La Vida Mexico

  Part 1. My family moved to the downstairs half of a duplex in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, (Milwaukee suburb) when I was in high school.  The teamsters, of which my Dad was one, went on strike.  A job opportunity (read new winter coat) presented itself when my pal Bunkie and I discovered that the Top Forty Radio  Station just across the park from us needed some willing labor to catalog 45 records that were replacing the 78's they had always "spun."   We hired on to catalog records for about $25 a month.  Bunkie returned to the real world of school and nursing dreams.  I stayed at WRIT in Milwaukee for the rest of my high school career.  I worked from four to eight each night of the week, cataloging new releases, helping with contests and winners, learning to write copy and generally having a very good time.  Our night time newsman for a while was Tom Snyder who went on to become a late night talk show host.  DJs came and went, our progra...

  The longer I live the more I admire my mother.  I try to emulate her.  Since I have up and moved far away from my family I see parallels. Not in everything, she married late and I married early.  Her third child and only son was born with severe cerebral palsy and she was forty-five. All four of mine were healthy and whole before I was thirty. She was married to an over the road, long haul truck driver who was not around much to help.  He did help when he was there. Anyway, after both girls moved to Texas and Dad retired, they came down to the Houston area, bought a house, Daddy worked the players gate at the Astrodome and he loved that. Unfortunately, while not freezing cold winters, Gulf Coast heat and humidity turned out to not be a great choice for folks with rampant arthritis, Mom, and emphysema, Dad, they decided to head for the higher and drier west.  After a year of checking out towns and nursing homes, they chose Lordsburg, New Mexico, as far wes...

  Phlegm. Yup, not bronchitis, not allergies, not Covid, Phlegm. Turns out that it begins a circle of death.   To get rid of phlegm you take steriods, that lower your immune system, that encourage other infections.   Then you take antibiotics to get rid of infections, and they cause endless digestive difficulties. Or, a new doctor, insisting that your lungs are fine (in Spanish) says it is allergies.  So a myriad of allergy medications are tried.  He has his own farmacia. The arrival of a serious bout of sciatica adds a luscious mixture of other medications to the mix.  Most effective is a generous shot of various B vitamins and the continual use of a glucosamine, condroitina and CBD pill that actually helps!  Not falling down so much anymore.  Not walking as far but at least walking. So I designed my own pharma template:  Allergy inhaler, cough medicine, vitamins C and E, magnesium and lots of water, juices, electrolytes, limoada a...

  While in conversation with a friend and her friend, a successful consultant,  he turns to her and says, "she's funny, she should write."  "Oh she does, she blogs." Him, "oh send me some of them.  I will forward them to an expert, he can edit them and fix them and then see if he thinks they would be marketable." Uh, never mind.  I've been writing for over seventy years and if not successfully at least able to support myself and four children, keep roofs over their heads and food on the table.  I wrote and produced a ton of radio and television commercials, newsletters, speeches for some fairly bright and demanding employers and an occasional unpublished story or two. What a great idea, at eighty, to provide my pitiful scratchings to an expert who may be able to clean them up and make me some money? That's great.  Thanks for the offer.  I'm sure you mean well. But I've never been great at taking "constructive criticism."  Undo...

 "Can you believe she's eighty?  Wow, you don't look that old." But I do in the mirror.  I no longer walk more than five miles easily. My skin is disgusting. Other families allow me to be a part of them.  My own has little or nothing to do with me. My Spanish is laughably bad.  Local ladies in my age group just rattle along as if someday I'll know what they are saying.  The kids giggle.  Chuy asks his uncle "what does she think she is saying?" Many of the people in my daily encounters seem to think I'm okay.  Laundry, including the owner, appear to appreciate my business.  My several regular eateries greet me warmly.  At Quack Burgers they  know my usual order. I have made a conscious effort to create daily connections.  I have a regular bacon smoking guy from Argentina.  He waves and/or visits with me even on days I can't afford two hundred pesos for killer bacon. My taxi driver waves and smiles  a greeting even thou...

 teaches me something new about this country where I now live and most likely will die. In June I moved to a small town on a pretty river, Las Juntas y Los Veranos.  I have friends here and they introduced me to a couple from Washington who have a small, quirky hotel here on the Rio Horcones.  These folks drive back to the northwest US in their big rv every June and return back in December.  I don't know for sure why I thought living in a small hotel on a river by myself was the answer, but I did.  And here I am. Lessons abound, but the one I am currently learning is about Ejidos.  What is an Ejido? An ejido is an area of communal land used for agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights rather than ownership rights to land, which in Mexico is held by the Mexican state. Peasants awarded ejidos in the modern era farm them individually in parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings with government oversight. They also are allowed to de...