Your chariot has to be tuned up to keep you in the Los Angeles race.
You aren’t going to get anywhere in this L.A. burg without a good set of wheels, a team of rested and well fed horses, and enough time to get where you are going through a maze of interconnected freeways, on and off ramps, incorporated towns that remind you of a patchwork quilt with each town independent but linked to the others to make a California dreaming quilt.
It is almost a forty minute drive to Los Angeles to reach Chris’s mechanic.
Ontario, where Chris and his mom live, is fifty miles from the Pacific Ocean, the Getty Museum, Staples Center, Sunset Strip, Hollywood, the Walk of Fame, and other landmarks. His car’s CHECK engine light is on and fan belts, recently replaced, are slipping and making a squeal..It isn’t something any garage can’t fix but when you get a mechanic you trust, you will grudgingly drive the hour to let him work his car magic on your car.
The Auto Care Center,when we pull in, is busting open at the seams with car hoods up, tires off, doors open, uniformed grease junkies busily removing and replacing parts, running computer checks, calling parts suppliers. It is the day before Christmas and cars are doing what they invariably do – break down.
Chris’s car belts are tightened and his check engine light turns out to be caused by not tightening down on the gas cap enough so a seal is broken and escaping emissions trigger a sensor.
On the way back to Ontario we stay off the freeways.
Chris, who cared for my dad and Roseanne, in California, was exceedingly fond of my Dad.
California was never a place my dad wanted to be, and, at the end, he wasn’t.
Chris and I still have plenty of J.L. stories, and all of them make us smile, to tell, even when they don’t have happy endings.
The shopping mall is not only a metaphor for the Christmas season, but a melody.
Jingle bells ring from inside closed stores as a security pickup patrols and deliveries are made to the back door. Stores open at ten in the morning and stay open till ten in the evening.
Palm trees and oranges mark this territory as Southern California but this shopping mall could also be in Arizona or parts of Nevada, Texas, or even Florida. Malls, once a new concept, brought customers out of neighborhood stores to shop in retail fantasy lands, closed down mom and pop places that had higher prices but kept neighborhoods together. Malls gave big business a chance to grab market share, streamline operations, centralize and advertise their brand. They changed America.
Christmas is promoted here as far as my eyes can see. Windows have nativity scenes, garlands are draped over light poles, decorated trees have presents wrapped underneath, snowflakes are sprayed on windows.
The last time Los Angeles saw a real snowflake was when Hell froze over.
High on a ladder, a painter keeps up appearances.
In California, there is no room for wrinkles, sags, or cracks.
California dedicates herself to the pursuit of Dionysus and when Santa rolls into town with his reindeer, real soon, he will be wearing yellow speedo’s, a bright red stocking cap, and a pair of dark sunglasses that would make a gangster proud.
Half of the world is in winter with temps in the teens, or worse.
Here, it is seventies with humidity but the sun shines more often than it hides.
Jose, at the front desk, says it is busy in San Jose most of the year and his hotel has more visitors from France than anywhere else.This morning there is a large French group departing, part of a tour that will get on a bus and go somewhere else for a few days, then a new location, then another. Being a low cost provider, this hotel fills a need for tour generators who need to keep prices down to capture travelers and market share.
There is no reason this hotel formula wouldn’t work anywhere. You buy a few houses next to one another, plumb in bathrooms and other refinements, and presto – you have a hotel that is like staying in a house. The furnishings and decorations are colorful, indigenous, typical of Costa Rica. Even if you wouldn’t want to live in an old wooden house at home with bright paintings and door handles from the twenties, it makes perfect sense here.
If I could take this hotel home in my suitcase and get through Customs, I surely would.
It is simpler though to leave it and come visit when I have a hankering.
The perfect trip is where you return with less than you left with, have a full stomach, and don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.
If the grass isn’t always greener somewhere else, the weather is better.
Being in transition is being a traveler.
You have one suitcase with clothes and an extra pair of walking shoes in the cargo hold. You have a carry on bag in the overhead with computer stuff, headphones, extra pens and paper, schedules, an umbrella, toothbrush, personal items. Your wallet and passport are in your pants left front pocket for safety. You hate to carry items you don’t need because odds and ends make your trek heavier and less simple.
Leaving Uruguay, en route to Costa Rica, our plane is thirty thousand feet up. We fly west out of Uruguay, then up the coast of Chili with the Pacific in view, then cut back towards the Andes for a stop in Peru. There is no such thing as a flight,these days, that goes “straight as the crow flies.”
Transit time is thinking time, sleeping time, re-charging time.
Uruguay is in my rear view mirror and Costa Rica is dead ahead.
All I have left of Uruguay is what went on between my left and right ears and what I got down on paper or on my camera.
Lingering on the past, while barreling into the future, is behavior I don’t want to be guilty of.
I don’t ever want old places to spoil new places.
From the air, oddly enough, I don’t see any dotted lines that mark borders between countries.
I guess we make borders up because we need them.
Tourist days come in all kinds of packages.
You are sleeping in strange rooms, surrounded by people you don’t know, eating food on the go that your stomach doesn’t recognize. There is television in a different language, obsessing with schedules, making connections, keeping up a big river ride on a little inner tube.
Your tourist day is as free as you want to make it, but limited. You don’t have friends here.You don’t work or have responsibilities. You are passing through. How involved you want to get depends on your mindset.
Standing at the hotel desk listening to three hotel employees talk is an education.They know enough English for me to understand what they are saying and I want to hear what they have to say.
Patricia is a hotel maid who lived in the U.S. but came back to Montevideo to be with family. Veronica is one step away from becoming a Doctor and is studying to re-take a final board oral exam that has to be passed before she can practice her passion. Virginia, another maid, speaks very little English but nods her head when she agrees. As a tourist, you don’t always have a chance to know people in a country you visit. People in the tourist industry are unappreciated Ambassadors for their country.
” It is hard, ” all agree. ” My paycheck, ” Patricia says, “doesn’t even pay my rent. Without family, it is really difficult. ”
Glowing reports about other countries often fall short. For people who hold Uruguay together by their daily work, economics is a daily rope climb in a daily obstacle course.
Even in Socialist countries, you still see people sleeping in the streets.
There is a security blanket here, but it has some holes.
To achieve what they want, people, around the world, still have to work hard, no matter what kind of government they have.
It always feels right to return to familiar places and people on a trip. This day I revisit Jesper and Olenthe, Maria, and Gabrielle at the Urban Heritage offices, and the girls at Punta Ballena Coffee Cup who have fixed me coffee every morning and tolerated my mangled Spanish.
The shutters to my former upstairs studio apartment are open and new tenants have moved in. Fires are stoked at the Mercado.There is a tango lesson in progress and people, some off cruise ships, some not, are grouped in the square. Rain has stopped and it is sunny.
This trip is like living in a big house with a lot of rooms. You move from one room to the next, but you never get out of the house.
I would never tell anyone to pass Uruguay up.
This trip is like trips most of us have taken, long days in transit with scattered, small, personal moments that bring truths when you polish them enough.
As one of my brothers likes to say, ” going on a trip makes coming home all the better. ”
Another brother’s favorite is, ” don’t let the door hit you when you leave. ”
Another brother likes to say, ” did you have fun? ”
If I had a sister, she would most likely, give me a sister kiss and hug and say, ” Welcome Home. ”
It would have been nice to have a little sister.
Hugs and kisses cure a lot of aches and pains.
The Theatro Solis is a renovated landmark in Montevideo dedicated to the performing arts, fine arts, and community awareness of the arts.
It was restored completely in the 1950s and looks now like it did in the 1800s. When you walk inside you are greeted by ushers and today is good to visit because an English speaking tour is beginning and I am hustled along to join it. There is no charge and the two young ladies who take myself and a young man from New Zealand under their wings answer our most boring questions.
Located near Independence Square in Montevideo, in the shadow of the Artigas statue and mausoleum, this theater is not majestic. It looks to me like a Roman 7-11.
My tour begins in a reception area just outside the theater’s Presidential boxes that are reserved for the President, his wife, and important guests.
From the reception room, we are taken into the theater itself.
From the main theater we go next downstairs to a much smaller performing space suited to smaller kinds of performances. A trio comes on stage and sings for us, dances, and acts out a specialty skit.
I’m glad ,when we are done, to have had a chance to see a piece of Uruguay’s culture. Even the old rough pioneer American West had Shakespeare mixed with opera and can can girls. I can’t say I have arrived in Montevideo without seeing a few guide book places. Going to the Big Apple without going up in the Empire State building, for instance, would be a major faux pas.
Next time down to Montevideo, I’ll come back and take in a real play here.
I bet there is gum stuck under the theater seats, and my guess is that it wasn’t put there only by kids.
City buses in Uruguay feature a team.
There is a driver who keeps the bus on the road, makes stops, stays out of accidents, and gets people on and off the transport safely. There is a conductor who collects fares, checks passes, smooths feelings, answers questions, and moves up and down the aisle like a stewardess/steward who doesn’t pass out pillows or drinks.
On any route, there might be a few stops, or dozens of stops. This Termas bus is well marked and though the bus is loud and smells like exhaust there aren’t chickens or sheep and the passengers are like me – wanting to get where they need to go cheaply and safely.
When you think of teams you think of Pancho and Cisco, Tarzan and Jane, Crosby and Hope, Siskel and Ebert, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.
I don’t know these bus guys names but they take time to ask where I am going and get me off at the right corner, two walking blocks from my hotel.
Riding the bus in Uruguay is not unpleasant.
I would ride them just to be going somewhere, and have.
It is sweet that these working men take the time to get me off at my right stop.
Good happens in the world, but mostly goes unappreciated and under reported.
Saturdays start slow in Salto. Even hound dogs sleep in this morning, worn out from chasing girls all night.
On the Rio Uruguay, small boat Captains are pushing their fishing boats hard, taking two, three, four paying customers further up the river where dorado’s are waiting to be reeled in at ” La Zona” where fishing is excellent and many travelers like to go in their quest of trophy fish.
On the pier this morning, early, there is a photo shoot in progress with three young girls dancing, modeling swimsuits, posing for sexy photos and getting direction from an old, bald impressario wearing sunglasses. When the teens change costumes a matronly attendant holds up a coat for them that becomes their changing room.
Clowning around, their big boss balances on the back of one of the benches on the pier and dances while a film crew snaps shots and gives him appreciation.
The girls love it.
I don’t know what they are trying to sell so early in the day, but youth and sex sells most anything anytime.
Behind news, business and politics is always old men with lots of money and lots of connections.
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As in Montevideo, there are antiquated homes in Salto too.
This old casa, on a street off the main thoroughfare, is one that needs more care than it will ever get. While it waits for someone with a dream to fall in love with it, it is a garden shop – El Nuevo Vivero. Inside, plants and trees for sale are placed in empty rooms and since there is no roof on much of the building, rain waters them right where they stand.
The sign in front says the business is open on Saturdays and Mondays. This morning the front door is open and someone rustles inside. It is Wednesday.
A young man comes to the front door to see what I want and invites me to come inside to look at his business even though he is closed officially.
Guillermo is having mate first thing this morning and shows me some of his plants. He is wearing a Brazil soccer shirt and we laugh about that. People take soccer serious on this continent. How can you be a good Uruguay citizen and not wear a Uruguayan soccer shirt?
In the U.S., this place would be closed for code violations. Here, there is no harm, thus no foul.
When I leave the nursery, the ” Closed ” sign, in the front door, still hasn’t been replaced.
A business, it seems to me, that won’t open its doors for a customer, even when the closed sign is in their window, isn’t much of a business.
Guillermo, owner and caretaker of El Nuevo Vivero, has his finger on the pulses of both plants, and business.
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