It is a Friday morning in late April. I sit here in the shade, waiting on the mechanics to set right my car again. This shop is open-air, and so there is a strong cooling breeze blowing here in the shade. We are having an early and persistent summer this year. The land, the river, everything is drier than I have ever seen it. This intense heat is burning up everything. At this altitude, getting out of the sun means finding a cool temperature. And so, I don’t mind waiting for my rear tires to be looked after.
These days I find myself driving
the hour to Durango every week, and back.
I have found a therapist who uses magnets in the ear to relieve pain and
stress. She changes them every week,
fine tuning the treatment. It is amazing
the relief I get from these treatments.
However, all these kilometers on the car have uncovered a flaw. The rear tires are so badly aligned that new
tires wear out in a year; strips of steel band are exposed on the inside of the
tire. Last week I stopped at the
Pemex/Oxxo station a few miles outside of Durango, on my way home. A bunch of gentlemen were gathered there,
taking a break. Judging by their camo
outfits, I thought they might be Guardsmen returning from an exercise. I could be wrong, there was no standard
uniform amongst them. If I had encountered
them on the highway in Montana, I might have thought them on a hunting
trip. Before I had gone a few steps
towards the door to the Oxxo, they called to me. My tire was flat! A few of us gathered around it. Was it a puncture, or something more serious? The guy feeling around the inner edge of the
tire recoiled his hand; it was pricked by something sharp. Sure enough, the one-year old tire had worn
through. We checked the other side; same
thing, just not flat yet.
They rallied to the call,
gathered around, found a jack and a tire iron, and set to putting on my
‘temporary’ tire. They advised me to
drive very slowly on the way home. I
grabbed my ice cream bar from inside Oxxo and set out on my long journey home,
going 40 MPH with flashers lit. As I
diligently attended to this dangerous journey, I reflected that I had given the
men kudos, thanking them as heroes, but had offered no monetary reward. Honestly, sometimes I wonder where my head is
at.
On the journey home I called my
favorite used-tire guy, a friendly old codger just a few doors down from the
Aurrera Bodega. He rallied to get in the
car and come help me. Wow. I explained that I was still coming on my own
steam, and asked if he could find me a couple of tires while I was on my way to
him.
My angels were ever so faithful
to me, and so I arrived safely to the used-tire shop in Canatlan. I pulled the only chair out of the back of
the shop and onto the sidewalk. The late
afternoon sun was behind the building, so I sat in the shade and played
backgammon on my phone for the time it took him to put on my two new used
tires. These, too, were an off-brand,
and so would wear out in a matter of months if I did not fix the problem. Sometimes he can find me a set of slightly
worn Michelin’s, but this was not one of those times. It is just as well, since without getting the
rear end aligned, again they would be shredded in no time.
Here I am, faced once again with
the basic problem of life in a backwater like Canatlan. It is filled with jacks of all trades, but
master of none. Where can I take my car
for this repair? I had no way to know if
someone happened to be experienced in this task. I wanted to take it to Durango, relying on my
friend Oscar to guide me to a reliable shop.
However, Oscar is a busy landlord of many properties, and never did come
through for me. I took the car back to
the very same place where I bought this last set of tires, a year ago. I do not remember if I bought these new tires
before, or after my car rolled over on the highway in January, 2023. Did the problem with the rear tires crop up
after that accident? Did the awful man
who was tasked with rebuilding the frame of my car swap out my good CV Joints
with faulty ones, making a profit while he kept me in limbo without a car for
five months? Or, when the new tires were
put on, did this tire shop simply not do a thorough check, putting new tires on
an old problem? At this moment, there
are three young men clustered around the rear end of my car, looking up at the
situation from the well. I can only hope
that among them there is enough know-how to find the problem and fix it. One can hope.
During the few short months that
Christine, from Canada, spent with me at Luz de Compasion, through her online
research, she introduced me to the many
hot springs in the area. Now I try to go
weekly to the one outside of Durango, not far from the farm where is the new
owner of my beloved horses. That is, the
horses are there; he lives in a nice house in Durango proper. Caretakers live on the farm, replacing me as
their herd. At the spa, I met a group of retired people who seemed to all speak
English. In particular I had a long
conversation with one gentleman, Jose.
Subsequently, I tried to make my visits to the spa on Wednesdays, hoping
to see him again. I’ve gone perhaps four
times, but have not seen him or them again, except for one gentleman who wears
a prosthetic leg, and comes diligently for water exercises. I spend an hour soaking in the heat, and
doing exercises to loosen up my damaged leg and hip. I think this workout is doing some good, and
along with the magnets in the ear, I have hope that I can get back maybe 90% of
use of that hip.
I get the news after inspection;
the rear cannot be aligned as is, but requires a part. This part must be ordered from somewhere far
off, and so I await the news of when it can arrive. Tomorrow, next week; as long as it is before
my next trip to Durango. These are the
things that make me go over budget; my pension is just not enough.
And here comes the news. The parts are very expensive, and then there
is the labor. Not counting the new tires
I’ll have to buy on my next trip to Durango’s WalMart, that bite is $5,000
pesos. At the current unfavorable
exchange rate, that comes to almost $400 US, almost half my monthly
pension. The cost of the new tires
should bring it to over the top, beyond the 50% point. That is not good news.
Speaking of Christine, she should
be flying out on her journey homeward this week. During her time here, against my advice, she
adopted a dog. She said she wanted to
take the dog back to Canada with her. We
discussed what had to be done to do that.
She knew she had to take the dog to the vet and get required paperwork;
nothing more than ordinary shots. In
fact, we had gotten the dog spayed, and it may even be that nothing more was
needed than the signature of the vet.
However, Christine never did this.
Meanwhile, the dog wound up back at Luz; and now she is mine. That brings the total of indoor dogs to
three. Since one of those dogs is the
neurotic Loki, who adopted me over his natal home a mile away, this is a bit
much. Her name is Betsy. She comes with problems.
Although I enjoyed the company of
Christine, she was getting restless.
Frankly, life here on the farm outside of town is boring. She did not seem to like the TV shows I
watched. We played backgammon once on a
makeshift board, but it wasn’t engaging enough for her to merit a second
play. She is marvelously gifted with
plants, and so puttered about her house planting seeds, and finding cactus to
root in pots. After she left, I took the
one tomato plant into my care, moving it to my porch and into a bigger
pot. With care, it has now grown quite
tall and bears odd looking tomatoes, almost like grape tomatoes but longer. The nascent stalks of cactus inspired me to
start a cactus garden. I used abandoned
mounds of gravel and dirt outside the smallest house, and now have five of one
kind and quite a few of an aloe vera and another very similar. In time, these will all grow and fill out a
nice five-foot square plot. They will
not die from lack of water, like all my other plants and trees. They need water only twice a year.
There came an odor emanating from Christine’s house. Over the weeks of her stay, it was growing
stronger. Just walking past the house,
the odor permeated the very air outside.
I did not recognize it. Was it
the sewer? Was she putting something down the sink during her cooking? Finally, I asked her to move into the other
house while we figured out what it was.
I truly thought it might be toxic.
This brought things to a head,
and within a couple of days she packed up what little she had and asked me to
drive her to a motel in town. Betsy went
with her.
One day a few weeks later, while
leaving the Aurrera Bodega with my groceries, I saw Betsy lying outside the
store. When she saw me, she went bonkers
with joy, followed me to the car and hopped in to join Loki and Junior. I went back inside to look for
Christine. I did not see her. I started to drive away, but thought I might
need to make a second look. I didn’t
want to think that Christine would knowingly abandon Betsy. I drove back to the supermarket, parked, and
did another walk-through. I did not see
Christine. And so it was that Betsy is
living with me again. One day shortly
after, all three dogs were lying on the bed while I watched afternoon
television. Suddenly I heard squealing,
barking, scrambling of claws on the floor.
Betsy had fallen off the bed, broken her leg, and Loki went berserk
peeing everywhere. I had to take her to
a dog orthopedist in Durango; her healing was trying, and expensive. It was, at least, a clean break and did not
require an operation. Still, keeping it
fixed and immobile while it healed was very problematic, and expensive. Canatlan is just not equipped for more than
the simplest veterinarian needs. [1]
Betsy pulled off one bandage after another.
I took her to a local vet, who put on a cast and elaborate wrappings,
for an exorbitant price considering that Betsy pulled it all off again in a
day. The vet had put a collar on her,
which could have helped, except that the collar was the wrong size, wrapped too
tightly about her head so that she had no visibility. She was frantic; I had to
pull it off.
Within weeks, I started noticing
that smell again, this time in my house!
The problem stems from Betsy. She
has preferred to spend her time inside, in fact, on my lap. She never seemed to need to go outside to
pee. I got out the mop and Pinesol, and
magically the smell was gone.
Interestingly, I found Christine to be an immaculate house cleaner. I do not understand how she could have
allowed Betsy’s urine to accumulate in her house so. But there it was. Mystery solved. Now Betsy must live outside, in the doghouse.
When I returned yesterday from my
weekly treatment in Durango, I did not see Betsy. I carried the groceries in with two trips, while
the dogs were jumping in and out of the car.
I had left them home alone all day, and they were a bit exuberant at my
arrival. After the last trip, I left the
rear door open; I forgot about it, and in the morning saw it was still
open. I needed two trips this morning to
bring my computer and a chair into the car for the visit to the new tire shop,
where the alignment was to take place.
Once there, I saw black-haired Betsy lying down on the floor of the back
seat. Now she lies beside me, as I sit here
in the shade typing. What am I to do
with this dog? Does the malodorous urine
indicate that she is ill? Her leg is
almost healed now; she is beginning to put weight on it. She seems to display no other indication of
an internal illness, except for her lethargy.
I just found an engorged tick sucking on her lip, but that can’t account
for this long-term smelly urine. Since
the Orthopede’s xray revealed that she has arthritic hips, I presumed that she
was an old girl, and that accounted for the broken bone and her lethargy. But I am told, not so. She is only about three years old. Some breeds, I am told, are prone to
arthritis. This was told me by a
middle-aged veterinarian here in Canatlan, whom I found to be a bit full of
herself. I know that some large dogs,
like retrievers and maybe German Shepherds, do tend to go lame in the hind
quarters at around ten years. I have
never heard of a breed that gets geriatric hips at age three or four
years. Learn something new every day? I still take this Vet’s opinion with a grain
of salt. Consider this. About three weeks after Betsy broke her leg,
after all my failed efforts to wrap the broken bone, I took her to this
veterinarian trusting that she could succeed where I failed. She called the clinic in Durango to get a
copy of Betsy’s x-ray, without which, she said, she could not wrap the leg. I offered to draw her the x-ray image, but
she insisted she needed the x-ray from Durango. She called. She did not give my name nor Betsy’s; she only
said that a foreigner brought in a dog with a broken leg. The x-ray she received on her phone was
clearly not Betsy’s. When I pointed that
out to her, she just shrugged her shoulders, dismissing me as a source of
information. This was not
confidence-instilling behavior. Yet,
echoing what I said earlier, the competence level found in Canatlan leaves much
to be desired. Given all of this, I am
at a quandary to know what to do with this dog and her stinky urine.
The shop owner comes to me with
the good news that he has found the CV joints, and that they are on their way
from Durango. There will be only a few
more hours wait until the car is ready for me to drive off. I get a ride back to town, where I can wait
more comfortably until the car is ready.
My friend Lupita, in spite of all her own personal burdens, kindly
leaves her job to pick me up and so I await at her place of work. I can only hope that when the car is ready,
the manager will call me and pick me up.
More likely, since we did not exchange phone numbers, I will take a taxi
back there at the end of the day and ransom my car.
The visit with Lupita raises an
interesting opportunity. This
resourceful, hard working woman needs temporary help. Although she is employed by the city of
Canatlan as a cleaner, she somehow also has taken on responsibility for a tiny
food shack on the grounds of the public park where twice a week vendors come to
sell their goods. I will learn how to
prepare simple Mexican foods, like gorditas and zapatoes. She will do the serious food prep the night
before, and I will simply spend a few hours a day taking orders and assembling
the simple dishes. This will give her
time to find another worker, one who will not steal from her as did the
previous worker. But that is a story for
another day.
