/8th inch thick rough sawn timber that spanned the width of whatever tree it was cut from. Back then, the pine trees were up to three feet in diameter. The two foot wide board would be raised up to the ceiling horizontally and nails pounded in just along the top edge. Then the board would be split along the grain just a couple inches below the nails and pulled down the wall to create a crack, nailed along that line again, split again and so on such that a two foot wide board would be spread down about 4 foot of wall. The plaster was a mixture that included horsehair that made the walls old 1853 finish brittle and dusty. Removing the plaster and lath required simply exposing one end of the lath by punching out the plaster, grabbing onto the exposed piece of lath and giving it a wicked pull that would cause the balance of it to burst out down the length of the wall. The action was violent as it would send bits of sharp stoney material and shards of splintered wood everywhere adjacent.

Midway into a day of ripping the guts out of the house I paused to relax on a mattress in one of the upstairs bedrooms. As I lay there I started to doze off. Just then I felt someone grab me with two hands and clench my shirt at my chest. He was a massive powerful presence because he then lifted me up from the bed, spun me around and threw me to the ceiling. I dangled there with only his hands and forearms holding me as I then heard screaming from outside the room. I couldn’t make out the words but I felt the blast of his response as heat in my face. Finally, the distant voice drew closer as I heard him say very clearly,

“He’s not wrecking the house, he fixing it up!”

I was tossed gently back onto the bare dust laden mattress and awoke immediately in a cold sweat.

In the 25 years that I owned the house, I never heard from “them” again. But I’ve always kept in mind that when it comes to homes that have a history, we never really own them. We’re mere caretakers for a time. And we need to be very conscious as to the renovation actions we take and the effect they would have not only on those who may inhabit the home in the future, but also on those who have inhabited the home in the past.

Sun Buckles. Sandbakelse. Cookie Recipe.

This is the actual old family recipe card.

The following is the common internet description.

1/2 lb Butter, unsalted
1 c Sugar
1 Egg, large
1/2 ts Cardamom
3 c Flour
Currant or rasberry jam
Xxx sugar (7/8 cup or to taste)

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg. Beat in cardamom and flour. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate for several hours. Heat oven to 375. Lightly butter minimuffin tins. Press dough into tins, making a well with your finger. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until just beginning to brown. Let cool on wire racks. Fill with jelly or jam and sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

How to make lesfe here.

Iz. Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Koreatown.

I like to travel. That’s why I live in Los Angeles. When I walk the streets, to steal a line from an Audioslave song, "It doesn’t remind me of anything."

I came to LA almost two years ago excited about the adventure of acclimating to a place so vast and complex. I had sold my home of 25 years on Main Street in the Town of Rural, Wisconsin. All my neighbors had bought all but a "carry-on’s" worth of belongings at my final estate sale, the house was sold and there was no turning back. It was an adventure for me. Having mourned the end of my solo father years long enough and taken the advice of elders, I could now, without guilt, start new. I could do anything I wanted and I choose the sun, ocean and vibrant culture of Southern California over the next nearest competitor, West Palm Beach, Florida. Comedy is here. National Voiceover work is here. Everything I’d like to pursue is here.

It was a hard landing. What little money I had lasted about three months as I bounced from hotel to hotel trying to get a fix on the lay of the land and where to settle. I ended up going through a few months of sleeping in my little Nissan Pick-up truck and begging $200 every couple weeks from my father. But I never lost my faith in my ultimate abilities. Took a sales job with Sears and looked for a place.

A lot of people come to LA from everywhere and don’t stay long. Like Gladys Knight sang in Midnight Train To Georgia:

"Ohhhhhh...L.A.
Proved too much for the man
He couldn’t make it - so he's leaving a life he's come to know
Say he's going back to find - what's left of his world
The world he left behind not so long ago.
He's leaving! Leavin!"

I found myself singing that song every time it got tough. Especially the later line where she says:

"But he sure found out the hard way,
Dreeeeeams don't always come true."

Anyway, because there is that penchant for folks who come here to not stay for long, and because there are so many more people than there is capacity to house them, finding a place is very difficult. Studios rent for $1,200 and everybody in the Santa Monica/ Venice areas where I wanted to live wanted multiple months down payment and solid references that I didn’t have. I was a risk. So, even though I was making good money pitching kitchens, I had to look elsewhere for an affordable place that was willing to take me.

Koreatown, or Ktown, as the cool locals call it, answered my call. The one room studio I rented is on the front of the building with a big bowed bay window. That’s what I liked about it. It looks onto a busy sidewalk and gets ample natural light. The rent is $725 per month including utilities. Parking is in a three story structure across the street. The Victorian Apartments is just of Wilshire Boulevard, next to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Building. It’s back yard is the site of the old Ambassador Hotel (pictured below), notable because about two hundred yards from my room, Robert F. Kennedy was shot just after midnight on June 5th, 1968. The LA school district is building a school complex there now. They have decided to retain the part of the buildings shell that was the spot in the lobby where he was shot, the site of the infamous photo. It’s haunting to realize I live this close to that place. The tall entrance sign also remains for creative reuse.Within three blocks there is just about everything. Wilshire is a full blown city business district lined with high rises. Just south is a series of 30's and 40's tenements that house mostly Hispanic families and young Korean students. On the other side of them is a shopping district that is Mexico. A long string of shops that cater to those of lesser means with street vendors nightly selling out of "Roach Coaches" and off makeshift shopping carts turned grills. The later of which will cook tortillas and hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Others sell yogurt mixes and fruit.

There are many small strip malls nearby that feature mostly Korean fare. For less than $10 you get several plates of very spicy stuff. I’m still working on liking it. Two blocks North there is a block long building that looks like an abandoned warehouse. It has one thin, long, unmarked hallway you can enter from the street. When I did it led me to a sleeper courtyard of upscale restaurants, tea houses and sports bars. A very cool find. Only about half the Korean businesses have English on their menus and signs but that still leaves plenty of choices. The "Crash" movie stereotype of rude and mean Korean store owners is just crap. I find them to be removed, yes, but always cordial and great business managers, very dedicated to keeping people happy, very service oriented.

Due east there are several very upscale high rise apartments. When I go out locally, often the proprietors assume that’s where I live cause I’m white. I don’t bother to correct them.
So the mix of cultures on the street has the Koreans as primary, the Mexican’s next, then black and then us "What are you doing here?" white dudes. Since moving in 6 months ago I have yet to see any thefts, acts of violence or other various and sundry dangers. Not that they don’t happen, it just isn’t that bad an area. Sundays bring out all the Mexican Catholics to the many giant gothic churches on Wilshire. They parade, hand in hand, as families passing by my window. Each morning a man walks by with a load of silvery balloons that he sells at Mac Arthur Park a mile up the road. Every night the Brass Monkey Karaoke bar hosts regulars and newbie celebrants in the cave like, wood walled basement pub kitty corner across the street.

It’s not Rural, Wisconsin. It’s a trip and "it doesn’t remind me of anything."

Free Hugs.

Immigration.

Look around you. What do you see? Is it all white? Does an all white palette look interesting to you?

When I look around I see a vibrant mosaic of rich colors that give my world depth and greater meaning.

I’ve lived in an all white world and it has about the same appeal as a blank page. It is empty, obvious and begging for words.

My world is LA. They speak 130 different languages here. They are of every size, shape and color. Every political, social and religious point of view. And we live together. We intermingle. We procreate with each other. So far, all the fears that I know exist amongst the ignorant, unexposed rural white folks of the chaos that this blend would birth are unfounded.

The European white Christian culture that has owned the US for the greater part of it’s existence is slowly fading away. Guess they will see how the Native Americans felt. This realization, the fear that comes from that, is the backbone of the anti-immigration movement. It’s not really racism as much as it is pride in ones own heritage and a lack of knowledge in regard to what the change will bring. There’s been little or no exposure. Most white folks are uncomfortable out of their small circle. They just don’t know what a more integrated, mixed future would be but they know it would be different. They like being on top.

When I see the world that my own culture has created I have serious concerns. We’ve been greedy, nasty to mother nature and selfish. We’re a black hole of consumption that does negatively effect the balance of people in the rest of the world. And we haven’t been more worthy, just more aggressive. Just more sure that our way should be imposed upon others. All this without knowing much about them. Without assimilating their beautiful cultural nuances and understanding how the addition of that would make us better.

And yes, I do understand that the immigration argument is all about numbers, costs, expenses and...to a very small degree....security. But I know by personal experience that the contribution that both illegal and legal immigrants make far exceeds the burden in taxes, health care and education.

My soup is gumbo. So full of flavor that you can’t attribute all the smells and tastes that tickle your senses. The anti-immigration soup is boiling water with flour. Tasteless and bland.

This once blank page is full of words and pictures now. Doesn’t it look better?

TRUE COLORS

My Father Had No Father.

A friend of mine shared with me a copy of the eulogy he read at his father’s recent funeral. It was a deftly written description of his elders life, love and heritage. As I read it, it crossed my mind that I may be called upon to do the same someday. I began to consider it’s content and realized that I was not as aware of my father’s, and thus my own, family history in a similar way. I’d had almost no contact with my mother’s parents. On my father’s side, it was just his mother.

My grandmother raised my father on her own. My father’s father had come to Minnesota from Canada, met my grandmother, created a child, and didn’t stick around for very long. He played no real part in my father’s life but was a very important influence. I say that because every living day of my father’s life, his father towered above him like a looming dark cloud. It seems difficult to accept given the large group of close relatives who effectively raised him in the small town "village" of Stillwater, MN. He had loving, close family ties all his life. But at the end of the day it was what he didn’t have that held great power.

Many years ago, just before she passed away, my grandmother sat across from me at a picnic table. It was a family reunion. We were in the campground dance hall and the music was loud. The atmosphere was gay but her face showed concern.

"What will he do without me?"

"Who?" I said.

"Your father, I’m worried about who will take care of him when I’m gone."

"I think he’s big now grandma. He’ll be able to take care of himself."

"His father was only here for a while. He was handsome. I made a..."

I nodded that I understood. She didn’t need to say it.

"You were the strong one Scott. Can you take care of him?"

She was near tears.

I nodded, "Yes" because I knew that’s what she wanted to hear.

Grandma was a tough cookie. She’d never revealed any weakness like that to me before. I could see that this had been on her mind as something she wanted to reconcile at this gathering. I was surprised by her attention and her plea. Clearly she had viewed herself as being the manager of my father’s life for his entire existence. And on that I would agree, he worships her. You can see it in his hoarding of her things after her death and how the mere mention of her name can silence him and force a concerted effort at holding in the pain of living without her.

When we asked about using an old blue floral couch in my father’s basement for my eldest daughters dorm room he said, "That was my mother’s couch. In a dorm room?"

With great reluctance he let it go but we never could admit to him what the disposition of it was once she moved out. It was even hard for me to toss it into the college dumpster because I knew that my father likely could somehow feel pain from it.

As a divorced man having dated a single mother with a child, I’ve gained a little insight into the regrets and guilt that single mother’s carry. They see themselves as having made poor decisions that led to their child’s plight and they have a difficult time letting that go. It can be an ever present attitude that deeply effects the kind of parent they are. I always viewed my grandmother as wickedly controlling and long hoped for my father to be free of her manipulations. Particularly after her death, I hoped that my father would feel free of her judgements and become a happy, unencumbered man.

But grandma’s family reunion concerns were unfounded because she continues to influence his every waking hour. Her lifetime of guidance has embedded itself so firmly into my father that her passing only represented the discontinuation of the use of her body. Everything else remains unchanged. My father has always loved her more than anything because in the formative years of his life, she was all he had. She had earned his loyalty.

His want to make any kind of connection with his father did lead to trips to Canada where he came to know several relatives but his father gave him only denials and disassociation. So he was never able to gain any acknowledgment or acceptance from someone who, by their mere absence, had come to mean a lot to him. My father always wanted to be the father that he never had. But with nothing to draw upon, it was like chasing a ghost in the wind. Instead, he became the mother that he did have. He worries like a mother. He cries like a mother. He’s loyal like a mother and he loves like a mother.

My father had no father, but I do. And he need not worry who will take care of me when he’s gone.

Winter in Viejo (Old) Mazatlan

My flights were short but the connecting layover and the half hour taxi ride made it exhausting. By the time the taxi driver pulled up to the address of the Royal Dutch B & B I was completely out of it. I had drank all day on two planes and at three airports. I either needed more booze soon or to crash big time. I wasn't perceiving where I was or what I was doing when the cab driver rang the bell and then quickly drove off. The doorway wasn't lit but I could see a dim glow coming from the transom above it. Standing in the darkness, for that brief moment, I started to get scared. I looked around and it looked like the inner city neighborhoods that you shouldn't even drive through much less be alone in at night. The street was dimly lit with adjacent buildings in ruins nearby. There was laughter and clapping and incomprensible words that were being drowned out by the blaring of a juke box from the shoddy bar up the street. I felt completely vulnerable and worried that my two adjacent carry on bags made me a target. There was a giant black lab dog sleeping on the corner paying no attention to me. The neighbors across the street opened the shutters from behind the iron bars of their window to peer out and see who was there. Like a whirlwind, the massive wood door flew open to reveal Santa Claus in street clothes, or at least that's exactly how Wilm looked. Chubby rosy cheeks and a Grinch like smile revealed slightly crooked teeth. He was calming. I immediatelty felt I would be safe in his care. He gave me an overview of my accommodations and, sensing I was tired, left me to myself.

Sprawled out with arms and legs wide on the king sized bed the clean sheets made me feel cool. The stark but homey interior showed little imagination but nonetheless you could see there was some effort made at design. A popular print of the Virgin Mary as depicted by Juan Diego and a watercolor poster of an a typical Mexican residential courtyard garden were both attached to the wall with wide cellophane tape. Twelve Hummel Christmas figurines siting on a blue tablemat and properly posed around a bamboo manger on the white painted vanity reminded me of what day it is. There was a large, new hotel looking bathroom with a larger than needed stand up shower area walled in an Italian looking salmon colored marble tile. The hot water poured over me like a warm Jamaican Blue Mountain rain. There was no way, overtired as I was, that I was gonna fall asleep right away, so I headed out the window turned private entrance to the Plazuella Merchado up the street.

The plaza is a football field sized park. The brick sidewalks ring the perimeter around nicely landscaped islands that are enclosed by waist high rust covered iron fencing. The 50' high palm trees reflect the 120 years the park has been there. The newer trees look just like what we would know as Ficus trees only are 20' high and did not die six months after they were purchased. Many of them have their crowns trimmed in square and rectangular shapes giving the plaza an architecturally striking geometric look. The backdrop for all are the two story 100 year old colonial building facades, many with porticos (porches), some newly painted and some wonderfully unattended to for dozens of years.

There were some white painted floral patterened iron benches left empty at one end of the plaza and I sat down to "soak it all in." The trees had the newly popular rope lights strung around and through them, giving the entire area a warm incandescent feel. Dozens of Mexican families were walking around the circle of the plaza. You could easily see who was who. The Grandparents always led the way. Setting a slow pace for their families to follow. They were nearly all walking arm in arm, grandkids with grandparents, teenagers with two arms sometimes wrapped around their own parents midsections and heads leaned onto their parents shoulders. The only ones not coupled up somehow were the toddlers who preferred to run circles around the whole bunch. It was pristine to see all this in the wake of my dramatic flight from my own messed up American life. As I sat in a nearly blissful blur, a true peace was just beginning to set in. An overweight, stern looking, old woman draped in a tattered knee length pinkish floral one piece dress was stepping slowly and methodically 6" at a time just in front of me to my right. As she came to block my bench seats vision from viewing the plaza beyond she stopped to rest and lean against a small newly planted tree. The light of the plaza made her a black sillouette that cast a dark shade on me. I noticed a trickle of water falling between her legs to the ground into the shallow well that surrounded the new tree. She was straddling a faucet and, not accepting what the reality of what I was seeing actually was, I attributed the water to her likely having bumped into it as she walked. But soon the stench of urine began to become more and more obvious and now I could see very clearly that she was pissing all over her unlaced beaten heavy white nurse-like shoes. She was mumbling as she let go of the tree and swung herself onto the bench directly across from me and continued to piss all over it to. Just before deciding it was time to go I glanced at the other benches in the area and they all had small little pools of piss beneath them, including mine. "Welcome to fucking Mexico man!" I said out loud but to myself. "Merry fuckin Christmas!" It would come to be a theme for my stay that for everything that is beautiful about this country, there is likely going to be something that is really fucking ugly to balance it off.

The next morning my crumpled bedside blue jeans smelled of the liquid I had "soaked in" the night before. The B & B hosts worked hard to make me happy. I was their only guest and it was at a time when they needed the cash due to a series of bad luck transactions involving the Mazatlan properties Alecias family owned. After making an apparent sale of one house they contracted for the renovation of another only to have the first gentleman renig on his payment obligations and leaving Alecia to have to ask for credit from suppliers for the first time in her life to finish the work. In Mexico, loan interest is 16-18% so they just don't borrow money- if they can help it. My $45. a night seemed like a deal to me still having my West Palm Beach/USA financial mentality. I had prepaid for 5 days upon my arrival and no doubt they wished me to stay for many, many more. But the many $200.- $300. fun nights out in Florida, hotels, car rentals and just plain recklessness had blown about half my cash, so I was determined to find cheaper digs for the balance of the season.

The Historic District in Mazatlan is a simply wonderful place. Having lots of past preservation experience with my work, home and neighborhood, I could see there was an intelligent effort at making the "Centro" area something to be appreciated. There is an active art, music and dance community that revolves around the recently renovated Angela Peralta Theatre and draws dozens of talented young people to the area nightly. But, in general, as a resurrection, the area is still at the beginning. Which is just what makes it appealing to me. Over 20 years of historic preservation involvement has me jaded. I now don't like the completely renovated American areas at all. They've generally been gutted of whatever local culture used to exist and been replaced by chic upper income snobs who are there for the sole reason of being seen. They all end up as souless facades dedicated to consumption. No doubt, this too will someday happen to "Viejo (old) Mazatlan" but the barriers that stand in the way of development are strong and it likely will be many years before the Mexican residents will be run out and replaced by immigrants. Laws that inhibit property sales unless all possible relatives have been compensated end up leaving some houses unattended for dozens of years. Thus, the majority of the old homes in the district are vacant. Many without roofs and with trees growing inside. It's just beautiful. These now intermixed with recently renovated properties and local residiences in varying states of decay. It makes a walk through the narrow streets wonderous. It is safe at all times of the day and night due to a successful program to add reproduction street lighting and constant bicycled police attention.

As I wandered I came across a renovated apartment building called "The Melville." (Named for Herman Melville but there is no apparent real connection with exception to the fact the he "Once visited Mazatlan" as the tour guides say.) For some reason the place just struck me, I thought "This is it!" I rented a one bedroom second level suite who's two room layout resembles the Embassy Suites in America. It had a small but efficient kitchen, was newly painted, bright and airy. It's prime feature was a fountain in the courtyard of the typically colonial rectangular layout. There were Bouganvilla vines growing up the majority of the walls with white and red flowers that gracefully rained down on you regularly as you walked through the first floor halls. It just couldn't have been more perfect. Originally, it had been designed and first promoted as an elderly residential care facility but was unable to draw enough full time residents to make it so now they had opened it up to goofy dudes like myself. There were still several full time seniors living there and they would gather nightly on the veranda for wine and chatter. They were a wealth of both good and bad advice.

I loved my apartment. It overlooked a three story ruin and the main street that connected the plaza to the Olas Altas beach three blocks away. Multicolored lights zig zaged above the length of that narrow passage as adornment for the yearly Carnaval celebration and gave the streetscape a rosy glow at night. There was a small balcony New Orleans style with an iron railing that was rusted to perfection. The smooth masonry facade of the building across the street caused voices to reflect perfectly unadulterated into my room. Some afternoons I would just sit in the bed beneath the fan and listen to the short bits and pieces of conversations that would pass by on the street below. Most of them unintelligible because they were in Spanish but some were in english and I would hear things I knew people likely would have not wanted me to hear. I'm not naturally a voyeur, I just liked having the place wide open and two double door windows when swung out made that entire wall almost disappear. Occasionally, I would hear something I didn't want to hear. Like the sound of a confrontation, it seemed, between two young adults, in spanish and calling out to each other loudly followed by the screech of bus tires. Silence for a brief moment and then an anguished female scream that held nothing back and threw sudden fear into the pit of my stomach. I lept to the balcony to see the tearful young mexican woman walking briskly beneath my room hugging a small limp terrier in her clenched arms. The sweat drenched boyfriend trailed behind staring down with both hands on his head. I have to admit to relief at the sight of the dog because on many occassions I had seen many near misses of vehicles and children who traverse the blind corners of the old neighborhood.

One day an organized walking tour was passing by on the street below. It had come from the "Zona Dorada" or "Golden Zone" commercial district several miles away where silver jewelery, trinkit shops and 1970's hotels are intermixed with the chaos of the large mass of short term vacationing revelers. As I listened to the guide do his rap it began to sound familiar. At one point he encouraged everybody to peer in through the front door to the hallway and the fountain in the courtyard beyond. One by one they would look in and make comments like "Oh my God isn't that beautiful!" One woman lingered and said to her husband "Honey! We should come back here and take a look at it!" It was then that I realized that I had taken the same tour two years ago and had thought the same thing. And here I was. I felt stupid at first, embarrassed by the revelation that someone had worked a deal out with the tour company to have the tourists peek in to the place as a tease for possible future business and I bit. I felt snookered. I had to know who the sneaky but smart person was that was responsible so I sent out feelers of interest in the building, the historic district and the possibility of my investing in real estate here and the person I wanted to find found me. He was XXXXXXX.

A lunch with a couple of 30 year formerly american local residents filled me in. "XXXXXXX" invented the historic district" said one of them who proceeded to drive me around town showing me potential properties for sale. Everybody here who speaks english has an angle on new gringo visitors. Hers was working real estate deals, but there were many others who I would run into who all had interesting and different ways to take my cash. Americans are a mark in Mexico, it's just something you have to get used to. So after a couple attempts at getting together that got canceled due to XXXX's high demand, I finally cornered him for dinner at the restaurant he owns and runs on the plaza- X's & X's. X's, as it is called, has a long history of good food and great service and a solid reputation with the 4,000 or so full time canadian and american residents. But on any given day you will find the local hispanic affluent types outnumber them. There is Jacque, the sax, clairinet, flute player who used to play with Glenn Miller way back when to serenade diners as they sit amongst tasteful local art of all types and shapes. XXXX is gladhanding everybody who passes our table like good bar owners are supposed to do and orders up oysters rockfeller for the both of us. I was nervous. I had no specific adgenda but I knew I didn't want to make a poor impression because he very clearly was an impressive local connection. I told him of my preservation past experiences and that I was impressed with his efforts here. He explained that he had gone to Washington DC to participate in the National Trust for Historic Preservations Main Street training program. And, knowing that I was familiar with that, begged me to understand that Mexico is different than the United States and thus things happen slower. He surprised me because he had not struck me as being a modest person, bragging about his next and upcoming parking garage project and the expansion of XXXX's into a courtyard currently not in use. But he was, for this moment, subdued and, yes, modest. There was even a sense of failure about him that I quicky squelched by telling him of a couple of examples of mistakes I had made in my hometown. "When you do someting like this, you can piss a lot of people off and they hold grudges" he said. This I knew. And on that we both nodded and were silent for a bit til I admitted that I was pretty burnt out by it all and actually had no intention of participating in anything like that here. That turned out to be a mistake. Once he saw there was no money coming his way from me, he suddenly found the gorgeous Argentine mother and her equally gorgeuos contemporary dancer daughter much more interesting. "I'm married but I can't help it" he said as his way of ending our discussion of anything business-like."The mother would be good for you but the daughter is who I want." He then walked directly over to them and left me behind with free oysters. I have to say I do admire him for his stamina. Not only is he still working, at 50 years old plus, for the same goal he has been after for many years, he has endured the trama of it all with little or no damage to his Latin libido. When the "gold rush" influx of renovation money I described to him happens in Mazatlan, he or his family will be well positioned to make great profit from it.

Among them will be his slimey brother QQQQ. I met QQQQ on my first day roaming the plaza. He and a partner had just opened a hole in the wall art gallery and I got snared into it's web. QQQQ, short with slick back hair, is actually not as crooked as he looks. He's a small time anything for a buck kinda guy. When I told him I had an interest in local real estate for renovation he told me, "I have exclusives with all the local families, I can get you any place you want for the best price!" I never took him seriously. You couldn't. His sleaze was comical. His associate was the straight man. When I asked about a black and white framed photo they had for sale he was the one who gave me the art rap about it. There was a list of all the photographers accomplishments on the back. It contained some art gallery showings and reflected the fact that he had worked for the Associated Press for a time but was otherwise not impressive. The price? Two Hundred Dollars. And of course somebody else was interested in it so I better buy it today. Pressure but not too bad. It being Friday night, I told him I would take the weekend to think about it and check my accounts on Monday to see if I could afford it and that seemed fine with him.

The next evening I dined at the Beach Burger across the plaza from the art gallery. The straight man saw me and waved and I invited him to join me. Soon his wife joined us and later his son. It was a wonderful meal, big juicy burgers american style with good company. He told me how he and his wife met. He was formerly appointed by the governor of an adjacent state to oversee all the antiquities at nine state owned museums. It was very fullfilling work receiving and cataloging existing and newly donated pieces. He was even given a budget for an assistant who he admitted he picked based on her looks and now was sitting across from me. He lost the job when the governor was not re-elected and kept the assistant and so now, here he is. As we finished our meal he shooed his wife and son off. QQQQ rushed from across the plaza by the gallery up to the table in a frenzy. They spoke spanish to each other with a sense of urgency and fear. Finally, QQQQ takes off and I am left wondering what has happened. My dining partner begins. "Scott! My friend! The most unfortunate thing has just happened to us! The owner of the Jazz Bar next to the gallery promised to buy the paintings of the four fat ladies today and now he says he has no money!" He looks down at the table with both hands wrapped around his forehead and then leans in close and looks up directly at me. "If you have the money now I can sell you the black and white photograph for only $175.00! You would be helping us out! We really need it! What can you do Scott?"

I sat dumbfounded for a moment. The entire meal, it turns out, had been scam to get me to buy the fuckin photograph. I felt so hurt I couldn't speak. What a fuckin fool I was. "Scott! You are my friend right? What can you do for me?" I said nothing. All I could do was stand up and leave. It was the same way I felt when, as a 20 year old new father years ago, I allowed a young college aged Kirby vacuum cleaner guy to give my apartments carpet a "free cleaning" and ended up with two older salesman "closers" pounding me with baseball bats to buy one. I felt like a sucker.

The old folks at the Melville consoled me. If I had bought the photograph, THEN I would be a sucker, they said. But I didn't and besides I was a tall handsome american who every beautiful Mexican woman wanted (they were really working on proping me up here).

Among the locals who hang at XXXX's outside sidewalk tables is Mike. Mike is tall and his hair is bleach white styled in a "clean cut". He's 48 years old going on 60. Mike's story was repeated to me by several local sources. Mike's family was among the most weathly in Mazatlan during his youth. He was afforded the life many rich kids enjoy. He was wildly spoiled and lived the party life well into his adult years. He and XXXX "grew up together." Mike's love for cocaine had him addicted to the degree that he had basically snorted all his families money up his nose. When he got so far into the drug dealers for money he didn't have, they kidnapped his mother. Unable to cover his debt, his mother was murdered. It's hard to sit next to a man and not be overwhelmed at the weight this must have on him today. But if you didn't know the story, there is nothing about him that would tip you off. Mike doesn't drink. He's left with cigarettes as his only vice and his demeanor is jovial. He speaks excellent english, which is helpful given his time share sales position, and never reveals a sliver of pain. He's perennially "up." Wide smiles accompany every handshake. His wife is a classy, beautiful Mexican woman who looks like the kind who are able to enforce fidelity. He talks "chick" talk but very clearly doesn't walk the walk like most mexican men. I can only think he is very good at hiding whatever weight he carries for being responsible for the death of his mother or he has come to terms with it. I pray for the later. I like Mike.

Their are many more women than men in Mazatlan. It likely is because the majority of marrying age men are in the United States working. There are also social cultural norms that work against the women of Mexico. The 10% partner and manager of the Cafe Pacifico Bar on the plaza is named YYYY. Sitting at the bar with his wife to his right and his teenage son to his left between he and I, he tried to explain to me how it was for women in Mexico. "They are..." he struggled for the right English words "...low. Is that how you say?" He gestures downward toward the floor with a flattened palm,"...Low?" I nodded slightly up and down. He was later joined by his "friend" SSSSS. She was beautiful and YYYY admitted they were sometimes lovers but that it had to be kept quiet for her sake because she was the concubine of a married man and if he found out she was seeing someone else, she would be cut off. She worked on her own selling advertising for a local small paper but, with two kids from dads who were no longer in the picture, would be in a very difficult circumstance without his financial assistance. I asked Ruben how much money she gets from the married paramor and he replied, "Oh maybe $70. or sometimes $100. a month." The amount threw me for a loop. That's "low."

It's easy for an american like myself to walk around Mazatlan thinking you are the "shit." American's live under the basic assumption that they are better than the rest of the world and can't hide it when they travel. They are arrogant and the Mexican mentality is to give way to it. They look down as you walk past them and have a real feeling of inferiority. I work hard to communicate my feelings of admiration and equality by smiling with my eye contact and saying the proper greetings in Spanish. It's a small and maybe futile effort. You do sense some resentment and outright dislike of americans that likely comes from the impression that is left by the hordes of idiots who leave cruise ships for eight hours and descend on Mazatlan like locusts. They're always loud, fat and "bar tan" white. They look right through everyone they come in contact with. They rape the language by saying things like, "Bringa de checko!"

Mexican men are short so, at 6' 2", I tower over most of them. Mexican women always notice me. Some try hard not to look, many don't. But you sense that everywhere you go, both the mexican men and women are aware of your presense. You have to act like you come here all the time and don't notice it. You also have to keep yourself in check by remembering the perspective most mexican women have. Amelda or "Mela" (pronounced "may la"), as she was called, helped me to understand. I had taken many rolls of film to the Kodak shop where she worked on several occasions. She was charming and funny knowing very little english but enough to explain to me when things got screwed up- which was on nearly every trip- that there were "complicacions." She didn't have the use of her smaller left arm which looks as though it's malformation has existed from birth. She started to play with the pronunciation of my last name to the point where she had all the other co-workers saying it too. "Beee dum! Bee dum!" They would laugh as they said it because it sounded more like a sound than a name. I invited her for a "cafe" (coffee) after work where we scribled on four paper placemat backsides to aid in the communication. She was 29 and had no childen. She had worked there for 9 years. She was paid on commission depending on sales that generally amounted to $8-$12.00 (usd) per day or about $300 .per month. She wanted to learn english because she would like to try to find a better paying job in the hotel zone. Better pay meaning up to $100.- $200. more per month. She lived in the impoverished "colonias" outside of town and took a 30 minute bus ride to work 6 days a week, ten hour days. Her last boyfriend was 49 years old. She lived with her mother and her sisters 3 year old twins were loud and visited their home too often. She wanted a friend, not a lover, to help her learn english.

Mela's story contrasted dramatically with that of 31 year old Lili. I met Lili (lee lee) on one of my drunken beach days. The Bruha Playa (beach) was the surfers hangout. It was way out at the end of the Cerritos bus line, the farthest the Mazatlan city buses go, so it was generally uninhabited and by far the best beach in the area. The area is referred to as "Nuevo Mazatlan" (New Mazatlan) because it's the next designated area to be raped by new construction. This is how they do it here. They recklessly overbuild an area, let it go all to hell, then move on to the next area. The Mazatlan sequence started at Olas Altas, the now historic area where I am staying, then moved North along a five mile beach ultimately ending at what is now the "Golden Zone." The devastation of this movement leaves the empty building carcuses of periods past to rot and stink in the sun. Just once it would be nice to hear someone say, "We're not moving anywhere else until we clean up the horrible mess we've left behind!" Twenty years from now the current hotel zone, if the mentality stays the same, will be Gary Indiana. Lili's parents own a string of 15 tourist clothing shops and have a condo in that hotel area at the El Cid Mega Complex tower building. Built in the 1970's, it's the epitomy of tacky exhuberance. Lili drives a new Volkswagon Jetta and has her own three story, typically American suburban house in one of El Cid's gated subdivisions. When we met at a local dance club she introduced me to a couple she worked with who she referred to as "poor people." She would begin her interpretations of what they said by saying, "In Mazatlan, when you are poor..." Her short, newly dyed red hair surrounded a well fed face. She was effervescent. Happy. When she drove the woman co-worker to her mostly corragated sheet metal home in the "colonias", she knew all the back roads to get there. Mostly pitted and dirt covered, we traveled slowly along them for an hour there and back. "They are poor but they are happy" she said. Lili is looking for a man to be the father of her 2 year old son, live in her new house and watch tv with her. "With me, you don't have to work if you don't want to." I understood the reason for the appeal but doubted it would be that easy.

"Lougee" is passing by on the street below my apartment. It's not his name, I call him that because the has a routine of blowing his nose repeatedly and then working diligently for 15-20 seconds summoning up the most flem he can manage from deep inside himself and then hocks it out with great energy every morning to greet my new day. He's probably 60 years old with a clean white tee shirt stretched taughtly over a giant beer belly that sways back and forth because one of his legs is much longer than the other. I don't know where he goes but have come to trust his timing as to when I should get up better than the kooky city roosters who will crow at all hours of the night.

I've been trying very hard to live life in a healthy manner here. It's not too hard. There is a market open early every day with fresh fruit, vegetables, all types off seafood and a side of beef if I would need it, within walking distance. On the way is the Panama Bakery that features fresh bread for about seventy cents (usd) opening at 7am. And the "El Farro" lighthouse peak provides ample exercise with a view of the entire area as a reward only a half mile away. No need for a car either as buses are regular and go everywhere. There is another plaza nearby that has the Cathedral as it's key anchor and a lively local citizenship. Entertainment is weekly at the Angela Peralta theatre that has included ballet, folk and contemporary dancing, independant musical groups of all types (percussionists next week) and glitzy vegas like shows with cheezy costumes and bad acting. Every Saturday night a different foreign film is shown for the hip crowd. New DVD movies can be rented 1 block away. Internet cafes abound and pizza by the slice is featured in windows everywhere. There is a new hip cafe called "Centro 28" that draws many of the students and performers from the theatre as does the gay owned vegetarian Ambrosia Restaurant just off the plaza. Oh yeah, the weather is great from November through June, so the ocean is always an option. And when I find I need to be among "homies" I take the bus up to the hotel zone and, cause I'm a white guy, am able to enjoy any of their pools with no problems. Many of the waiters there are getting to know me as a "Crasher" because I feel obligated to tip heavy due to the fact that I'm not paying $300. a day for a room. Tip heavy means to tip 20% instead of the typical Canadian or tight ass american 10%. It's nothing when you are talking two pina coladas in an afternoon. Now, nearing the end of my stay, I've made an exercise of trying to extend my stay by being tight myself and am down to about $30. a day needed for everything.

It is still Mexico so you have the usual negatives, unattended dog poop and garbage are difficult to acclimate to as is the sewage treatment stench that can pervade the mornings that lack sufficient enough wind. There are the small conversations that you don't take part in when out in public because you don't speak the language that can have an isolating effect. And there are the scary police stories that I fortunately have none personally to relate to you. They seem to leave the americans alone but to the Mexican people, espacilly the teenage boys, they are to be feared. And no, you still shouldn't drink the city supplied tap water without proper filtration.

Mexico isn't what most americans think it is. And a week at an all inclusive resort or timeshare won't enlighten you. A long stay in a place like Mazatlan's Historic District will. It may even give you the courage to return to the US to attend to all the crap that was the reason for leaving in the first place. The difficulity will be to resist the temptation to stay. Good Luck.