juanzqui

I SPENT MUCH of yesterday evening outside, in my sister’s backyard, with two of my sisters, a brother-in-law, a niece and a nephew. We enjoyed the cool spring breeze, sipped on some cheap wine and exchanged stories, new ones and old favorites.

We also listened to the sounds of the evening. The traffic humming and clanking. The dogs barking. The grackles coming home to roost for the evening after a day out in the country, or wherever it is they spend their daylight hours. And in the distance, we could hear the faint sounds of music. Tejano music. Depending on the strength of the breeze, we could hear the distinctive conjunto sounds: the tinny wailing of an accordion, the steady rhythm of a bass, and the soulful harmonizing vocals. I commented that there must be a dance somewhere nearby but I was told that it was probably a local band, practicing.

“They practice at home,” my niece said.

That’s the kind of town I grew up in, the kind of town where noise — necessary noise, joyful noise: life’s noise — was not simply tolerated and seen as a byproduct of living, it was welcomed and celebrated.

One of the most enduring memories of growing up in this town was the daily amplified sound blaring from speakers mounted on the top of a car, announcing the day’s feature presentation of El Teatro Luna, the local Spanish-language film theater.

“No olvide used que la impresa El Teatro Luna presenta esta noche una pelicula …”

It was the voice of Tino Luna, the son of the theater owner’s son, Nacho Luna.

Every afternoon, Tino would make his way up and down every street of the Mexican neighborhoods, like a town crier, giving us the vital information about the latest feature at his family’s theater at the edge of the town’s cantina district.

When he drove in front of our house, we simply suspended all conversations until Tino and his noise moved past. Nobody called the cops to complain about the nuisance. Nobody ran out into the street and angrily threatened to shoot up the loudspeakers. Nobody went before the city council to demand an anti-noise ordinance.

Noise was accepted as a part of life.

Another memory:

Margarito Ramírez lived across the street from us with his widowed mother and never-married sister. He too had never married. Every morning he woke up early before dawn and walked to his job as a garbage collector, and every evening he’d walk quietly back home, where he worked on his beautiful vegetable garden until nightfall forced him inside, then he’d disappear inside his home until the next morning. He did that every day — during the week. On Saturdays, though, there was a transformation. Early each Saturday afternoon, Mague left his house dressed in crisply ironed shirts, buttoned all the way to the top, and equally crisp khakis. Five or six hours later, Mague slowly weaved his way home, totally sloshed. He was not a quiet drunk.

“Ajuuuuua,” he would shout, “Aquí viene Margarito Ramírez!”

Or: “Que viva Margarito Ramírez!”

Then he’d start singing. I wish I could say that alcohol gave Mague a magnificent singing voice, like Pedro Infante in the movies shown at El Luna, but it didn’t. He was a horrible singer. But that didn’t stop him. At least once every block along his long path home, he’d stop to proclaim or praise his existence, and to sing his warbled tunes.

We all heard him. It was almost impossible not to, but none of us dared go out onto the front porch or stoop or sidewalk to watch or listen to him, much less make fun of him. It would have been the ultimate in bad manners and it would have shown a great deal of disrespect to Doña Ester, his mother, and Nicolasa, his sisters, both of whom were cloistered in their home, mortified with embarrassment. We didn’t ignore Mague. We joked about him and we listened for any nuances in the songs and declarations he chose. But we did it all inside our homes.

And nobody — nobody — complained. Nobody dialed 911 to ask that Margarito be picked up for disturbing the peace or creating a nuisance. It was part of our life and he was part of our community.

And one final acoustic memory: every Mothers Day, soon after midnight, the sweet, sweet sounds of a conjunto began to fill the pre-dawn air. The sounds would start faintly as the band performed las mañanitas — a set of songs devoted to mothers — to someone’s mother blocks away, but gradually, as the band members sang nearer our house, the sounds would get clearer and louder. Then they would fade again as they moved on down the street. And then another band would come along. And another and another until, as daylight arrived, the serenading would end and the sounds would be no more than beautiful memories and smiles on countless mothers’ faces.

Again, despite the fact that the serenading music interrupted people’s sleep and lives over and over again, nobody complained, nobody called the police and nobody asked the city council to outlaw the practice (it still exists).

That’s because in a small community, we knew the difference between good noise and bad noise. Bad noise was what other people make, and in a small town, there were no other people; we were all us.

In a small town, we knew that life comes with sound, full stereophonic sound. We knew that a rooster has to crow and that a donkey has to bray and that a celebration, by definition, involves loud, boisterous sounds.

And we knew that life, no matter how harsh, no matter how cruel, is a celebration. So we simply sat back and took in the blaring loudspeakers, the drunken neighbors, the crowing roosters and barking dogs, and the bands playing down the street or next door.

In a small town. Back then. We would do that.

A life came to an end early yesterday morning on a lonely stretch of road on the way to Del Rio, a town on the border some 90 miles from here.
She was a distant cousin (granddaughter of one of my mother’s half-brothers), one of the numerous relatives I have never met. I don’t even know her name. Word has it that she drove her car under a tractor trailer. No one knows what she was doing out there. But the fact that no one knows doesn’t prevent the speculation. It only encourages it.
News and rumors still travel in a small town the way they have for decades. An early morning phone call from a family member who is in law enforcement brings the first bit of news, the basics. A series of calls, to relatives and friends, begins to fill in the details.
Everyone, it seems, knows someone who can provide a bit more information to fill in the blanks.
“Dicen que…,” is how every conversation starts. They say that …
And soon the anonymous “they” becomes the authoritative source.
Everyone is eager to provide background information about the dead person’s life, much the same way reporters do, as if the information of how a life was lived will give us an answer as to how and why she died. The fact that the details are based primarily on speculation matters little and soon the story emerges as complete, as more fact than speculation, simply because it has been repeated so much.
The incident happened after the local weekly’s publishing deadline but it wouldn’t have mattered: the local paper rarely provides any real news and is about reliable as “they.” Maybe less so. So, it is likely that no one will ever know what happened and why. And everyone will know.
Dicen que…

A thick layer of South Texas fog hovers over the town, making 7 am seem like 6 or 5 and dampening the spirits of the birds, which remain silent. Except for the roosters in the distance. The dogs, of course, don’t seem to mind either and their far-off barks sound fierce and threatening. To other people. The neighbor’s dangerous-looking but friendly dog, happy to see any evidence Of human activity, bounces over to my sister’a front porch where I am sipping the morning’s first cup of coffee and nibbling on a semi-hard biscuit left over from yesterday’s breakfast. He readily takes the piece of the biscuit that I give him but what he wants more than food is to be petted, human touch. Fooled by the fog, the street lights remain lit and they cast an eerie surreal glow on the trees and houses. The dog decides that the two cats copulating in the empty lot next door are more interesting and so he hurries off to rudely interrupt their moment of rapture. Few cars go by but the hum of traffic on other streets is steady and reassuring. A school bus stops at a house down the block and honks loudly, its yellow, orange and red lights blinking equally as loud. The lights are reflected on the shimmering leaves of a nearby bush and in the silvery tubes of a wind chime hanging from a sagging branch on the bush, making it look like a Christmas tree. The bus welcomes its little passenger and moves down the street to the house across the street where it repeats its ritual. Now the bus is gone, as are the street lamps, and the birds have suddenly come to life, chirping and tweeting furiously, as if to make up for lost time. My brother-in-law opens the door but does not join me on the porch. It’s cold, he says, and then turns around and walks back inside, closing the door behind him. And thus begins another late-January day in South Texas. In a few hours the sun will win its battle with the cloud cover and send it on its way, and the heat will settle in for the day, offering a mild preview of what is to come in the months ahead.

Over the last few days, as I have struggled to deal with the reality of the death of Bob Barton Jr. – longtime friend, former boss, mentor — I am repeatedly reminded of a scene from the movie, Hud, in which the grandfather expresses his frustration with Hud, his son.
You will recall that the old man had criticized Hud, telling him, that he didn’t give a damn about other people, that he value and respected nothing.  
“You live just for yourself,” he told him. “And that makes you not fit to live with.”
When Bannon, his grandson, attempted to defend Hud, the grandfather ruefully observed, “Little by little, the look of our country changes because of the men we admire.”
In reading the many tributes to Bob, on Facebook and other forums, I have marveled at how certain words keep being used over and over again.
Hero. Mentor. Giant. Icon. Great man. Good man. A huge, positive influence.
I marvel too at the number of people who have sought to find a way to pay tribute to this giant of a man. It warms my heart because it tells me that, at least in this little corner of Texas, our country has not changed at all, and it has not changed because so many have demonstrated that we admire men like Robert Clark Barton Jr.
In looking up to Bob, we have proclaimed to the world that we admire decency, fairness, justice, kindness, tolerance, and a good and generous heart. In short, what we admire about Bob are the qualities that defined him as an unrepentant liberal.
Whether he intended to or not, in giving the world Hud, Larry McMurtry introduced to us a new breed of the modern American man, a breed that is, regrettably, admired by way too many. He introduced a man who is defined by greed and selfishness and who values and respects nothing other than wealth and power, for their own sake. They are men not fit to live with.
Fortunately, there remain among us still men – and women — like Bob Barton Jr., who every day they walk on this earth remind us that greatness can be found, not in wealth and power, but in goodness.
In a sense, Bob was the anti-Hud. Unlike Hud, Bob gave a damn about people. Unlike Hud, Bob valued and respected many things, chief among them the notion that there is a basic decency and goodness in the souls of all people, and that those souls demand respect.
And, unlike Hud, Bob did not live only for himself. He lived for his community and his country.
There are some who will argue that, for Bob, politics was an end in itself, that he never lost the appetite for politics for the simple reason that he enjoyed it, as a spectator sport. But the truth is that Bob saw politics as a means to something else, as a way to improve our world and to improve the lives of people.
To Bob, the true appeal of politics — and newspapering — was that, if done right, and for the right reasons, both can help right what is wrong in our communities and in our country. Both can make life better for more people. Both can begin to erase the dark stain of injustice and prejudice of all kinds.
Unlike some of us who over the years have let cynicism creep into our existence, Bob truly believed to the very end that change and a better society are possible through the efforts of those who have the courage to take a stand.
Those of you who remember The Hays County Citizen might recall that it prominently displayed on its opinion pages the motto, “Independent in all things, neutral in none.”
That was an appropriate motto for that crusading newspaper, but it was also a fitting motto for Bob himself — with one exception, for he was not completely independent: he remained inextricably and unabashedly bound to the concepts of truth, equality and fairness.
I worked with and for Bob for a number of years, and I was his friend for many more. I learned much from him. He did not teach me how to write, but he gave me the freedom to make the mistakes that taught me how not to write. I had the privilege of also getting to know and working with Tutta and Jeff and David, and I have learned from them also. In politics, I rejoiced and celebrated with Bob when our side won, and I commiserated with him when it didn’t.
A few weeks before he died, I spent several hours discussing with Bob, David and Jeff, how we would proceed with Bob’s long-planned “unauthorized, opinionated and unsanitized” history of Hays County.
In an outline of the book that he had prepared, Bob described the book as “an uncensored history,” explaining that it would be the story “of many individual lives, each having been precious to the people who lived them.”
In a very big way, that was what defined Bob: his undying belief in the preciousness of the lives of the people with whom he shared this corner of the world. And that made Bob a person very much fit to live with – even now.

A BIT MORE than 33 years ago, when I moved to Washington to enroll in American University’s one-year master’s program in journalism and public affairs, I knew no one in this city. I arrived about a week before school started, in order to look for housing, and so I was very eager for our first day of class so that I could begin to make friends. I was tired of talking to myself.

On that first day, I looked around the group of about 30 students seated around several tables as the professors did their introductory spiels and I saw several possibilities. One of them was a young mustachioed guy from Cleveland, a quite guy who – unlike the rest of us — didn’t feel the need to impress the group with what he’d done so far in his life. I quickly decided that Richard Cowan would be one of my friends.

And he did. That same day, at the bookstore, as I stood in line behind him at the cash register, we struck up a conversation, and that was followed by lunch, with two or three of the other students at the student center.

I don’t know how the friendship developed from that point, but it did, and Rick remains one of a handful of people from that class with whom I still keep in touch. He’s also one of my best friends.

I also don’t really know exactly what our friendship was and has been based on. We share many interests, including baseball and the arts, and a penchant for rooting for the underdog. But I think the main thing that appeals to me about him has been his piercing, perverse wicked, often silly and ever-present sense of humor, which I’m glad to say he’s passed on to his children, Gabe and Sophie.

I believe that I can safely say that if I can be said to possess a sense of humor, I have stolen much of it from Rick. For instance, if I’m at a meeting and somebody comes up with a three-word noun phrase, such as “We need to take care of the off-site purchases,” I find it almost impossible to resist saying, “Oh yes, those OSPs can kill us.” Or, if somebody says, something about “perfectly balanced system,” the temptation is very strong to say, “The PBS, you mean?”

Or heaven forbid that somebody talk about something Russian, such as “ a Russian soldier,” or a “Russian dance,’ because the response will always be, “What’s the hurry?” (Get it? Russian … rushing!)

I know, I know, it’s silly and stupid, but it always elicits a groan, and that grown is worth it, as are the groans that the acronym game also produce.

There’s a lot more to Rick than humor, though, and that is what has made this friendship so special. He is deeply, deeply loyal to his friends (He is the first person I came out to). He has put up with countless acts of petulance and pettiness on my part. He is kind to strangers. At parties, I would walk away as quickly as possible from people I instantly decided were nerds or losers only to find Rick a few minutes later engaged in interesting conversations with those “losers.” And he is intelligent as shit and a damn good journalist, one of only a few people in that class who is still in the business.

One of the things that have helped keep our friendship strong is that Rick stayed in Washington, unlike most of the other people from that AU class. So, every time I’ve returned to Washington, he has been here, eager to have the friendship resume. The last time I came back to Washington he had a wife and a four-year old son. They soon had a daughter, and I have watched in wonder at how both have become the beautiful, intelligent young adults they are. I have watched them perform on stage and on the soccer field, and I have enjoyed their being part of my simple Christmas celebrations. They are more than my friends’ kids; they are my friends. So is Zoe, his beautiful and talented wife, whom I love dearly, and who created an amazingly beautiful collage for me that I saw for the first time tonight.

And so, it was fitting that on this last night in this city, I spent the evening at the Cowan residence, enjoying a wonderful dinner and conversation – and lots of humor – with these beautiful people. It was the right way to end this period of my life. And that is all that is ending, for my friendship with Rick, Zoe, Gabe and Sophie is strong and it is forever.

ON MY WAY to Ocotlan from Oaxaca via bus several years ago, I watched as a young man of about 20 boarded at a bus stop near the edge of the city. Carrying a black satchel, he made his way to the middle of the bus and, holding tightly to the overhead railing, he began to speak.

“Señoras y señores,” he said. “Forgive the interruption but I would like to inform you about this wonderful cream.”

With his free hand, he took a small jar fom his bag and held it up for all to see. No one appeared to be interested in what he had to offer. Conversations that had been going on continued and new ones were initated. Undaunted, the young man proceeded to deliver an energetic litany on the benefits of his miracle cream.

“Back pain. Feet pain. Neck pain. Pain at the waist. It gets rid of them. Coughs, too, especially in times like these when the weather is uncertain. As you know, one minute it is cold, at the next it is hot. Very hot.

“This cream penetrates the skin. It penetrates muscle tissue and tendons, and it gets directly to the source of the pain.

“There are times when a housewife spends hours ironing and at the end of the day she cannot stand the pain in her feet. This cream takes that pain away.

“There are times, when young women spend all day on their feet at work, until they have so much pain in their legs that they feel like crying. This is the cure.”

On and on he went, pausing only occassionally to make reom so persons who’d just boarded the bus could squeeze by him.

At last, he paused, and I thought that he was through. But he was not. Instead, he reached into his bag and pulled out another jar. This one, he explained, was a cream for the skin.

“It gets rid of wrinkles and scars and eases burns and sunburn,” he said. “It makes them disappear.”

As he spoke, he kept stealing glances out the bus’s windows. Obviously, he had planned to get off at a particular bus stop and did not want to risk missing the stop.

After one of the stops, he announced that he would be going down the aisle to see if anybody would buy either of his creams.

“Lots of luck,” I thought. “Nobody has been listening to you.”

I was wrong. At least two women were listening, and each bought one container of each cream, at 10 pesos apiece. He thanked them, profusely, then asked again if anybody else was interested. With no more takers, he made his way toward the front. As the bus was slowing down, he spoke one final time.

“Señoras y señores, muchas gracias por su paciencia,” he said. “I beg forgiveness, again for this interruption but, you see – you understand – this is my job. This is how I feed my family. Have a good journey and a very pleasant day.”

The bus stopped and the vender of relief and beauty was gone.

SOME THOUGHTS on the first day of the rest of my life. Or the last day of the old chapter in my life and the first day of the new chapter in my life.

I have a things-to-do app on my phone that has come in pretty handy. Listed under “Today” are reminders to look at the latest chapter of my niece’s dissertation, a reminder to buy gifts for three couples who have gotten married this past year (one in June!) and a third one says, “Tacos, Tortas and Tamales,” a reminder to buy a new cookbook by Chef Robert Sontibanez.

Listed under “Tomorrow,” is this: “Start having fun.”

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but whatever it is, it has to be more fun than the last few weeks and dealing with all these major changes in my life as I prepare for that next chapter. Putting my place on the market and wondering if it would ever sell; giving notice at work and pretending that I can be a full member of the team when the reality was that I became a short timer the moment I gave notice; deciding where I want to move to and changing my mind several times; deciding when to start looking for a house in Houston; and worst of all: figuring out how I would say good-bye to my friends, at work and outside of work.

I do intend to have fun. By that I don’t mean that I will get up every morning and put on a happy face and go out to enjoy everything that life throws at me. The problem is that while I know what I don’t mean, I’m not sure I know what I do mean. Maybe what I mean is that I’ll continue to approach each day the way I have approached most days until now: with anticipation for what might be.

It’s not going to be easy because I require discipline in my life, the kind of discipline we find in the workplace. I have some immediate projects that I intend to tackle that will have their own deadlines, but what happens after that? Will I be able to force myself to sit down to write a certain number of hours each day? To stand in front of an easel and paint for x number of hours? To volunteer? To travel? To earn extra money so I can travel as much as I’d like to? Will I force myself to leave Houston for extended periods of time, to spend a month or two in San Miguel or camping in the West?

Lottaquestionslottaquestionslottadamnquestions!

Retirement. It is a weird word, isn’t it? It brings images of going to bed, of secluding yourself in a room while other people are still roaming the house. It connotes separation. It’s not a good or accurate word at all, for while some people do move to “retirement” villages or similar locales, most people do not separate themselves – from society or family or friends. Most simply stay home, with the only difference being that they don’t go to a job every morning. I look at my six older siblings, all of whom are “retired,” and I can’t say that any one of them has withdrawn from life or society or family. Not a single one of them is bored, and most of them complain of not having enough daylight hours to do what they want to do.

In South Texas we say that a person “se retira,” which is just a bastardization of the English. “Retirar” would be the verb. Which, if you think about it, sounds awful. Tirar means to throw, to throw away. Add the re at the beginning and it means to really throw away, to get rid of. I don’t know what word the Mexicans use but my Spanish dictionary tells me that retirement is “jubilacion.” Jubilation! That sounds a lot better, but it’s also a great exaggeration. It brings visions of people at a Pentecostal service, walking around with a beatific smile on their faces and their upraised palms floating around their heads. I don’t see many older people walking around like that.

I don’t really like the phrase, “the next chapter in your life” either. Yes, it is a next chapter, if we divide our lifespans into chapters, but it’s not just another chapter. It is more than likely the last chapter, and most of us have a hard time dealing with that thought. That phrase is supposed to make us feel better, like “passing” is supposed to make us feel better when we talk about death. If we talk about death; most of us would rather not.

(As I sit here writing this, at a café near my home, I keep hearing the new-email ping on my iPhone every few seconds. It’s the IT people at API testing the this-guy-no-longer-works-here message that those who email me there will get. Pretty soon, the number of emails coming into my phone will decrease by about two-thirds. That’s a welcome thought, but also not, given that I’ve become addicted to the iPhone tone of incoming emails or text messages, to the point that I automatically reach for my iPhone whenever I hear any kind of pinging, as I did earlier this afternoon when each tone of the elevator indicating that we had reached a new parking garage level made my hand move towards my pocket.)

But I guess it doesn’t really matter what we call it, does it? What matters is what we do with it. In one way or another, we all keep on working, for life is work. It is fun and it is exciting and it is rewarding, but in order to get any of that, we have to work at it.

I intend to work at it.

Beyond that, I am very lucky that I am an artist. I paint, I write, I draw, I take pictures, I cook. I create things, and people who have creativity in their blood and in their genes are doomed to keep working until they take their last breaths. My siblings are also artists, in their own ways, although I doubt any of them would ever admit it. But they create beautiful things, in their kitchens, in their gardens, in their woodshops, and in their sewing rooms.

I guess if I have to choose one person whose life in his older years I would emulate, that would be my grandfather, Alejandro Palomo. He was a carpenter. He built his own house and built a house for each of his children. He built furniture. He never stopped working and, after he was convinced by his daughter to move to California with her, he continued working there until the moment his heart stopped beating. He was picking fruit in an orchard near San Jose.

That’s how I want to live the rest of my life: picking beautiful, juicy things from the tree of life.

WE CAME HOME from school with a hopeful question.

Dormio? we asked her. Did you sleep?

Un poquito, she would say, or, Casi nada.

Almost to herself, she would continue, Ay, Dios mío, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If I can’t sleep, how can I work?

Did you take the pills?

Sí, sí, pero pa’ que? No trabajan. They do nothing.

How can a person not sleep when she needs to? That’s what I could not understand. There’s nothing to it: If you work all night, you sleep during the day, or at least part of the day — even if the sun is shining brightly outside, even if the noise of the neighborhood fills the air outside your windows. You need sleep? You sleep.

Every once in a while, we got the response we craved.

Sí, m’hijo, she would smile. Bastante, y muy bien.

The sleeping pills had been her friends; they had done their job.

We were relieved, of course. We felt glad for her and we felt grateful that, at least for a few days longer she would be ready when her ride arrived, lunch bag in hand, her gray hair held tightly in place by the wisps of the hairnet. She’d remain alert throughout the night and we wouldn’t have to go to bed worrying that her hands might get caught and mangled by the metal belt carrying the spinach (or beans, or beets).

And, more important: a few more hours of sleep meant that her mayordoma – La Heddy — would not catch her nodding off and she – we – would have another full week’s paycheck. Another week that we wouldn’t have to ask Tío Juan’s dour wife to allow us to again charge that week’s food supply at Lopez Fruit Stand, where we could always go when there was no cash to go to the IGA or Ray’s Food Market.

Another week devoid of preocupación.

This is what I think about as I lie in my bed at 3 and it’s dark outside and it’s quiet and a full day’s work awaits me in the morning and I can’t sleep.