Back in the 1950’s, after WW2, most people headed home to raise families.
Men were tired of shooting bullets and women were tired of making them. Instead of killing humanity the focus became re-populating humanity. An era of big bands was coming to a halt and an age of rock and roll, beat poetry, and abstract expressionist art was coming into its own. Jazz, an American art form, was in ascendance and its emphasis on rhythm, dissonance and drugs were a premonition of things to come.
Jack Kerouac, one of the beat generation’s shining stars, made a trip down to Mazatlan in the 50’s in an old bus, camped, and immortalized this place as one stop in his epic rollicking novel “On the Road.”
On a wall, by The Shrimp Bucket, is a plaque placed by the Mazatlan Historical Society to commemorate the exact point in place and time where the bard stopped roaming, drank beer, hung out with the locals, and dreamed of the proletariat overcoming. He looked for pleasure and put his stories down in long winding sentences where he only stopped writing to take a breath. His novel was new for its day but old in concept. He was the hero of his own epic Homeric poem. He was a tumbleweed travelling to new ports with his only home the inside of his bus or a bedroll spread out in some flophouse. His friends were fragile poets traumatized by war, big business, and moral restrictions.
Sitting in The Shrimp Bucket, you can look at a little hill that must have made Jack nostalgic for San Francisco. Even if you can’t agree with Kerouac’s self destroying lifestyle, you can understand why he was here, by the water, drinking beer with limes, almost naked bodies dancing in the surf and fishermen spinning stories of great marlin battles.
Kerouac would have turned sentimental at the marlin story telling but Hemingway, if here, would have relished each twist of the hooks.
Kerouac was beautiful in his willingness to edit nothing.
.Hemingway was beautiful in his willingness to cut everything to its heart.
They are both masters of prose storytelling.
I would have loved to be drinking at the next table to them, at the Shrimp Bucket on any starry Mexican night,listening to them talk poetry.
Down near the radio towers, at the south end of the Malecon, is an eatery called the Shrimp Bucket.
It is right on the road and if you stick your arm out from a table closest to the rail that separates you from the road, a car will take your arm off your shoulder.
From our table Alan, Dave and I can see the Malecon, the beach, a rock hill where San Francisco type homes rise to give the grandest view for miles. After an appropriately long wait in a place where time itself is on a holiday, a waiter brings us a menu that is the same as it was in the 1950’s. There is, after all, no reason to change your Menu when everything on it is something someone once paid money for.
The marlin stew catches my eye.
After a large hotel breakfast, a bowl of stew is enough for lunch and if it is good for hangovers it will also be good for a travelers malaise that strikes at some point in every trip where sun, surf, new surroundings, different language, lack of sleep begin to take a toll.
Marlin stew is pungent and Mexican. It is packed with peas, carrots, onions, cabbage, green olives, and small reddish bits of marlin. The marlin has a distinct flavor and its taste is softened by queso piled on top of the soup and crackers broken and dumped in the bowl like you did when you were a kid. The stew is hot and spicy and comes with a cold local Pacifico beer.
After I finish lunch I want to cross the road, descend concrete stairs to the beach, lie down on a bench under a thatched shelter, take a long siesta, and dream of long winding Kerouac sentences that get lost in their own waves.
Us English majors have a thing for well turned sentences, short or long.
Walking the Malecon, visitors come upon palm branch topped beach shelters that provide protection from the sun and are places to gather. The shelters line a sea wall and their tops look like giant Chinese coolie hats.
This morning a crew of workers are re-thatching a roof on one of the palapas. A helper on the beach hands a palm frond up. A hatted worker on the roof takes and positions it across the joists of the shelter’s roof, careful to overlap other branches already laid down. Then he uses wire to tiie the palm leaves to the joists. As the project is completed the bones of the shelter roof disappear and it shows a new thatch of green hair that will turn brown in time, like the older ones.
Other workers are erecting huge statues for a Mazatlan Carnival in February. That is the event that has pushed this thatching to top priority.
Work occurs here each day.
It winds its way through all lives here and ties people, weather, time and space together.
Our original trip concept was to take RVs to Mexico, stay on the beach a month, drink beer, and check out bikinis.
Our original destination was to be San Carlos, Mexico – up the coast north from Mazatlan. There was a RV park already picked out. But things change, all the time and quickly, so that trip idea turned and became a different animal.
Because diesel fuel is of a lower grade in Mexico, Alan didn’t want to drive his RV to San Carlos. By the time we three figured the cost of fuel, insurance, space rent ,it was going to be cheaper to take a traditional vacation to a hotel with hot water and maid service so we dropped our idea of a RV caravan.
On a morning walk, Alan and I discover a RV park in Mazatlan where we all might have stayed if we had brought our RV’s. It is on the beach, in the middle of the Zona Dorado, and affordable. Seeing these big rigs pulled in between palm trees on a dirt lot and old guys in shorts riding rusting bicycles to the front doors of their luxurious motor homes, brings a fuzziness to my heart. The snowbirds carry English newspapers in little wire bicycle baskets and will spend this afternoon working on a crossword puzzle because it is too hot to go fishing.
Jose, the park’s maintenance man, waves when we knock on the closed office door and we talk with him in broken Spanish, enough to understand that it costs five hundred dollars a month to stay here and you pay for your electric. This park is right on the beach and some patrons come down for months. The office is closed but this park doesn’t need much management with these old guys taking care of most nuisances themselves.
In a place like this you want to live quiet, economical, and simple. You want to have a few friends you can count on and buy lots of shrimp on the beach from fishermen who just come in. A couple of beers in the evening to calm the mind are good, and reading ” Old Man and the Sea ” puts your mind in the right frame.
Here, in Mazatlan, we all have time to savor our time.
Hotels and restaurants dot both sides of the street that takes you from the Mazatlan historical center to the marina at the north end of town. If each hotel was represented on a map with a red pin, and each restaurant a blue pin, you would have a long
row of pins. You could climb up on the head of one pin and walk all the way to the marina without ever touching the road.
A half block down the calle, in front of the Hotel Playa ,is a colorful eatery that calls itself the Gringo Lingo
A kid in front of the eatery, holds a menu, stands on the sidewalk and talks us inside for a meal and a Pacifico beer – one of Mazatlan’s gifts to the world. There is world class fishing in these waters that drew Hollywood stars in the 50’s, taking time off from the rigors of stardom and Los Angeles. You see photos of John Wayne and Robert Mitchem in travel brochures in local shops and huge marlin dangling from the end of ominous hooks connected to dock scales.
This evening the three of us are enticed into the Gringo Lingo complete with bright primary school colors, hanging potted plants, and an extensive menu of Mexican and American favorites. There is only a handful of patrons when we enter and only a few come after we find a table. It is early in the evening and people are still recovering from sunburn and too many afternoon margaritas.
This evening we try tortilla soup and chicken wings. Ordering food is a tricky business in Mexico even though menus show pictures and have food descriptions written in English as well as Spanish.
Dining tonight in the ” Golden Zone, ” we eat what tastes good to us and look for movie stars.
Mazatlan, in it’s day, was where gringos went to speak their lingo to the ocean sunsets.
Mazatlan, today, has lost some of it’s charm. Now, it feels like a big marlin that has hung a bit too long from a big hook on the pier.
If places could just remain the way they used to be,mostly natural and undiscovered, we travelers would all be the better for it.
While the places I visit are new to me, there is no question that I have been preceded where I go by many.
If going someplace no one has been was my goal, I would never get out of my house.
In the morning, before ten, the beaches are empty except for romantics, beachcombers, and elderly walking their dogs.
Around this place, people stay up late, dance into the late hours, have a few too many drinks, keep everyone at the hotel awake as they stumble down hallways with all too many doors looking the same.
The Malecon is a wide sidewalk that runs from Valentino’s to the Centro of Mazatlan. It parallels the beach and gives ample room for bicycles, walkers, joggers, hand holders, pet walkers, photographers, street hustlers, tourists and locals. The thoroughfare is level, the potholes far and few between, and, if you wish, you can take concrete steps down to the beach and feel sand between your toes. It reminds me of the Rambla in Montevideo though the sunlight in Mazatlan is more intense than sunlight in Montevideo.
At breakfast, our conversation is about re-locating to Mexico from America, and Americans.
“You don’t want to be around Americans,” Dave insists.
What he says is understandable, but we are Americans. It sticks on us like a glove. You can change your clothes, work on your accent, hang out with the locals, smoke non filter cigarettes and eat shrimp till your eyes bulge,but you will always be a gringo.
You can take Americans out of their country but you can’t take America out of American’s.
Being an American doesn’t prohibit you from enjoying Mazatlan for as long as you want to stay. As long as you are spending green dollars, there is tolerance here for you.
People here might not like Americans, but they love our American money.
The Mazatlan geography is flatand vegetation hugs the ground. The predominant building material in town is cement and tile is used prolifically because it is easy to wash, mop, clean, and maintain.
Around us this afternoon are T-shirts aplenty in storefronts, caps and sunblock, numerous watering holes for an ever thirsty clientele. Street vendors get ready for evening when people come out to play and this well known city has miles of beach for para sailing, kayaking, swimming, body surfing and building sand castles. There are places here you can eat famous Mazatlan shrimp or Carne Asada with jalapenos and onions.
Mexico remains Mexico – loud, bold, in your face. After your first day you realize that it is you who must adjust, slow down, turn over, and not be in a hurry. There is plenty of time to do what you think needs to be done, but you first need to think about whether it really does need to be done. This is a place that doesn’t always reward the ambitious.
With the sound of waves ever present, this afternoon is spread out like a beach towel waiting for a warm body.
The Seashell Museum offers shells from around the world.
A group of girls practice volleyball kills across from a beach bar.
Senor Frog greets guests for casual shopping and a local eatery entices with fake margaritas displayed on a table on a sidewalk in front of a bar.
A pit bull looks down on his street from an upstairs window and barks at everyone while thirsty bikers sip whiskey and talk about Harley’s.
We have all landed.
Mexico will have its way with all of us.
Interstate 10 from Surprise to the Phoenix airport is slowed to six miles per hour at seven in the morning.
Our clock is ticking and our plane departure time is absolute.
Alan and I exit the freeway and head south to Buckhorn Avenue at 51st street, then east towards the airport. With detours, and uncertainty, we end at the airport and find the Terminal 4 parking garage, slide into a small space for my compact car that I drove to Happy Trails from Albuquerque, and get ourselves to the American Airlines check in desk. We meet Dave, who drove in from Denver, in the Phoenix airport, and board together a flight to Mazatlan, Mexico.
On the airplane, all the way to Mexico, there is the back of a head looking at me. I keep trying to visualize it with eyes, a nose, a mouth, a personality. But, it is just a thatch of graying hair holding up a set of earphones. To my left is a porthole window whited out by the sun.
Alan tries to catch up on sleep in the window seat. Dave is seated in the front of the plane. He hates flying and had to bring oxygen because of COPD.
After two hours we three land in Mexico and have to endure still another security screening.
This is a price you pay for being warm when back home people are wearing heavy jackets and shoveling snow.
Being deemed no security threat, we catch a cab to our hotel, change into shorts, and watch palm trees sway in the breeze above a cool blue swimming pool as babes turn into bronze statues.
Up to now we have just been talking Mexico. Now, we are doing Mexico.
Another foreign country is getting into Scotttreks, this time with company
Recent Comments