On Tuesday nights, at 6:30 pm, featured entertainment at Crazy Canuck’s is crab races. The races are a fundraiser for local schools and charitable groups and give locals and visitors another reason to drink, dance, socialize, relax.
Number 57 is halfway across the obstacle course on a prison break before Kevin, our master of ceremonies, wearing a red crab hat and holding a microphone, catches him and carefully slips him back under an upside down champagne bucket in the center of the ring.
The first race begins late, after announcements, when Kevin lifts the upside down champagne bucket again and the crabs move, from being under the bucket, towards a rope perimeter that forms a circle around them on a big plywood game board resting on the sand.
The crowd is excited and some gamblers rush the platform to support their pick.
It is illegal to touch or step on the board but you can yell, flash lights, move hands and arms up and down to influence the race outcome. The winning crab is the one who crosses the rope at any point in the rope circle around them.
At the end of this first race, Daryl provides live music while losers come up with a different strategy for the next race and try to handicap the crabs that will be running next.
It is all in good fun and none of the crabs, tonight, end up on anyone’s plate.
Number 57, my pick for the first race, never crosses the rope line, and, as far as I’m concerned, can go into tomorrow’s soup.
If I were really lucky, Stephanie Kennedy, the ” Belizian Temptress ” would come through the door and try her temptation on me.
My defenses have been pretty weak the last few days.
Every Anthony has his Cleopatra.
nnnnnn.
Sunday is FunDay at Crazy Canuck’s.
Three to seven, the Cover Ups hammer out reggae, Santana, Jimmy Buffett and pop songs from last year and yesteryear. As the band powers up, an investment conference concludes with a drum roll and attendees shut notebooks on establishing money havens, protecting capital, and growing nest eggs.
Reggae is a music of choice in the Caribbean.
When the song is over the lead singer reminds me that singing is spiritual and takes him to a different realm and sometimes he goes into a trance. During a band break he chats up a stunning black girl at the end of the bar and he isn’t looking at her with spiritual eyes.
Reggae has its own sound. It takes a while to understand the words, but that will come.
Places move at their own speed, and, San Pedro Town isn’t going to speed up, just for me.
Reggae and waves compliment each other.
You don’t have to understand what they are saying to enjoy their melody.
Going out without an umbrella is taking a risk in San Pedro Town.
Rain is forecast and today doesn’t disappoint. A woman, passing in a golf cart, waves back at me while I video this drenching.
The storm is over in fifteen minutes. It gets hot and humid as water begins to evaporate, flows into low spots, and soaks into sandy soil.
Residents love rain and talk ruefully about dry season.
” In summer, ” they remind me, ” you would sell your own mother for a rain like this. ”
My mother would be the first to tell me to enjoy this moment today.
When the rain is done, I head back to my lodgings, walking down a dirt path that looks like an aerial view of Minnesota’s 11,884 lakes.
Not even a mother knows where her kid’s will end up and what they will or won’t accomplish.
Life, as a puddle swallows my right tennis shoe and rain water soaks my tennis socks, is mostly a blessing, as long as we feel it that way.
This ride is not smooth, but it isn’t bumpy either.
Down below us are little green islands sticking their heads above the Caribbean Sea like turtles, fishing boats, and turquoise water. I can almost see the grassy bottom of the sea from the air.
We are packed tightly in the plane and our pilot navigates by looking through his planes front window through rotating propeller blades. He has a small instrument panel and this flight is analogous to riding a city bus in the sky but it is the quickest and cheapest way to get to San Pedro Town from Belize City late in the afternoon.
Enroute, we land first at Caye Caulker, another tourist destination. We deliver a few guests, then make a U turn back to the beginning of the runway we just landed on. The pilot turns us around, again, and we take off for San Pedro Town, again. The plane’s little tires suffer from potholes but we lift off just before we reach the runway’s end and the water’s beginning.
Leaving the United States at 8:00 am and arriving in San Pedro Town at 5:10pm, on the same day,for two hundred seventy five bucks total, is a good piece of travel.
It is good to be out of New Mexico and have people ask me again where I am from.
In the saxophone family you have a number of siblings.
The shortest boys, who sing the highest, are the C Melody and Soprano saxes. Then you move to Alto and Tenor Saxes who are the most common kids on jazz bandstands. At the back of the parade you have Baritone Sax. The lowest voiced saxophone, and biggest of all – the Contra-bass saxophone- seldom gets out of its case because it is an elephant at the tea party.
This afternoon Sax Therapy performs in Old Town during the annual Albuquerque balloon festival.
Dressed for this performance in suits, the quys move through their songbook with style.
A few listeners take photos, engage the musicians in conversation, and dance, especially when the ensemble launches into a spirited version of ” When the Saints Come Marching in. ”
The guys play like a family, and, on this song, a happy family.
Everyone knows their part and they play well together.
Sax Therapy is therapy everyone can use.
This live concert is next to the Mercado, about lunchtime. There are posters advertising it on phone poles but their music grabs me by the ear through my open studio window and drags me to come watch and listen.
This band calls themselves ,” Murga Don Timoteo”, a local group sponsored by a local paint company.
They perform with style, sporting costumes that look more African and Brazilian than Uruguayan, and, despite their visual cornucopia, they sing with precision, clipping notes that need to be clipped and holding notes that need holding with dynamics and vibrato.
Good singing is good to find and this free concert is good luck for a music lover like myself.
If this chorus line wasn’t dressed up like Las Vegas dancers, would their music sound as good as it does?
The answer, of course, is ,Yes.
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