Richard Jernigan -> RE: Beethoven listeners (Mar. 25 2014 20:39:02)
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ORIGINAL: estebanana Yeah tough guy? Tell that tale and see what happens. Err...I mean please tell the tale, sir. OK, since you ask so politely. Even at the risk of an offensive internet display of cameraderie among those who have met in real life. As usual we left the gin in San Perlita around 10:20 PM, and didn't arrive at our favorite bar in Reynosa until a little after midnight. The place was packed, and all the desirable girls were taken, so I got a beer and walked up to the game of animales. A woman of a certain age was seated on a chair set on a table top. She held a deck of cards about four times as thick as the usual 52 cards. On the cards were images, some from the taro deck like "The Ladder", "The Fool", and "The Hanged Man", others peculiar to the animales deck, as far as I know. The players paid a fee to receive one or more pasteboard squares, maybe 11-12 inches on a side. The pasteboards were like Bingo cards, except with miniature images from the deck of cards instead of letters and numbers. For markers you got a pile of beer bottle caps. As in Bingo you could pay for more than one card. The woman flipped through the deck of cards, flashed the image, and called out the name, often a slang reference rather than a real description. If you had the image on one of your cards, you put a bottle cap on it. First one to cover his whole card won the pot. The woman shuffled, players paid for new cards, the game went on. As it happened the guy I moved in next to was this huge Jamaican. He seemed to have been there for a while, because he was visibly sloshed. Seeing a probable English-speaker, he greeted me in a lilting Caribbean accent. Eager to maintain good relations with such a hulking specimen, I replied politely. Soon my new friend was proposing side bets. Even if you didn't win, you could bet on who had the most spots covered at the end of the hand, how many rows or coulumns you had filled, etc. I hesitated to bet. The guy was at a serious disadvantage. He was quite drunk, he appeared to speak little Spanish, the woman zipped through the deck at light speed, so you could only keep up if you listened to her patter and kept your eyes on your cards. On the other hand he was persistent in his desire for side bets. I caved in and bet. He lost every time. I began to be concerned, but he was a very jovial drunk. He was betting me 50 or a hundred pesos at a pop, $4 or $8 bucks. He began to run low on cash. He offered to bet a bottle of Bacardi Añejo against 50 pesos. To keep the peace, I agreed. Then he said he had a girl for the night, and bet her against 100 pesos. The correct fee was $20, so I upped my part to 250 pesos. Of course he lost. Then he took off his shoes and put them on the table. They looked pretty new, a light tan color, and practically glowed in the light that hung above the dealer's head. I demurred, he insisted. He lost his shoes, and declared defeat with a big smile and a thundering slap on the back. I insisted on returning his shoes. He accepted and called the girl over. I was surprised that she was young and pretty. In the 1950s Mexico still had attitudes that I found contradictory. There was modern industry and a strong trade union movement. The 1917 constitution was the first hard left socialist one, with collectivized land reform, state-owned industry, the whole bit, pre-dating that of the Soviet Union. The ingenious corruption of politicians and plutocrats in circumventing the law was the equal of any modern state. Yet the attitude toward women could have been from medieval Andalucia. Young women were kept in social isolation. During the weekly paseo in the town square they were accompanied by a stern older woman. If a couple did receive permission to go out together, they were always accompanied. In the cultured city of Guanajuato, with its university and annual outdoor festival of classic Spanish dramas, I once walked up behind a courting couple strolling along the sidewalk, accompanied by her younger brother. He had a transistor radio next to his ear, listening to Beethoven. There were very few young women working in jobs we gringos then saw as normal, such as bank tellers, department store clerks, etc. If a young woman worked in a stall in a public market there was always an older one keeping watch on her, ready to interrupt any male who tried to flirt. No female of any age wore trousers. Shorts were unthinkable. As a result of these attitudes, any young woman who was known to lose her virginity before marriage was in very serious trouble. Elsewhere in Latin America or in Spain, she might be sent to a convent. The anti-clerical 1917 Constitution made all church buildings federal property, confiscated the church's vast landholdings, forbade the wearing of clerical garb in public, and prohibited monastic establishments. A few nunneries operated underground, but only the daughters of the wealthy might enter one of these as disgraced maidens. As a consequence, in the red-light district bars of any Mexican city, and particularly in those lining the Texas border from Matamoros to Juarez, you might find a young, pretty girl, with a couple of years of high school, and a disposition that was still sweet, who had been thrown out of the house by her enraged and embarrassed father. My girl turned out to be such a one. Lucky me. We went to her room and chatted for a while. Before we got any further, a fight in the bar across the way spilled into the street and quickly flamed up into a full scale riot. The army trucks could be heard, the cries of the crowd as they tried to flee. Then other sounds struck fear in my heart. You could hear people pounding on nearby doors, soldiers shouting, objections from customers being rousted. The girl told me that sometimes when the soldiers chased someone into a bar, it really pissed them off, and they rousted the whole place, arresting just about any male they came across. "What should I do?" I asked. "Get in the bed," she replied. "Under the bed?" "No. They will look there. Get in the bed, under the covers, pull them over your head." "But…" "Now. Do it!" She climbed in after me, shoved me up against the wall, and piled a spare blanket on top of me. Soon enough the soldiers pounded on the door, she told them to come in, it was unlocked. The soldiers stomped in, looked in the wardrobe, looked under the bed and interrogated the girl. She pleaded, and wept. I never knew whether the tears were just an act, or whether she was really that scared. At any rate, the soldiers seemed to be in a hurry and moved on. Eventually the ruckus died down, the street quieted, the trucks moved away with their cargos of hapless revelers. It took us a while to get over our nerves, but we eventually found a way to pass the time pleasantly. The next morning I was invited to a nice breakfast with the rest of the girls. They complimented me on my escape. I took away most of the bottle of rum, and almost $50 worth of pesos, which I changed at a casa de cambios before I crossed the bridge. I didn't have the shoes, but I never forgot their warm glow in the light. Nor have I forgotten the sweet girl, and her generosity in saving me from the soldiers. RNJ I didn't even say anything about doorknobs….
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