Hola and welcome to the Traveling Boomers. First, a few basics. My name is Dan and I am a native Chicano (Mexican American), born and raised in the San Francisco East Bay city of Richmond. I’m a first wave baby boomer and came soon after my father had proven his worth as a welder at the Kaiser Oakland shipyards and married my mother who was working at the time screwing in torpedo fuses at a converted American Standard plant.
Richmond was a hard city to grow up in back then and probably still is for many who live there. I spent my college years in and around Berkeley and now live in Whittier with my wife and life partner, Alicia.
I’ve always had a hunger to see the world and have been fortunate in that I’ve traveled extensively over the years. In terms the career journey, I spent several years as a librarian working the inner city and then pursued a doctorate in information science at UW-Madison. My doctoral research focused on the information seeking behavior of Latinos and the topic required me to travel and gather information from Latinos throughout the Midwest and East Coast.
I leveraged my degrees to move into the corporate world where my work and travel schedule allowed me to see and taste the bigger world. I met people and managed operations in Japan, Mexico and other parts of the world. It was great to use my business travels (with corporate perks) to check out as many jazz clubs, museums, and historical sites as time allowed.
Then came about a decade working and consulting with energy firms, including a stint doing a turn-around for a natural gas firm in Kentucky. Life changed dramatically after 9/11 and I decided to leave the big business hustle and satisfy a long-held desire to teach. I found a refuge close to our home and for the last twenty years I served as a professor of business and sustainability at Whittier College, the sole HSI Title V liberal arts college in the US.
During my time at Whittier College and during three teaching stints with the unique Semester at Sea academic program I managed to take college students on over a hundred and fifty field trips in twenty plus countries. A couple of those field trips stand out and there are a few tales of them in this blog.
It was hugely satisfying to teach but the low salary motivated me to start my own consulting firm in the energy efficiency and water conservation arenas. It was good to blend theory, strategy, and practice in the classroom. The students responded well to the mix, and many of them still keep me current via their postings and wanderings.
I retired a few years back but convinced my wife to join me once more as I will teach again in Madrid as a Fulbright Scholar during the Spring 2026 semester. We have traveled extensively in Spain and enjoy the people, the great food and wine, and the diverse regions that make it one of our favorite places to travel and live. We are looking forward to our return to Spain and this blog will soon have a few stories of our travels to come.
My first solo travel venture away was in the mid-60s and my best guess is that I’ve been to ninety plus countries. Alicia and I will keep venturing as long as health, mind, and spirit are good and in sync. Along the way we’ve met and made friends with other wanderers, including expats, digital nomads, retirees and others who have ventured away from the ordinary.
While we’ve enjoyed many great vacations and escapes in the past our travel goals today are different. We’re both “retired” but not tired and plan to continue venturing. It’s been several years since we started planning our own adventures and going solo when we could.
Our goal when away is to get familiar with the mercados, meet the local people, and perhaps most of all share a meal and glass or two with new friends.
Alicia and I have had some glorious adventures. Last year we completed our third voyage with the Semester at Sea program. That last voyage took us across the Mediterranean and due to the outbreak of war in Gaza we took an unexpected five thousand mile detour down the coast of Africa and then across the Indian Ocean to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. That’s another story you can find in this blog.
So, it’s time for Alicia and I to get back to planning our cycle of adventures and trust you will take a moment to think about your next venture.
Dad loved going to the Tampico on weekends to play pool, drink beer and hang with his friends. The Tampico was the only real Mexican bar in the neighborhood and was located on 4th and Macdonald in Richmond, a working-class city dominated by Standard Oil, the biggest refinery in Northern California. The Tampico was only a few blocks from our home on the “good” side of the tracks that separated the poor part of the town with the growing population of Mexicans from North Richmond, the unincorporated side of town where most of the blacks lived. My mother would often send me to the Tampico to see if he was winning at pool and to bring back as much of his winnings as I could convince him to give me to take home. It all depended on how loaded he was and whether he was on a winning streak, which was often the case.
Dad’s drinking buddies were all working class men who had little or no education. He reigned over them as he was a master welder, a champion pool player, and darn good at the races where he studied the horses and jockeys. During the racing season he would go to Golden Gate Meadows with his fellow race buddies where they would spend the day comparing race notes, placing bets, and drinking beer. He won far more often than his friends as he took the time to study the racing stats and he used an old set of binoculars to study the horses and their jockeys.
Richmond was then and still is an East Bay city, known by many in the San Francisco area as the armpit of the Bay Area. The city was controlled by a handful of white businesspeople and old school WW2 veterans who squeezed what they could out of the city that supplied the workers to man the round the clock shifts at Chevron and American Standard. Dad was a master welder and worked at American Standard, the only other major local employer that produced toilets, sinks, and like goods. The Tampico was the prime water hole for my father and the other Mexicanos who worked at Chevron, American Standard, and the few remaining shipyards that lined the Richmond harbor.
Most of his buddies and close family members called him Don or Jefe Cuco, as Cuco was his nickname and they looked up to him as a leader, a jefe. He was always pissed off at the city council and police who he called corrupt and self-seeking ‘pendejos’, idiots. When I was in fifth grade he banded together with his friends and launched La Gente (The People), the first Mexican based community organization in Richmond that focused on community concerns. The time was ripe as his small organization grew quickly and drew the attention of the Anglo power brokers. His goal was to educate and organize the Mexican community to support our community to provide needed services. La Gente soon became a beacon for the Mexican based community and created alliances with other organizations, ranging from a partnership with the Catholic Churches in our community to bury the deceased Mexican poor with dignity. Dad and his supporters also sponsored several sports clubs and events, including a boxing club that sponsored fights that generated income for La Gente. While Dad avidly supported my book reading habit he also wanted me to learn how to fight so he insisted I join the organization’s youth boxing club. Growing up in Richmond required several skills, including knowing how to fight, both the clean and street ways. In short Dad was a born leader but he was also an old school Mexican who played as hard as he worked and the Tampico was his primary playground where he held court, gambled, played pool, and drank.
Dad grew up in Zacatecas and never knew his father who died in a mining accident, somewhere in northern Ariona. He was a gifted boy who worked to support his mother as soon as he could walk a donkey to the mountains to collect firewood to sell to the local women for cooking. There were no schools in his small mountain town, so he grew up without the benefit of a formal education. While he never attended a day of school in Mexico and taught himself to read and write in Spanish and English and education for his children was a given. He pounded the value of education into our heads and was very proud when we brought home our report cards with good grades. Unlike most of my cousins’ parents, Dad and Mom always attended the parent teacher meetings and they took special pride when we were recognized at school for whatever reason. So, he was OK with my going to the Tampico to ask for some of his winnings to take home as it gave him a chance to brag about his number one son, me.
One of Dad’s cardinal rules was that I could keep half of whatever money I earned from doing yardwork for neighbors and selling things that I picked up in Mexico. I never had an allowance and learned early how to sell whatever might bring in a few coins, from the eggs laid by our chickens in our backyard to fireworks I brought back from our regular trips to Mexicali to visit his brother and my Mexican family in Cucapah, an ejido, just south of the border. I loved those trips where I ran across the corn fields and took skinny dips in the irrigation ditches with my Mexican cousins. I always took my savings with me and did a booming business after every trip to Mexico with Dad as I always brought back bags of fireworks, including M2s, firecrackers, sparklers, and rockets. The fireworks were hot sellers in school until a couple of my friends and cousins blew up a few of the toilets at our elementary school. One of my school customers guys snitched on me and I got off with a few swatches from the school custodian. I was forced to abandon that business and looked for other revenue sources.
By age ten I had diversified my sources of income beyond mowing lawns, doing yardwork, and running errands for Mrs. Negus, a wheelchair bound Anglo neighbor and a surrogate mom to me. I loved Mrs. Negus whose son had died in WW2 leading a bombing raid over Germany. She had a big yard that always needed attention. We would often share ice cream and a donut after I finished the yard work and one day it dawned on me that the Tampico might be a good place to sell donuts as I could buy day-old donuts for twenty-five cents a dozen and maybe sell them for five cents each. A dozen could net me almost fifty cents and two dozen might bring me a dollar, big money back in the early fifties.
I bought two dozen donuts one Sunday morning after going to mass with Mom and my younger sister and brother. Mrs. Negus had paid me fifty cents the day before for doing the lawn and bringing her a few things from the local store. That fifty cents bought me two dozen day-old donuts, one dozen of the glazed and the other a mix of old fashion and chocolate topped. It was around noon when I arrived at the Tampico and it was louder than usual as it was filled with boisterous men playing pool, drinking beer and hard liquor, and arguing about the Giants game that was on the radio. Dad motioned me over and asked what I was carrying, and I showed him my donuts. He took a glazed one, ate it quickly and asked if I was taking the rest of the donuts home. I told him no and that maybe his friends might like a donut or two and that I would take the leftover donuts home. He motioned to his buddies to come over and they started reaching for the donuts. I gathered my courage and said that the donuts were five cents each and within a few minutes I was sold out. For the first time Dad told me I could keep all the profits and to not tell my mother about my new business at the Tampico as she would brag to her friends and I could end up with competition from their own boys. I wasn’t too concerned about that as I knew my father was the Tampico king and would protect my new business venture.
After that first donut day at the Tampico, I was a regular on Sundays and within a few weeks saved enough money to buy a decent fishing pole, a good used bike, and lots of second-hand books. The Tampico was good to me as long as the day-old donut supply lasted. I still like donuts, especially the old fashion glazed ones, as it reminds me of the good old days of donuts at the Tampico.
My baby sister Syl was flying cross the Pacific every week as her Oakland based airline had a contract with the DoD to carry fresh cannon fodder to Vietnam. Syl was an airline hostess and loved her role although she was always depressed after each flight knowing that several of the young guys they were taking east to war would not return. She told me that after every Vietnam flight she needed a day or two to forget the last one and get psyched for the next one. So, after the hard flights she would go out with her girlfriends and they would do the club scene in SF, mostly around Union Square where the high-end clubs welcomed beautiful woman. I was living in Madison at the time pursuing a doctorate and Syl regularly updated me via our calls when she would tell me about the newest hot spots where she and her mates would enjoy drinks, often some smoke, and perhaps a kiss or more with new male friends. She said it was their antidote to the war as they needed to dump the funk before the next flight. It was on one of those nights that her friends suggested they hit the Tenderloin district for a change of pace.
She met G that night. He was out with other club members gathering to celebrate their recently enhanced notoriety. One of the contemporary hipster writers had just come out with a bestselling book on One Percenters that identified their club as the leaders of the packs. Syl said the boys liked to meet at a pool hall in the Tenderloin that enforced a live and let live policy towards bikers. The pool hall was also well known for their excellent roast beef sandwiches. She took to G in a flash. Yes, he was a guero (white guy) with great abs, thick black hair, and a don’t screw with me attitude. Syl was also a gueirta but thoroughly Chicana. So, within a few minutes after walking into the pool bar she made her way to the pool table and laid down a ten, big money for those times. She walked to the other end of the table from G and said ‘let’s play’.
She quickly knocked all those balls where they belonged. Syl bragged to me later that she took fifty bucks from the guys and that they all paid. There were four other guys at the table and they all fell in lust with her that night and asked where she learned to play. Syl smiled and confessed that our dad had shown her how to use the stick since she was nine. So, Syl took their money, including 10 from G, and she became a newfound princess to that tribe from the day on. She knew they thought she was special and that even the aloof G liked her. While G didn’t drink alcohol due to some family history, he paid for two rounds for everyone. After the second round he asked Syl if she was Ok with leaving her friends and helping him with a job that needed to get done and then, if she was up for it, to see the sun rise at his cafe on the Bay.
She left with G and that evening they shared fragments of family history and a few personal tales. All this as Syl handed G gobs of cash to put through the bill counter. She said it was like processing cheese, but it was cash. G told her that night that he was the treasurer for his club. He also consulted with the club affiliates all over the US and overseas. Syl was impressed by G’s quiet way, this treasurer of the Oakland chapter of a big-time motorcycle club of One Percenters. It took them several hours to sort, bundle and count up the cash. It came to about twenty-five thousand dollars and G said that it was an average night.
G explained to Syl on that first night that he was a simple smoke and beer man, sometimes wine. He was clear that he stayed away from hard alcohol and drugs. His priorities were to maintain good health, keep his bike clean and ready, and ensure that his club’s finances were in order. Syl asked G if he had a current girlfriend and he said no and he asked the same of her with the same answer. After the money work was done they smoked a joint and talked even more. G said it was time for breakfast and the sunrise so they got on his bike and went to the Buena Vista overlooking the marina. Syl told me all this and more about the evening over that first call about G. I was away in Madison pursuing a doctorate and living a different life and she ended the call that night saying that she met someone who she wanted to know a lot more.
I was away at school throughout the first two years that they were dating and did not meet him. When I returned home, I leveraged my degree to get on the big business treadmill and was always on the road or in the air. I was a rising corporate guy and G did not fit into my social mix so I did not meet him throughout the time they were dating each other. I know it disturbed Syl that I was not friendly to G but she felt that as long as our father accepted him that was enough.
Syl enjoyed riding with G on the club runs and after a long one that took them into Montana they got married by an ordained minister who worked with club members. He was not a One Percenter and the marriage was legitimate. None of the family attended the wedding and I was glad that she decided to do it far from our home. I did not meet G until a year after they returned home. Our first meeting was a heavy one as my family had gathered to deal with an ugly situation and G was there to listen. The intervention solution meant dealing with a predator in-law and we were not in agreement how to do it until G spoke up and offered to fix the matter with no questions. We declined his offer but I was impressed by his words and demeanor.
G was very good to my sister, and I never saw him lose his cool, and I had some very interesting talks with him about the workings of the world. Syl and G invited me to crash with them whenever I needed a bed as I often used the SF and Oakland airports while on business trips. They lived in Alameda, so it was easy to get to the airports and once Syl and G had a baby boy I was happy to spend even more time with them.
Syl quit flying soon after B was born. G was a loving but stern father and Syl was an adoring mother. G’s club standing rose during this time as he masterminded an affiliate strategy that generated buckets of cash. Their club had a global brand and during G’s tenure they grew chapters beyond the US to include brothers in several European, Latin American, and Asian countries. G was totally focused on the Club’s growth and his family’s welfare and his club brothers held G in high esteem for his riding, thinking and financial skills.
All went well until Syl asked us all to attend a family meeting. I did not look forward to family meetings as they always focused on hard situations that required us to act in good faith even if it meant bearing our souls and dealing with ugly issues. At that family meeting Syl and G told us that his doctor had diagnosed him with pancreatic cancer and that his options were limited to chemotherapy and prayer. G said that he would do some of the chemo but no prayer. He said he would take the lumps and do the unthinkable and turn in his colors and spend all his remaining time at home with his family. We knew that the colors were the DNA of the club and that this was a momentous decision, one that could have hard consequences. We swallowed our condolences and agreed to his request. At the end of the meeting G smiled and told us that we were the best club members anyone could have and that he was proud to be one of us.
G died three months after the family meeting. He had followed through on turning in his colors and the Club accepted them with honor but told him he would always be a member. The family gathered together at a small chapel in the Oakland hills to say goodbye. G did not practice any of the faiths and my wife and I were probably the only ones in our family who still went to church or said an occasional prayer so the family asked me to say a few words at a short memorial service to be held just before cremation.
We had gathered at a chapel in the Oakland hills where we could see the San Francisco Bay spread out in the distance. There were only a handful of us at the memorial service and I had just started to say a few words when we heard distant motorcycle rumblings that quickly turned into a roar. We walked outside and looked with awe as a cavalcade of riders on their bikes rode up the hill and circled the chapel. It was surreal as the thirty or so riders all had on their colors with black bands on their arms or heads. They had come to say farewell to their brother, and we were honored to have them. S, the club president, walked to the open casket and asked me if he could say a few words. This was a powerful request from a club member who was considered the numero uno of the One Percenters. S was in remission from cancer that had devoured his vocal cords, so he spoke through a throat speaker, a device called an electrolarynx. I nodded my head and S went to the open cask, bent over and knocked his head against G’s forehead. Then he looked at all of us and said that G was a stand-up guy who took care of his club, his bike, and his family. He also said that G had once offered to take a RICOH charge for him but that they both beat the rap and the club prospered. S said all this is about a minute and then he and all the club members raised their fists to the casket and walked out. I caught S outside on his bike and thanked him for his words and invited him and his club members to join us for barbecue at Syl and G’s home. He said that he would attend with a few others later that afternoon.
I returned to the chapel, said a few words about G’s love for Syl and their son and our small family group left as the mortuary folk took G’s body for cremation. We went to G and Syl’s home and were reminiscing about G when we heard the thunder of bikes coming down the street. Syl asked me to greet the new arrivals and I took them through the house to the backyard where we were had meat smoldering on the barbecue and ice chests with beer and wine. S said it was a good day to say goodbye to a brother and that he hoped his own last ride would be as classy. He asked if it was OK to light up and I said of course. G would have loved seeing his club and family enjoying some good barbecue, cold beer and wine, and smoke. Even my two cousins in law enforcement who were with us at the wake put aside their badges and took a couple of photos with the club members. S even offered one of my legit cousins a joint but my cuz said no thanks and then he offered S a shot of tequila and they both drank to G. All of us shared shots that day and when the bikers left we called out the kids who were in the house to the yard and continued eating and drinking. I think G would have approved the way we chose to honor his last ride home, colors or not, club and blood friends celebrating his life.
The media was full of news of the full solar eclipse that motivated millions of people to travel to a good location to bask in its glory. I thought back on my own eclipse story of forty years and two lives back. It was not a good time at home and my career was streaking across the skies and continents as I spent scores of days at forty thousand feet attending meetings with people I have not though of since. I called my Japanese boss and said I was taking a week of time to reload my personal life and that I would probably make it back in two weeks. I told my wife it was time for us to talk and that the coming eclipse afforded a perfect time in our lives to figure out where and how we stood with each other. She begrudgingly agreed and we packed my almost new Cherokee four-wheel drive jeep with plenty of food and gear for the long road trip down the spine and coast of Baja.
I’ve always been an astronomy nerd and it seemed like a sign from the gods that the full solar eclipse would swing by Loreto along the Baja sur coast. There were three of us on that two-week adventure that would change all of our lives. It had taken almost a year of pleading with my then wife before she agreed to the trip. She was not a nature focused person, much less an eclipse one, but she finally agreed to making the trip if we took our eleven year old nephew with us. His parents were going through an ugly divorce, and we could see the turmoil on his face. It was a good deal for me, as I loved the boy who was smart, feisty, and precocious. I sensed then he would be the only boy I could ever claim to have supported as a father so it was a good deal for all three of us. We left the first day of his summer vacation with a very loaded Cherokee, a few AAA maps, and a couple of old books by Earle Stanley Garnder who had explored Baja on his own. We headed south on the busy interstate and six hours later we reached the border.
We had just crossed into Mexicali when we stopped for gas at a Pemex station. The station guys rushed out to put in the gas and clean the windows so it seemed a good time to rearrange the stuff in the back of the jeep to make it easier for us to get to the food and toiletries. I took out all of the boxes and packages, including my fishing tackle box. The box was jammed with stuff, had a worn lock clip, and came undone. One of my bigger fishing knives fell to the floor. I picked it up with my let hand just as my wife touched my shoulder pointing to a box of Kleenex at the back that she wanted to move up front. I jerked around to see her and somehow sliced across my right palm. The blood gushed from the deep cut and she freaked out and stood motionless. My nephew ran from the jeep to the other pump island, spoke to the attendant and pointed at me.
The attendant saw that something was wrong and rushed over. He saw my bloody left hand and grabbed his red bandana from his front pocket was about to wrap my hand up when my wife came out of her stupor. She took his rage and threw it on the ground and told my nephew to find the first aid kit that was in the wheel well. It was a small Red Cross med kit and had a few things, but it was clear that I needed stitches. My wife looked like she was having an out of body experience but somehow she managed to encrust my hand with several large band-aids under a wad of gauze and some sticky tape. She looked scared but my nephew seemed aware about the scene. I asked the gas man if there was a clinic, hospital or doctor nearby. He said the hospital was on the other side of town, but he winked at me and said there might be a doctor working out of a makeshift clinic at a nearby house of some working women. The good news was that I my fingers were still intact, but I needed to find some real help. That fishing knife was a prized one with several gutting years giving it character and skin.
I pulled my nephew next to me and told him the directions the gas guy gave me. He said it was a ten or twelve minute drive. I could only use my left hand to drive so I told my wife to get into the back seat. She did so muttering that it was going to be a very screwed eclipse and a sign of our lives and that we should have never left home to take some back road to a faraway Mexican town to see it get dark for a few minutes. She got in the back and my nephew joined me up front, next to me. It was clear that I needed help steering as my bloody right hand was in my lap. The boy put his hands on the wheel and together we steered in and out of the barrio looking for the case. Finally we found the casa. There were a half dozen women standing outside the casa. Some of the women wore tight outfits, looked very young, and were smoking cigarettes. Two of the older ones walked up to the jeep as asked what we wanted. I showed them my hand and they said to get out and follow them into the casa. I told my nephew to move the car to the curb as I got out and walked into the casa.
I walked into a dreamscape as the casa consisted of one big room with a bar at the back with doors leading out on either side, a small dance floor, and a few tables and chairs spread around. It was not a typical doctor’s office and looked like an after-hours strip joint suffering in the sunlight. The doctor commanded attention as he was tall, bronze, and maybe thirty years old. He looked like a high end mestizo with a good nose, thick hair, and long fingers. He was sitting at a table in the middle of what passed for a small dance floor. There was a black medical bag at his side and several vials of pills and bottles on the table. He stopped talking to his client and asked me if I had a problem. I nodded my head, held up my hand, and he motioned me to sit at the table next to the client. She looked at my hand, said goodby to the doctor, and left.
It was almost exactly a thousand kilometers via a single road from Mexicali to Loreto. I was determined we would reach Loreto in four days of driving and then spend at least another day resting before the eclipse. That was the plan and it didn’t work. We managed to drive only about two hundred kilometers on the first day and saw only a handful of vintage cars, a few spewing busses, and too many crazy truckers and haulers. The scenery was devoid of life except for the occasional vultures flying overhead. The desert was endless in all directions except for the coastal mountain range where there was a fishing village with a handful of tourista cabins. We drove into the village looking for a room to rent. The only rooms were shacks with basic cots with no electricity or running water and a outhouse.
My wife had said very little during our drive but after storming out of the room said we would sleep in the jeep and then keep driving until we found a real room. The weather was good as the night temperature was in the 80s and the stars were incredible. None of really slept much as the jeep was cramped and we kept our eyes wide open to make sure none of the locals decided to visit us. We left with the rising sun and drove along the coast for almost ten hours before we ended our day’s run at a small fishing camp. It was not the resort my wife was hoping for but instead about two dozen makeshift stick huts, a run-down trailer park and what looked to be a motel or bar built on eroded piles atop a weathered pier. It was a welcome site to me, and my nephew was ready to hit the beach and take a swim before sunset.
The boy was happy to run along the beach while my wife and I took refuge at a small cantina overlooking the bay. The sun was setting in back of the mountains that guarded the bay and it was clear that we needed to clear the air. I asked her to tell me how she felt about our progress and what we could do to improve our trip. She rarely drank alcohol and had sipped through two shots of tequila when she told me that the eclipse reflected our marriage with a complete blackout on the horizon unless I changed my ways and made her my priority over career and my yearnings to see more of the world. Her comments were sharp and not news to me. I told her that every eclipse gave rise to a reborn sun and that if she still felt that way after our time in Baja that I would let her know whose sun would rise. I had barely spoken the metaphor when my nephew bounced into the room asking for a coke. They didn’t have any cokes so he had a 7-up, a warm one as the cantina didn’t waste precious space in the one cooler for anything other than their Tecate and Dos Equis. We spent the night cramped into a hut with two cots and rose with the sun to continue our journey to the eclipse that beckoned us, or at least me.
Making Loreto
It took us two more days of driving to reach Loreto and I was thankful that our nephew filled the silence that my wife wore with pride. She insisted that we make short stops along the way so he could run barefoot along the string of deserted beaches that would probably be littered with resorts in the near future.
The jeep had acquired a thick, rough skin of dirt and mud with pock marks on the hood and sides caused by the gravel and stones kicked up by the four-wheel drive that kept us from sliding off the road. It was a lonely road with an occasional pickup truck or battered car sharing the endless desert space with us. We stopped at every Pemex station long the way to check the tires and radiator and sometimes were rewarded with a cold Fanta or 7-Up but no cokes.
Finally, we spotted Loreto blinking at us after four days of traveling the road to purgatory and redemption. We checked in at the Presidente de Sur hotel that was known for its small fleet of pangas and beach huts that were sprinkled along the sandy lip of the bay. Heaven.
We unloaded the jeep and moved into a small beach hut that squatted just above the high tide beach lip. My nephew had been a quiet support during most of our road trip but now was his time, running along the beach, chasing sea birds, and picking up shells. The wife quickly unpacked a few things, put our few groceries and water jugs into the ancient mini-fridge and looked at me saying nothing but clearly unhappy with me. She walked outside, sat down on one of the two wood rockers, opened her book, and finally asked me “what next?”. I explained that the eclipse would start at 10:45 and last almost two hours in its entirety. She said she would catch it from our beach hut, that the boy could stay with her or stay with me if I wanted to see it elsewhere. I walked out and asked the boy his preference and he said he would stick with me.
I asked the boy if he was OK with seeing the eclipse from a small boat that I would hire for the event. Cool with him and I said to be ready to leave at dawn to give us enough time to find a boat and captain to take us out to sea, but not too far to lose land.
On eclipse day the boy woke me up while it was still dark and said he was ready. I nodded, put on my shorts, tank top, sandals, and a big hat and we started out. The wife on her cot opened her eyes, waves us away, and muttered something about coming home alive and in time for lunch.
There were a lot of panga guys standing next to their pier. It didn’t take me long to figure out that these capitans were all charging the same flat rate for four hours at sea. It would cost me fifty bucks plus a few dollars for extras. I hired a young pocho talking captain who sealed the deal by showing us an ice chest that was filled with local beers and soft drinks. He also had a big bag of chicharrons and a couple of jugs of water. I found out it was his first eclipse and he was prepared well to spend a few hours at sea with a couple of Chicano touristas. The boy and I had on lots of sunblock, and we were dressed for the eclipse with shorts, sandals, big hats, and our special eclipse ready sunglasses. It was my fiftieth year of life, and the boy was closing in on his fifteenth so together I thought together we could retire to the sun.
Damian, the captain, took us out about ten klicks and killed the engine. There was no wind and no action on the surface as it was hot, and the sun was beating down on us. The eclipse was scheduled to move from west to east, so we situated ourselves looking straight west. I drank two beers and the boy two sodas before the moon made its appearance. We were all speechless as the sun was consumed by the moon. Even the sea birds that had been molesting us looking for bait and trash stopped flying and sat down on the flat ocean that had stopped breathing. I had given our boy capitan a pair of the special glasses and I told him to put them on as he was looking at the sun straight on. The three of us We were speechless for throughout the entire eclipse. I tried to empty my head as I went through my standard meditation techniques of controlled breathing but I could not get past the doors that would not open. Just as the eclipse was receding, I confessed to myself that that my old life was over and that it was the right time to start again, with myself and with others. The ride home would be far different than the ride south as there was a lot to discard before starting anew.
It was a hard time of my rising corporate life with my right leg encased in a cast for most of the year and my marriage broken since it began. The cast was courtesy of doing a short dance on black ice during a walk in Tahoe during a brief escape from San Jose and my Japanese boss, Mr. Shinozaki, whom we Gaijin called basketball head. He was a jerk and required me to report to him every Monday at 9 which required me to wake at 5 to make a 7 AM flight from LA to San Jose. While our marketing department was in LA he chose San Jose as our corporate HQ so he could stay close to his golf club where he and his Japanese exec buds could drink, play golf, and talk about the decadent ways of Americans.
My marriage was empty and sad at that time as my academic wife preferred to spend time with her university friends while I made the big corporate bucks to add to her status and support our life style. We had a lovely home on the Ventura coast within commuting distance of her campus. It was a long commute for me to my office and I short one for her to the university and we rarely spoke on the ride along the coast. After a year of commuting to and from our offices she said we should have a second home in Lake Tahoe so that we could escape to a neutral place on holidays and long weekends. It was on one of those weekends when we were walking and arguing about my desire to escape the corporate world that I messed up my right knee and subsequently had a high-end titanium cast fixed to my body. For almost a year that cast set off every airport gate detector and made life miserable as I was in the air weekly. So, when my oldest friend from high school days suggested I visit him on the reservation and do a sweat and peyote ceremony I was game ready, or so I thought.
Basketball head told me that it was time for me to take off the cast and head with him to our annual marketing meeting. That year it was scheduled at a high-end luxury resort at the tip of Long Island. The resort was not easy to get to but had a reputation for beautiful golf courses, very attractive masseurs, and an outstanding alcohol selection. There would be three main presenters. Me on the American markets. A guy from England on the European markets and a third regional marketing head for the greater Pacific Rim region. We were the best the company could find and buy to expand the Japanese footprint in the telecom and new IT markets outside of Japan. I made the case that I needed to have a few days to prep for the presentation and that I should spend time with key customers and preparing the presentation. One of our largest IT customers operated a large microwave site in northern Arizona and it provided the excuse to make a stopover before heading to NYC to see my boyhood friend who was living on the reservation while pursuing his doctorate in some arcane subject while serving as principal of a BIA school.
I called my friend and said I was in deep need of some smoke and healing. He had married for the third or fourth time and his newest mate was a full blood Navajo woman who worked for the tribe. He suggested I meet him at his hogan that was outside of Flagstaff and a million miles away from the known world. He would wait for me at his hogan alone as he thought it best that just the two of us meet. So, I got off the small plane in Flagstaff, rented a four-wheel drive car, drove east on a paved road for a bit and then created a dust storm as I skidded across unpaved roads for a few hours following a hand drawn map he had sent me beforehand. It was a drive into another world as I did not see another vehicle or person until I arrived at his hogan that was situated at the foot of a small mountain that looked like someone had stepped on it. The sun was setting behind the broken spine of the hill.
My old friend came out to greet me as I stepped out of the car. He embraced me, handed me a pipe filled with bits of weed and dried peyote, told me to have a toke, take off my shoes and pants and follow him to a small lean-to that had smoke rising from the top. I did as he said, and we crawled into the primitive fire room lean-to that had a fire-pit at the center filled with large stones and smoldering pinon. It was hard to breathe at first as the smoke was thick, but I followed his lead, folded my legs under my body and we kneeled facing each other. He offered me the pipe and said we would first take the smoke then sweat until the bad stuff was leached out of us. Afterwards he said we would see if the spirit in the volcano would welcome us to see the stars. We stayed in the fie hut sweating and taking turns slapping each other with cups of water filled from a wooded bucket next to the pit. We spoke little during that sweat other than to ask about the wellbeing of our families and mutual old friends we had lost contact with. It was a hot, peaceful, time that I’ve relived many times since during those moments when I’m able to escape the demands of the day.
The pipe smoke was different than the weed I occasionally used back home. It was like having a glass of deep cabernet sauvignon cruising throughout my entire body warming and pinching me, so unlike the standard weed high that just tickled the head. As I never took any illegal stuff with me while on business trips this smoke cure was an unexpected and much welcomed change of pace.
My friend finally said that it was time to leave the sweat house. We walked outside. It was a moonless night and the milky way, brilliant in the night sky, flowed directly over us. My friend reached into a burlap bag next to the sweat pit and took out two pairs of worn leather sandals. I reached for my pants that were next to the bag, but he said that we would make our way to the mountain heart unadorned but for our calzones and sandals. It was getting colder by the minute, and I hesitated for a minute then put on the sandals and followed him to the base of the mountain that waited for us.
He said her name was little dzil and while not one of the four sacred women mountains she was still one of the old powers. She had burned bright before the old people of the land first raked her soil for the blue corn that prospered on her dead lips. She was cracked and folded over and along her base were a few dry veins that led into her burnt out core. My friend led the way and I followed wordlessly as we made our way through a vein that put us on our knees as we neared the end of the fire tube. We stood at the edge of a cold dark crater that stretched for at least a few hundred feet before rearing up to the stars. We looked up. The universe inhaled us and we swam with the stars. It was a wordless epiphany, a metanoia of mind and spirt. We laid down on her cracked skin. My mind spiraled into the star river while my body sunk beneath the ancient soil. We were there for an eternity before my friend got up and walked back to the vein, got back on his knees and started out. I was totally greaked at the thought of being alone in the universe and followed him out.
We made our way back to his Hogan where we spent the night drinking tequila, smoking, and laughing. I left the next day for Long Island. I made my pitch to the assembled group and think it went well but I don’t recall a single thought these days as I look for those stars thinking about the end of the day and how the next one will be.
On December 22nd of 2023 the MV Explorer, our home for five months, maneuvered into her slip at the new Bangkok cruise port terminal. We had packed everything up the day before and the crew had picked up our luggage before we woke up at 5 AM. We rose that final ship day at five and had our last ship breakfast of mediocre dorm food. That morning the ship buzzed as everyone was making their goodbyes and promises to keep in contact. It was bittersweet for the two of us as we had gotten close to our favorite shipmates, including a few students and faculty buds and the handful of life-long learners who made it through the last segment. An unexpected bonus was hugging and saying goodbye to a few of the children we had grown to love and know well.
It was our final port after a dozen previous dockings and we were scheduled to be the second group to leave the ship for the last walk down the gangway. The immigration and docking procedures went well and less than an hour after leaving the ship we were in a taxi with some friends; we were all in a weird lets get out of here mode so we could endure more than twenty hours in the air.
Alicia is a pro at finding us good business flights for the long hauls so it was good that she found us a consolidator for our return flight. It was a great deal and the Taiwanese airline had OK service although the food did not measure up to other flights, including our great long haul with Turkish Air from Istanbul to LA the year before. This was a treat for me as I still recalled my first trans-Atlantic flight via Icelandic Air more than fifty years ago. It felt decadent to go business class, but I’ve gotten over it since then. In this case the big Airbus we came home on was an older one. It kept us up but looked tired and ready for a face lift. I’m grateful that Alicia’s knows how to play the long-haul travel game as she knows how to deal with all the point, dollar, and special offerings. I just go along with it all as it makes our travel easier at the start and at the end of our adventures.
The flight from Bangkok to LA across the belly of the Pacific began and ended on the winter solstice. It was also the first new day of my seventy-seventh year. Once home we got sucked into our standard manic routine of unpacking everything before we went to bed and then we spent the new few days washing loads of clothes, checking the house for bugs, restocking the kitchen, and going through a box of mail, most of it junk. We worked well together during this crazy time, and it was all good except for the poor sleeping bouts. Two days after we arrived home, we spent a drowsy Christmas eve with the girls and a few days later we spent New Years with our best travel friends out in the desert. Our friends hosted a welcome home New Year’s celebration and I struggled to stay awake for the countdown to 2024. It was weirder than ever to return home after five months away and to already start thinking about leaving in a month for New Zealand.
I still don’t feel synced up yet. The signs of my unease are all around me. Maybe a dozen books lying around that I’ve started, not one holding my attention for more than a few pages. We ordered a new bed, a good one as it will be our last. Clearly a good decision. I can tell we’re anxious for the next leap as we’ve been tightening up our New Zealand itinerary and checking out potential month-long rentals in Spain and Portugal for our fall adventure. We’ve already made air arrangements to fly to and from Iberia this fall. Our focus is now on prepping for the rest of our 2024 travel cycles.
Now it’s time to focus on the real challenge, returning to my blog and book. The book has been gestating and uneasily gasping for attention for the last year and it’s past time for a rebirth. Then there’s the south, Latin America, pulling at me. I pray time remains for us to travel down the spine of the Americas, hopefully a 2025 adventure down the coast of Chile to Patagonia and the end of it all. Good to consider all this as the days race as the night offers little respite.
My best friend and I met Raven in one of our first classes at Berkeley. It was a course on the indigenous tribes of Sudan that focused on the Nuer. We took the class because it would satisfy one of our liberal education requirements. We learned that the professor was a political refugee who had been driven out by latest coup leaders who distrusted academicians, especially those who spoke out against the neo-colonial powers that preferred to invest in captive nations managed by their paid bullies.
Professor Ibrahim was making his first remarks when a female student raised her hand and asked the professor if it was true that that the CIA had helped engineer the latest coup. The professor asked her to stand so that he could respond and the class let out a low gasp as she rose from her chair. She was a tiny person, maybe five feet tall, had a striking tan face and jet black pony tails that reached her waist. She was dressed in what looked like a sack, and only had one hand, a left hand. Professor Ibrahim asked her why the question was relevant to the class. She said her name was Raven and that as a Hopi woman she understood what it meant to be pushed out by invaders and forced to live with strangers. Professor Ibrahim put down his lecture notes and spent the next forty-five minutes talking about the many ancient and current foreign powers that had invaded his country and the legacy of despair and death that they left behind as their markers.
After class I followed Raven and told her that she was gutsy for asking her question and that as a Chicano that my people and culture had also been invaded and degraded. We spoke for a few minutes and she asked me if I wanted to share a bite and a joint after classes at her apartment that she shared with three other Indian girls. She gave me her address and I biked over to her apartment not knowing what to expect.
Her apartment was a converted garage with a tacked on outhouse. There were three cots side by side next to the only window that faced west. They didn’t have a regular kitchen as she told me that they made do with a large beat-up grill on wheels located on what had been the driveway. There was a hose next to the grill along with a few pans and pots on the ground. They had invented urban camping and I was impressed at the simplicity of it all.
Raven introduced me to her roommates who just smiled and then walked out the door. She said it was nothing personal as they were not use to having guys in their place although it was OK with them as I wasn’t white. There were only a few old chairs in the room and we sat down on two of them, a few feet away from each other. She asked me about my family and why Berkeley and I told her that I grew up just a few miles away from campus but that it was another world. I asked her about her family and she told me that she was from Norther Arizona and that her family were sheep people and that she was the first one from her family to finish high school and go to college. I told her that was the same with me. Then she raised up her left hand and said that she lost her right hand cutting down a dead tree and that it had been her favorite hand but she had learned to use the left one pretty good. I didn’t know what to say and just nodded my head.
She smiled and asked if I wanted to smoke. I was not a virgin to weed and thought she would offer a joint. I was blown over when she walked to a wood chest against the wall and pulled out what looked like a homemade pipe with a really long stem. She put it down next to me and then went to one of the cots, reached under and pulled out a mason jar filled with something that did not look like the grass I was used to. She walked back and filled the pipe. She said that it was a special mix that her family assembled from plants that grew on their grazing land. She said that it had been blessed by the Hopi elders and that it could only be shared with those who wanted to see beyond the light.
While I was interested in the smoke I asked her to light up first to make sure it was not spiked with something weird. She took the pipe and inhaled long and slow. She kept it in for a long time and slowly let it out without coughing. It was my turn and I looked straight at her as she passed it to me. I took a slow drag. It did not smell or taste like pot and I did my best not to cough. We sat there wordless for what seemed hours. She looked into my eyes and said nothing. I looked at my hand and focused on a small throb in one of my veins. I felt my self moving with the blood in my veins. It started off as a small creek of memory and then became a small river moving through my organs. Then it swept me to my heart where it cascaded into a pool and mixed with other rivers. I got freaked out, slowly roused myself, said nothing to Raven, and headed out to my car. I knew I had to get somewhere that was calling me.
It was past midnight and it took me a lifetime to find my MG. I could not focus on where I had parked it. It was a 58 MG convertible and was my prize possession although the transmission was shot as the gears ate each other even when I shifted well. Somehow, I did a brain dump and somehow made my way back to the car that had been parked outside Raven’s place. I knew I had to clear my head. I drove in circles for what seemed an eternity and finally saw a road sign that said Tilden Park was about three miles away. I decided to go to Tilden Park, find an empty campsite or parking spot and search for my sanity. I had gone less than a mile on the way to Tilden when the car ran out of gas. I saw a gas station at the end of the block. It was dark with no lights on and no one around to help me push the car to the station. There was no moon and the stars seemed to be fighting each other for space as I took a century to push my car to the station. It took me an eternity of swearing and sweating but I pushed the car to the nearest gas pump.
The station was deserted and I sat down in the car to catch my breath. I had been doing yoga for about two years and did nothing but focus on my breathing. Just as I was reaching a small level of self-control a light above the pump went on. It was a delusion or maybe a miracle but I knew that something momentums was rising up to bother my soul. From the back of the station, an apparition, a cadaver of a man, walked towards me. I was frozen in place as he walked to the car door. He stood there looking at me. His pupils eyes were huge and his face looked like a sculpture of a starved martyr. I was terrified to look at him directly so I stared at his bristly white eye brows and lashes. Those eye lashes moved in a loop above his eyes and the little snakes were calling me. I tore my look to his eyes and he said “I’ve been waiting for you. Ready?”
I was not ready. I jumped out of my seat, abandoned the car, ran down the street and found a temporary refuge at a bus stop several blocks away. Several hours later just as the sun was rising the first bus of the day came. I jumped onboard, not caring where it was going. It took me several hours to make my way back to my apartment and had an ugly sleep until late afternoon. I needed to get back to reality and find my car. It took me several hours of riding my bike up and down the streets in the direction of Tilden Park before I found my car next to a gas station that had real people at the pumps.
Raven and I saw each other in class a few days after my lost drive. After class ended, she asked me if I wanted to smoke with her again and I said “maybe, but next time I’ll just chill in place.”
At age seventy-six I suspect I will be the oldest professor teaching on the Fall 2023 Semester at Sea voyage. I think it will be an incredible adventure and a heck of a way to rekindle my retirement phase.
The voyage (Semester at Sea never uses the word cruise) begins in early September when Alicia and I board the MV World Odyssey in Bremerhaven. We will spend four months on and off the ship and are scheduled to disembark in Laem Chabang, Thailand, on December 22nd, my birthday. If all works to plan we will race the winter solstice back to our home that same birth day. Over a four month period Alicia and I will share new experiences, teach and learn from others, make new friends, and enjoy some wonderful new sites. This odyssey will us across fifteen countries and several seas, including a special transit through the Suez Canal.
To be straight up this will not be a high-end cruise with nicely furnished rooms, multiple good food venues, well-stocked bars, onboard entertainers, and lots of endowed cruise folk to mingle with. No, this voyage (SAS never says cruise) will be a living-learning campus with miniscule rooms, timed showers, OK dorm food, about five hundred (mostly US) students, thirty or so faculty and staff types and one small lounge that serves drinks at special times, too few times to be honest. It’s understandable why Alicia has mixed feelings about this voyage as we did it twice before, once in 2009 and then again in 2016. So why do this one?
The short answer is that I’m more restless than ever since retiring almost two years ago. I’m afraid of the deepening age pit and the gradual fade of light. I confess I want to escape my daily chores, even the joy of gardening in my backyard, and spend another extended time at sea living in the present, reflecting on the past and wondering about the future as the stars leave all of us at light speed. The stars are shooting away as I pray for another glimpse or two or three. I still want to meet and learn about different people and their lands that call to me, to us.
Alicia and I are preparing for the voyage as best we can. She is figuring out the right mix of clothes and possible expeditions. Together, we are building a solid e-book library on our iPads and making a list of “healthy” snacks. So many other tasks on our “to dos” check-off list. We’ve done a good deal of research on the locales we will disembark at and have identified the more interesting places that we can get to and from in a few days. We can’t afford to miss the ship departure schedule, so the goal is to select and maximize our excursions both in-country and out of country. This voyage is different than most other ship offerings as we will spend days, not hours, at each port.
One reason I’m doing this is to engage students via a meaningful day-long field excursion. I’ve managed to do around 200 college student field trips in more than twenty countries over the last twenty years. This Fall 2023 voyage will allow me to take students on day long field trips in Aqaba, Piraeus, and Mumbai. My hope is to give the students a real work-life lesson as they learn and witness first-hand how global businesses and new ventures impact the economy and the environment. At present it looks like we will meet with the Aqaba Economic Development Zone to better understand their role in the international transport of goods via ship and pipeline. I’m equally enthused about the planned session with Chinese giant COSCO at their Piraeus HQ at the port that is currently controlled by COSCO. The last field trip will hopefully take place at an education and training center for Indian women seeking and using microloans to start and manage their own businesses. Things always change but I have high hopes for these field trips.
During our field sessions we will also meet with and talk to the local people as we try to understand how they cope and react to economic and environmental changes, hopefully for the better, but not always. It’s a lofty goal and I do feel up to it, at least one more time if body, mind, and spirit keep in sync.
I’m confident and comforted that Alicia will keep us on the right trajectory. I’ve updated this piece in mid-July as we are but one month away from departure. The plan is to post weekly updates once the voyage begins but until then think about your current “voyage” and what calls you most dear.
Dad’s second oldest brother, my Tio Ysidro, lived with his family in Cucapah, a small ejido (communal farm) with about one hundred people that was about two hours south of Mexicali. Tio Ysidro was a humble man (my mother said he was just lazy) who raised corn, chickens, and a few pigs in the summer to feed his family. Tio had four sons and two daughters and they took care of the corn field while he made the rounds of the ejido to chat with the other half dozen households. He was also a local entrepreneur and made a few centavos the rest of the year selling raspadas and gathering firewood in the foothills that he sold or traded to his vecinos, his communal neighbors.
I had just turned fourteen and Dad said it was time for just the two of us to make our way to visit Tio Isidro and the family. Mom was happy not to go as were my younger sister and brother as life was a bit primitive in Cucapah with no running water or electricity and a tiny outhouse to handle body functions. I was up for the trip as Dad said I might be able to drive the pickup once we were across the border.
Before we left right after school let out for the summer, I spent a few weeks visiting the family, all on my mother’s side, to gather up used clothing and other items to take. My tias (aunts) were glad to get rid of old stuff, especially children’s clothes that no longer fit and chipped plates and beat up pans. My tios (uncles) donated used work boots and jackets and pants with holes and stains but the pants had been washed and the boots still had some sole left. I collected a lot of stuff as the truck bed was big. Father on the other hand scored some cool things, including an ancient barber chair that could still be raised using a foot pedal. The barber chair had stood in Feliz’s yard (his close compa) and I had sat on it since I had hair to cut and Feliz had always given me the same cut, close to the scalp and no nicks. I was a bit sad at first that the chair was going away but I thought it would be put to good use and perhaps inspire a new skill for Tio Ysidro. The chair was the crown jewel and we put it in the center of the bed and surrounded it with offerings, most of the stuff wrapped in burlap sacks in case the weather got bad on the ride.
It was the best truck trip of my life and still is, core to the DNA of my boyhood memories. It was going to be a father-son trip, the first and only one until I took my father back to his ancestral hometown of Juchipilla (Zacatecas) right before he died forty years back. I had asked him what he had left to do and he said a trip together to Juchipilla would do the trick. He wanted to smell the air in the mountain town and find some wife prospects for me, recently divorced. Back to our rode trip from Richmond (California) to Cucapah (Baja California).
The Road Trip
My mother was freaked out by the idea of her alcoholic husband and first bookworm boy going south to a place she hated. My father had taken the whole family down to Cucapah a few times before this trip and she was not a happy camper. On those trips she always took everything she could, including cartons of canned foods and milk, the condensed type that the Mexicans loved. On those early trips me and my sister would run around the irrigation canals with my cousins, no shoes on and skipping around lots of cow and burro shit along the sides of the canal where the animals came to drink. Our Mexican cousins, and there was a bunch of them with enough to match our numbers, did not speak English and we used baby pocho Spanish to communicate. On the last family trip three of my Cucapah boy cousins who were about my age convinced me to hike to the mother irrigation canal that fed other irrigation channels and watered all of the ejido fields. I left behind my sister with Mom and Tia Maria and her flock of girls and the four of us ran through a bunch of corn fields until we arrived at the mother canal. I later learned that almost all of the ejidos in the area raised through crops using the last water carried by the Colorado River before it emptied to the Gulf. My cousins dared me to strip down and jump into the canal. The water is moving pretty good about three feet below the tope of the canal. I took their dare and, buck naked, we dove it and tried to drown each other. Good boy fun. We returned to Tio’s adobe abode after the plunge. Mom looked at my filthy clothes and muddy feet and told me to go out to the well and wash up. When Dad came back for dinner after spending the day drinking and playing dominos Mom went off on him. She caught him outside the door and I heard her say that was never retuning to Cucapah unless it was for his funeral. That’s why Dad and I were going alone and he said he had things to tell me.
Even as a kid I was crazy about maps and before we left I went to the library to figure out the route and spot for things to see. I knew Dad wanted to get there quickly and knew he would not want to stop along the way for sightseeing but I wanted to be ready. It was a ritual send-off as Mom, my sister and my brother stood at the driveway as we backed out and honked the horn, it still worked and was loud. She looked sad when I turned around to wave at her and then she smiled. I felt good about the trip.
It was a warm summer day and we headed east towards San Jose and then Modesto to catch Highway 99. Dad looked good as he had his hair cut before we left on the chair that was now reigning as queen behind us, surrounded by all her stuff. The first few hours were tough as the truck made a lot of sounds as things shifted around. We mush have stopped a dozen times to tighten the ropes before things settled down. I remember we got to Modesto mid-afternoon and Dad said we would have some of the best birria (goat stew) outside Mexico at a cantina. We stopped and ate and it was good although I got worried that Dad was drinking too much beer. It was a very long stop and we were heading for Visalia to spend the night at some casa de husepedes (a Mexican rooming house) that he said was cheap and safe. We left the cantina and I could see that Dad was not up to speed and it worried me. We had barely got on the road when we were stopped by a motorcycle cop, a brown one. He was an OK cop and asked Dad if he was drunk. Dad started to argue but I spoke over him and told the cop that I had my driver’s permit. Dad figured out what was going on and let me talk. Dad told the cop I was an honors student and we were going to Mexico to give the stuff in the back to his family. The cop was sympathetic and I convinced him that I could get us to where we needed to be for the night. We made it to the casa de huespedes and went to sleep, Dad snoring like a locomotive going uphill.
The Road to Baja
We woke up and Dad rewarded my driving with breakfast at Little Black Sambos, a famous pancake place open 24 hours a day. I had the best pancakes ever with lots of syrup, bacon and sausage, it was heaven. We got back on the road and took turns driving until we got to the LA basin. We came down the grapevine into a pool of smog and made our way past the silhouette he told me was Los Angeles. He headed south to San Diego and then into Tijuana as the gas was cheaper and there was a Mexican road that would take us across the throat of Baja to Mexicali. We spent the night at another case de huespedes and then drove along the La Rumorosa Highway to Mexicali. Loaded with stuff we drove for what seemed like centuries along a two lane road carved out by men with picks and shovels. I’ve read scores of men dies building La Rumorosa and many others have since died falling down its crevices and landing at the bottom of canyons where the caracaras circling as the coyotes wait next to burned out cars and cholla patches. That’s another bite to share later as I’ve traveled the Rumorosa many times since with different outcomes each time I wake.
We decided not to stop for the night but made a short pit stop in Mexicali to plug a radiator leak, buy some cans of oil, and get some spare parts for the truck as Cucapah had no gas station or an auto repair shop. The sun was about to set when we drove south to El Faro where we got on a dirt road to Cucapah. Cool to say that today my cousin Mauro, Tio Ysidro’s oldest, now owns a local cantina hang-out on the El Faro junction to Cucapah. A solid family success story for a future bite.
The Arrival
We drove down the dirt road for a half hour until we reached Cucapah. It was surrounded by corn, squash, and melon fields and the people in the fields stopped their work as we drove by to look at us in our pickup truck. A few of them stopped work and followed us as we entered the ejido and made our way to Tio Ysidro’s adobe hut.
Tio Ysidro’s home was pretty basic. It had a single door facing east, no electricity or plumbing, a clay oven on the western side, a plank table in the center with three rickety chairs, and straw filed mats piled up for sleeping at the other side. He had a well with a bucket and crank situated about fifty feet from the front of the house and the outhouse was a few feet away from the back of the house. He also had a lean-to on the eastern side of the house that could hold several hammocks. He was equipped. We arrived just as the sun was setting and Tio heard the pickup, came outside, embraced father, then me, and we went inside. Dad and I took turns embracing Tia Maria who insisted we sit down at the table and eat her fresh tortillas filled with carnitas and cilantro. It was heaven and we were safely home with the goods, now their goods.
Tio Ysidro was not a drinking man but he brought out a bottle of no-name tequila and two glasses. He was a distinguished looking man standing a bit over six feet, lean, long jet white hair, and a very cool looking mustache that looked razor cut. He called me Mijo Danny and asked if I could show my cousins the pickup truck while the two of them caught up with questions of family and friends. I had four male cousins, three of whom I knew well from past visits and a new primo who was seven or eight. They followed me to the pickup and the four of us crowed into the front seat while the youngest boy looked at us as if we had just come from Mars. It was getting dark but they all wanted to go for a ride so we left the house. They shouted and motioned for me to pass their friends homes and I honked in front for a minute or two as their neighbors came out, many with babies and food in their hands as it was dinner time. They wanted to visit all their friends but it was dark and there were no street or house lights so we went back to their home where we laughed and talked for a long time before they forced me into one of the hammocks to sleep. I had just started back home going out with friends to watch the older teens cruise the main and here I was with my cousins doing the Mexican version.
We got back home, talked, and I ate some beans and tamales. I was running on empty so the boys took me outside to the lean-to and I crawled into a hammock, took off my shoes, and conked out. I woke up at dawn as the roosters were bringing in the day and went into the casa where Tia Maria was making tortillas, cooking beans, and frying eggs. She had two of my girl cousins working with her and they were busy getting us all ready for the day. Tio Ysidro had gone somewhere for wood and my father was still asleep outside on a hammock. I was ready to eat as many fresh tortillas and fried eggs as my fifteen-year-old body could handle, and it was a lot. My boy cousins came in and we filled ourselves while laughing about how jealous their friends had been to see us cruising the ejido in the pickup that had not yet been unloaded.
Dad woke up and said he felt a bit crudo and was hungry. Tio Ysidro came back and told my father he shouldn’t drink so much and asked how long we were staying and what was the plan with the pickup. Dad looked up from his nescafe and told Tio that all the goods on the truck were theirs, and the truck as well. Tio was speechless, looked up and crossed himself and said “Gracias, hermano, eres un buen hombre.” He had said “Thanks brother, you’re a good man.” I could tell that Dad was touched despite his hangover and he gave a deep embrazo to his older brother and looked at me as I nodded my head. It made me proud to see his brother embrace him that morning in Juchipilla, another world that I can still smell and swim in, a world closer now as I record these life bites of another time and place.
I had loaded a big box of Cherrios on the trip and thought it would be cool to educate them about American food. I convinced everyone but my father and Tio to try a small bowl with some condensed milk I had also brought. I took a spoonful of Cherrios and motioned for them to do the same. Each one took a small mouthful and two of the boys quickly spit it all out. The others just looked at me until I started laughing and they spit out their Cherrios as well .We went back to a breakfast of beans, tortillas, and fried eggs. Then we unloaded everything off the truck starting with the stuff stacked up next to the old barber chair.
We set up a human chain line and unloaded the truck starting with the all the clothing, pots, pans, shoes and house stuff. We took all that into the house for inspection by Tia Maria and the girls. Then we gathered the shovels, hoes, rakes, and other tools and outdoor stuff along with the truck parts and cans oil and put them all in a cleaned-out chicken shed. It was fun work as my three cousins and I joked the whole time about stupid things we had done since we had last seen each other. Only the barber chair was left and I climbed up on the deck with my three cousins. We took off the tarp and they stood there speechless until Mauro (my primo age same) climbed up on the chair, cranked himself up, and declared himself El Jefe. He spread out his arms and pretended to bless us. It was probably the high point of his life but it ended quickly as we pulled him off the chair and we carried it off the truck and set it down next to the lean-to. The chair look fit for a king as we had mended the seat and polished the metal parts.
Meanwhile, Dad and Tio Ysidro were talking and smoking cigarettes in the front of the pickup. It only took us about an hour to unload the pickup. We had become an ejido event as we could see small groups of their vecinos (neighbors) looking and pointing at us. The tongues were busy that day and my Cucapah cousins were the new ejido celebrities, maybe even the first if you didn’t count the grumpy El Faro guy on the paved road.
It was a memorable trip and a year later when I hitchhiked from Richmond to Cucapah and beyond I saw that chair still shining under the protection of a new lean-to. We left the pickup behind and my Cucapah cousins used it to haul firewood from the hills, transport chickens, pigs, and even a few burros. My cousin Mauro said that the pickup and the chair changed their lives forever and that my father was a saint, so they thought.
Papa’s birthday was legitimately on the fourth, the fourth of July, and we celebrated it with blood and beer all through my adolescent years. It was 1960 and that year the birthday celebration began Mexican style with a trip to a sheep and goat ranch in Dixon where my dad’s cousin, Augustin, was foreman. Augustin was much older than Dad and he was the family member that helped him with his papers when he first crossed the border just before WW2. Augustin liked me and let me ride around the ranch on one of the old horses who moved at one speed, a very slow speed, that was good with me as I was a city boy and not use to riding. Dad and Augustin would always start off their catch-up with a couple of beers and then move on to tequila shots and talk about family and old times back in Zacatecas. After they were well lubricated, they would go to the goat pen, pick out a goat and one of the new kids, tie their legs together and toss them into the back of the pickup bed. By this time Dad was pretty loaded as was Augustin. Dad already had a couple of drunk driving tickets so he insisted that I drive us home despite the fact that I didn’t yet have a driver’s license, much less a driving permit, as I had just turned fourteen. It was a heck of a trip back home with dad asleep next to me and the goats thrashing away in the back of the truck, bleating loudly all the way home.
Digging the Pit
I was in charge of digging the pit in the back of our yard to host the goats for the big roast. We had a large yard and it took me and my younger brother two days to dig the pit that was about four by four feet and three feet deep. My brother did OK with the digging although he also complained that he was missing good bike time with his friends. Once we arrived home, we took the goats out of the sack, tied them next to the chicken coop, and tried to tune out the uproar of the chickens as they flew around the coop, clucking angrier than usual. I think it freaked out the goats as well and I hoped that none of my white friends would come by to play and witness this country scene in the inner city.
The birthday prep got into high gear the night before the fourth. Dad asked me to bring the kid to the back of the house so I walked over to the back porch with the baby goat in my arms. Dad had been drinking with a couple of my tios and some of his buddies in the kitchen and they all came out to the back porch. Dad had a machete in his hands and was wiping the blade with some steel wool. They all looked loaded to me and were talking fast in Spanish. I couldn’t catch all of what they were saying as they were using bato talk it was clear that they were talking about the good old days back in Mexico when men were men, and everyone knew their place. Then Dad stopped talking, flicked his cigarette aside, and asked me to hold the kid by the belly with its legs wrapped underneath. He told one of his buddies to hold the kid’s head straight while I tried to keep it from thrashing around. I was worried about Dad’s aim as I knew he had been drinking but he did the job like a master and with a single downward thrust with the machete the head separated and I was left holding the kid as the blood spurted out. Dad had another drinking buddy positioned with a shallow bucket to catch the blood that was squirting from the severed kid head. I was so freaked out by the rush of blood that I dropped the kid on the ground, and everyone started laughing.
Dad put down the machete, smiled at me, and told me to stand next to him. He then called over his compa, the man who had captured the blood in the pan. Dad took the pan, poured a small amount into a shot glass, and told me to drink it. I hesitated for a moment and looked at my tios and Dad’s buddies who all had a shot glass of tequila in their hands. My brother was also looking at me, smiling and absolutely still. My mother came out of the kitchen and stood next to my dad. She looked mad but said nothing. I took the shot glass of blood, looked at it for a moment, and then swallowed it. It was still warm and tasted salty. I started to gag but held it back and the men all nodded their approval. Dad then handed me a shot glass of tequila and told me to drink it with one gulp. Mother looked at me with sad eyes as I drank it. Hell of a way to prep for Dad’s fourth of July birthday celebration. I turned to my brother and said “Your turn is coming” and then watched the men butcher the kid and get it ready for the pit.
