Elton might not approve, but a cheap radio, playing one of his yesteryear hits, provides music at the Rincon RV Resort Farmer’s Market.
Having the same feeling as watching a John Wayne movie on a TNT movie night, I listen to Elton belt out his early ancient hit to whomever is listening. Once a song goes out on the air, it has more lives than a cat.
Now, rumors of his lifestyle are far more interesting than his music, but good songs seem to outlast their composers and resonate across generational borders.
Ghosts stick around, but music residuals go on forever.
We spend lots of time waiting in our lives.
We wait to be born and wait to be buried, wait to graduate, wait to raise kids, pay off a mortgage, retire, serve and be served,break par, get money back on our taxes.
If we are lucky the line keeps moving and we have more people behind us, than ahead.
This line started forty five minutes before six, the scheduled time for the chili fundraiser for the Lapidary Club. In the auditorium, attendees visit old friends and make new ones. You would think that with less time left in their hourglass old people would be in a bigger hurry.
The Chili Fundraiser is a success.
The chili isn’t spicy enough for some but we’ll wait till next time to see if the chefs get bolder. The older we get the more bland our food has to be.
Raising funds is always a challenge, but tonight they SOLD all their tickets.
People watching beats television any time.
Desert nights get cooler than desert days.
In the winter, day temperatures can rise to the eighties, but, at night, they can drop to the forties. Park models have propane or electric heat and RV’s are not immune from Mother Nature’s mood swings. When the sun drops you need a jacket, a flashlight, and a heater.
” Call this number and put it where the delivery truck can see it, ” are my Tuesday morning instructions at the RV park office.
I am given a four by six inch piece of orange card stock with a place to write my name, my space number, and the date of my request.
ARIZONA PROPANE takes up most of the card space with barely room for their phone number and website. I call, give credit card information, get scheduled for delivery on Wednesday between eight and ten.
Wednesday morning at ten forty five, the delivery truck pulls up and its driver runs a hose to my propane tank, fills it, and writes a ticket for the minimum charge of five gallons and a five dollar service fee. The bill is $20.00.
” That will keep you warm, ” the kid says, as he rolls his supply hose back onto a reel on the back of the company truck.
From my space he pulls across the street and services a three hundred thousand dollar recreational vehicle.
Being warm for twenty bucks is a bargain.
Spending three hundred thousand for anything on wheels seems like a walk on the wild side.
Calzada Street begins at the Granada Cathedral and ends at Lake Nicaragua. This street has become a main tourist draw and has everything a tourist might want, and plenty they don’t need.
In the stretch down both sides of Calzada Street you have bars, restaurants, street vendors, an open seating area in the middle of the street, waiters standing on sidewalks promoting mojitos and two for one Happy Hour. This place is a mixed drink of locals, foreigners, tourists, ex-pats, hustlers, transients, businessmen, artists and artisans, homeowners.
In the old days this was a sleepy street and residents lived normal lives. With an influx of foreigners, real estate became more valuable than most could have ever imagined. A quiet street on the way to the Lake became the Las Vegas Strip. Old adobe homes were suddenly valuable.
This house on Calzada Street has brought local issues out into public.
It’s owner calls out swindlers, by name.
The bottom line is that this house is not for sale, unless, of course, the price is right.
Swindlers buy dirt cheap and sell sky high.
Swindlers, and those swindled, dance a fine line on Calzada Street.
Lake Nicaragua is in the top five largest lakes in the world and has enough water to keep Central America hydrated for hundreds of years if the tap turns off.
Mario, our tour guide, brings out his map and shows us where the new Panama Canal is going to be built.
Looking at the map, he points.
The new canal will go from the from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea cutting through the southern part of Nicaragua, using this lake and a new man made fresh water lake to feed water to canal locks. China is scheduled to start this new canal soon and the project will change this country forever.
” These islands, ” Mario continues, ” are for sale.” He puts away his map, gestures with his hands, and grabs our attention.
” That one, ” he continues, is owned by one of the wealthiest families in Nicaragua, the Pella family. They own the Tona beer company too…. ”
The good thing about owning an island is that neighbors are separated from you. The bad thing is some of your neighbors are living in galvanized sheet metal houses with boats dry docked in the yard and laundry hanging from makeshift clotheslines..
Men fishing in the river pause and watch us, then cast out their nets and pull them back in with tonight’s dinner.
When the sun goes down fires glow in the woods as day is put to bed and stories roll out of their bunks.
Most who live on this lake never want to see anything crossing it that ruins their fishing.
Taking a different way to the Plaza, there appears another Catholic church, one of fifteen in Granada.
This place of worship is unique for its grizzled exterior that looks older than history, and people are standing way up in a church bell tower taking photos of the city at dusk. It is evening and Mass is in progress.
I have been told by a tour guide that the black stained exterior is not mold but comes from a fire built by an American, William Walker, who invaded and tried to take control of Nicaragua in the 1800’s to extend Southern slavery. He was trying to burn out defenders of the city who were holed up inside the massive walls of this church.
Walker was eventually captured and executed in Honduras but American interventionism has never stopped anywhere.
Church’s try to do God’s work, but men keep putting their foot in the door.
American’s have been visiting Nicaragua a long time, and good has not always been on their mind, no matter what their mouths said.
A trip to the grocery in a foreign country can be setting yourself up for shock treatment.
There are items in the grocery here that are less than what I pay at home, but many items are far more expensive.
In a country where the minimum wage for a working guy or girl is less than a U.S. dollar per hour, why would any sane person want to drink a six pack of beer at almost $10.00 U.S., or shave with Gillette shaving cream at eight dollars a can? On my most recent trip through the grocery gauntlet, my costs for a handful of items were $12.00 U.S.
For my money today, I buy two bars of soap, a link of sausage and a package of chicken cold cuts. I bring home an avocado,two boxes of saltine crackers, a small bag of apples, a bunch of bananas and a loaf of wheat bread.
Coming from Europe, or the U.S., or wealthy South American countries, Nicaragua is a bargain.
On the other hand, walking in a Nicaraguan’s shoes pinches your toes..
If I only make seventy or eighty cents an hour I would have to work two days to pay for what I just bought.
If you really need to know what a country and it’s people are about, peek into their shopping bags and watch what they ride to get home.
On Sunday, I hear church bells.
Citizens stay close to home and tourists are carried through empty streets in horse drawn carriages with flowers braided in the horse’s manes .A few retail stores are open around the plaza and taxi’s lollygag in front of hotels.Waiters stand in their dining rooms watching soccer on television. Moms and dads tend to children and older parents.
On Monday, the sounds change.
On Monday, there is a great flowing of people out of their homes and sidewalks become outdoor grocery stores with baskets, buckets, wheelbarrows filled with beans, berries, apples, citrus, lettuce, rice and staples. Workmen carry scaffolding, pick up paint brushes, swing machetes, keep streets swept clear of trash. Everywhere there are people in motion, bright colors, conversations, money changing hands for goods and services.
According to facts, Nicaragua is one the world’s poorest countries.Only a third of children finish primary school and much of the population stay poor. It is a country of great natural wonders and biodiversity and is visited by tourists from around the globe. Nicaraguan’s value family and are famous for their hospitality. Their culture is one of European, African, and Caribbean influences.On Monday, I start in line at a BAC bank changing two five hundred Cordoba notes just pulled from their ATM machine because local merchants are reticent to take them. There are seven people ahead of me doing bank business and next time I will use the money changer in the street outside who wears a ball cap and has a wad of money in his right hand.A funeral proceeds down the street outside with a long line of mourners following a black hearse with white curtains in the windows to the Cemetario.On Mondays, the living get back to the job of living.
Prospecting is in your blood, or it isn’t.
On a weekday, at the beach, Neal prospects, Joan knits, Scott pulls his hat down and lays back against a dune and watches kite surfers move across the water. The wind is blowing, but it is better here than in a frigid north where a cold front moves down and throws a wet blanket over the Northeast, Midwest, and South.
At the tip of Texas, almost as far south as Florida, we are not immune from restless weather. Palm trees rustle, clouds hang like a boxer’s black eye, fog lounges on street corners like a thug.
Prospecting takes patience.
It isn’t long till our prospector comes back with his find.
He pulls out scrap, beer cans, foil, pop tops and wire. Then, out of his front shirt pocket, he brings the coup de gras – a corroded copper penny.
You know there are gold doubloons and pieces of eight not far from where this penny was found. Newspaper reports of gold doubloons found by farmers from Ohio walking on the beach surface every so many years.
Hope supported by facts is more than enough reason to prospect here.
Early, gold hunters show up with wading boots, windbreakers, wide brimmed caps, sunglasses, their gold detectors dipped into frothy water.
The sky, water, and beach run together like a tightly edited film. Everything in this landscape moves but seems to stand still. Clouds blow past, waves roll in, seagulls take flight. A raven stops on a fence. Shell seekers prowl and the gold hunters are left alone with their devices.
They wear headphones that keep their ears listening for upticks, bleeps of sound, excited electronics. All movement cancels itself out, like white noise on a television. If you are still and look straight ahead, all you hear is the wind and all you see is the horizon – frozen in the moment.
Spanish galleons crossed these waters in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries taking gold from the America’s back to Europe. For as much as was lost at sea, many times more got safely back to vaults and banks and the King’s Treasury.The gold funded wars, New World exploration, luxurious court lifestyles, foreign affairs, palaces. Merchants became rich, pirates created legends, and their names were stolen by professional football teams.
While our prospectors move methodically, a middle aged surfer adjusts his gear and prepares for another trip out.
” Not very big waves, ” I suggest.
” They are big enough,” he smiles, ” I am a beginner. ”
Beginning anything new in your fifties is something to write about. This much older than a teen shows me his black wet suit that helps insulate him from the cold Gulf of Mexico water.
Who is to say who is having more fun – those hunting gold, swimming, or riding waves on a surfboard?
It is a gorgeous day where land meets sea, whether you are on sand or in the water.
Old dogs are always learning new tricks.
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