For two days, hot water has not been working.
The landlord has been attentive, sent someone by who thought it might be something it wasn’t, then sends his maintenance man to troubleshoot.
Hugo comes prepared with a tape measure, apartment keys, an electrical voltage tester, screwdrivers, and instructions that if he can’t get it fixed it will require an electrician or plumber and no hot water for several more days.
Hugo, a short man, stands on a chair and tests power to the electrical box into which the electric hot water heater is plugged. It is getting juice to the box, but no juice through the switch to the hot water heater. He shows me the switch after he pulls it out of the electrical box.
“No bueno,” he says.
“Puede repairo?” I ask.
Hugo says he will be back in 15 minutes, takes the dead switch and leaves to a neighborhood ferreteria, comes back in thirty minutes and completes his job.
A green light comes on at the bottom of the hot water heater when he is done and indicates all systems are functioning properly.
I check the hot water fifteen minutes after he leaves to make sure I have hot water, and I do.
In this world, it is Hugo’s who keep wheels turning.
Cold showers, any time of the day, aren’t hot.
Blues chords aren’t complex, the rhythms and melodies aren’t sophisticated, the harmony is a step down from folk music but several steps below jazz.
Stevie Ray Vaughn isn’t the only white blues man to make it big and suffer an untimely end. He has been gone a while but the songs this group are playing, on Sarandi Street, are straight from his Real Book.
This street band features a bass guitar and a lead guitarist who handles vocals. Percussion is supplied by a kid sitting on a drum box. They have microphones positioned so I hear them from blocks away.
The bass guitar player asks where I am from during a break, and, when I answer, in English, he points me to the lead singer who speaks the best English.
Uruguayans are friendly and helpful people and unfailingly good with gringos trying to speak their language. It is sweet the way they always talk about their bad English, but never mention my abysmal Spanish.
The guys jam, hit notes, stick with the beat – one, two, three, four, one, two,three, four beats to a bar.
I sit on a wide stone window ledge in front of a men’s clothing store and listen to an entire set and make sure I leave them money in an open guitar case.
Texas blues sound good anywhere.
In old Montevideo. I call the band ” Men in Black. ”
Stevie would be pleased.
Walking towards Constitution Plaza from Independence Plaza, there are bronze Generals on horseback every block, as well as little plaza’s and parks.
There is something sad about memorializing heroes in bronze and then placing them outside where pigeons squat on their pointed military hats and defecate on their medals. It is an unfitting end for men who have contributed so much to their country.
There are plenty of fountains on this boulevard too, mostly in the center of plazas with water pouring from jars held by Roman Goddesses or shooting from the pursed lips of cherubs. These fountains sometimes have no water, waiting for maintenance men to hook up lines, clean the pond, paint the walls of the pool. Occasionally, in front of well financed government buildings, you find ponds with water lilies and colorful fish.
In Constitution Park the fountain is generic and empty of water and I am startled because it appears one of the statues from this fountain has been moved by delinquents in front of my McDonalds.
There is a small jar filled with money at the statues feet.
Stepping back and watching, I watch the statue lips move and I see her breathe.
The makeup on her face is thick and her hair is perfect. She remains still and doesn’t make eye contact until I drop a bill into her jar. Then she bows and smiles, reaches into a pocket and hands me my personal fortune written in Spanish, which I have since lost, but am sure it wished me a long and prosperous life with a wife that loves me and seven or eight children who get good grades in school and go to bed on time.
I wave at her, she smiles at me, her palms opening and closing as she clicks two wood castanets. She finishes with a bow, to me, and returns to her statue position.
It is easy to get mentally lazy.
She has made this day spicy, and, for that, she is a real Goddess.
Big cities should be a worker’s paradise with good wages because there is too much construction and maintenance needed to match equally with people who will work a long hard day for little pay and no recognition.
Walking near Constitution Plaza, on Sarandi street, Gustavo, a fellow painter, is working in a doorway. He has applied paint remover and is scraping softened varnish off a door jamb with a scraper that won’t damage the wood.
Gustavo’s next step will be to take sandpaper and smooth the wood surfaces. Then, after cleaning, he will apply a thinned down undercoat of polyurethane, lightly sand and wipe everything down with a tack cloth, and finish the project with two full strength coats of exterior polyurethane with a flourish of his three inch sash brush.
Painting is not without honor but, at the end of the day, it was, for me, always a relief to clean my brushes, fold drop cloths, seal up paint cans and load the van.
New doesn’t last long in a city of several million and paint makes glamour girls out of a lot of plain Jane buildings, offices, kitchens,bathrooms and bedrooms.
Working men keep this world operating.
It takes an even bigger crew of painters to keep the stars sparkling.
Regardless of where I travel, one of the most asked questions I get is – “Do they have a McDonald’s?”
There is a McDonald’s in Montevideo, Uruguay. It wasn’t sought out, isn’t on my list of important things to do, but it is a cultural landmark that marks the landing of American habits to every corner of the world.
This McDonald’s is not flashy but the familiar arches beckon me to come closer. Employees wear uniforms just like they do at home, freshly washed and ironed. Coffee is made in an expresso machine and costs two dollars a cup, cheap for Montevideo.
Sitting outside, at one of the benches under a grove of trees, I feel right at home.
We Americans have landed and planted our flag.
Wherever I go; There we are.
“We were in the eighties last week,” Jesper tells me, pouring us a Monday afternoon cup of coffee at his desk in a Ciudad Vieja office close to the Port. He talks about the old city versus the new city, how he and his wife are now moving into commercial sales in addition to property management.The studio where I stay for this journey is owned by one of his clients and Jesper manages it as a favor.
The old city of Montevideo, he says, is a hub of economic activity, a place where ships bring goods, government buildings abound, museums are on most every street and lawyers, accountants and young professionals snap up every place that is renovated. This Port area has been neglected but his investment group is bringing people and business back to the neighborhood.
“I am from Denmark,” he continues, “and my wife is from Argentina. She is in New York on business …”
The office is spacious. There is art on the wall and Gabriella told me, when I walked in, in English and Spanish and hand gestures,that a woman will be in to clean my rented studio on Friday, the 7th.
I pay my rent and settle in for this piece of my journey, get a receipt, and catch my bearings.
Travelling and weather hold hands like high school sweethearts.
” Call me if you have any problems, ” my new landlord says.
I leave feeling like he really means it.
Money might not make the world go round, but it provides lubrication .
Looking for an ATM to get cash to pay for my rented vacation studio in Ciudad Vieja, I have apprehension.
Banks and credit card companies have been told Scott will be out of the country. They have been given names of the countries I will be visiting and have authorized the cards to be used. ATM’s are blood transfusions to the withering traveler. If you don’t have money, you are going to the mat in a place where you have no friends, don’t speak the language, can’t read the street signs.
This machine asks what language I prefer, asks whether I want dollars or Pesos, asks whether funds are coming from savings, checking, or credit card.
I go through each step but the transaction is cancelled. People are in line behind me so I take my card and myself for a walk. Why is this not working?
It hits me like a brick that I wasn’t prompted to enter my card’s password.
This next try I punch in my password before I hit ” continuar ” and follow instructions, to the end.
It is the right solution because the machine spits out hundred dollar bills that are so crisp that Ben Franklin must be printing inside the ATM,as I wait.
ATM’s are a three letter word I like. It is amazing that a machine in a foreign country will give me money even though it doesn’t know me from Adam..
ATM’s are as close to a money tree as us guys are likely to get.
Even the best plans of men go awry and the best planned trips get caught in rough currents.
Boarding my plane in Albuquerque, all things are possible. I am scheduled to fly from Albuquerque to Dallas, Dallas to Miami, Miami to Montevideo, Uruguay.There is no doubt this trip will happen, in proper order, until the Captain of our American Airlines jet announces a ” maintenance problem. ”
We are stuck on an Albuquerque runway,our plane’s engines won’t start, so we taxi back to the gate for grease monkeys to determine what the plane’s problem is,and, if possible, fix it.
Sitting in our plane, an hour and a half assessment is completed. Finally, with supervisor approval, techs jump start engines and we taxi back out and get airborne on our second try.
The traveler seated next to me is from Peru. He makes his living explaining mutual funds to South American financial advisers and tells me Uruguay is nice which gives me some comfort that this trip will be better than it has begun.
In the Miami airport, a huge floral design on a wall above an escalator going down to Customs, reminds me that Peace and Love are the hardest words to live by in the English language.
It is two in the morning before a shuttle from the Hotel Element picks up six of us stranded travelers and gets us safe to our airline paid compensatory rooms for having missed our ongoing connections through airline error.
It isn’t an auspicious beginning for this trip, but at least I reach Florida with all my body parts.
Statistically, airline travel is safe, but fear of falling really kills us.
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