Sometimes things just don’t go as planned

Oh, Oh, to Mexico

It is a long flight from Dubai to Atlanta, to Dallas and to Puerto Vallarta Mexico.  I was tired when I arrived there. I am an expatriate. To me the word expatriate sounds as though it should mean someone who used to be patriotic. Not even close.

My wife Anne at Los Palmas restaurant

It means that I work out of the country, and that means I must stay out of the country for 330 days per year or pay Federal Income Tax.

I’m a married man and separation is hard on a marriage, but my wife, Anne, and I know we must do this—retribution for a mismanaged early life. Normally we meet somewhere in Europe, but the exchange rate has become so unfavorable there that we decided to meet in Puerto Vallarta Mexico.

Anne is my travel agent. She is quite good at finding out of the way, cheap places for us to stay. Often we are far off the tourist beaten path, and I like that. She found us a privately owned condo on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. There would be few if any American tourist staying there.

There was a glitch in my flight plans and I arrived half a day late. My very efficient wife had prepaid for the cab ride from the airport  to the condo, and after being accosted by ten or twelve timeshare salesman, I found the correct cab stand and I was on my way, glad to be free of the salesmen, only I wasn’t free.

After we got underway, the cabbie pulled out his brochures and made is pitch. The Puerto Vallarta Web site had not mentioned that everybody in town was a timeshare salesman.

We passed a Home Depot, just as in the States, and I wondered do Americans hang around the parking lot looking for work? I thought probably not. I tipped the cab driver in US dollars and found the condo. I had fifty dollars in my wallet and no pesos. I need to find a cash machine.

Because these were privately owned condos, there was no check-in process as in a hotel. I went straight to the condo, and knocked on the door, anticipating a big warm welcome, but there was no answer. I checked the condo number and name, and knocked again, but still no answer. What do I do now? I know. She is on the beach.

The wheels on my suitcase made an annoying clacking sound on the tile floor as I pulled it around the pool. It disturbed the sunbathers, and I felt as if every eye were on me. I drug my suitcase from the pool to the beach. She is a lover of the sea, and I was sure that I would find her there lost in thought oblivious to the time. After twenty minutes of dragging my bag through the sand, I concluded that she was not there. I returned to the condos where a maintenance man found me wondering around looking confused. “May I help you, Senor” he asked.

“Ah. Great, you speak English,” I said.

 “I lived in the States for a while.”

“No kidding,” I told him about not being able to find Anne.”

“Ah, Senor, she was here earlier. Perhaps she has fallen asleep.

We will go awaken her.”

We walked to the condo and began pounding on the door. There was no answer, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw her walking across the parking lot. Her shoulders were slumped and there was a glare in her eyes. As soon as she reached me, I put a big husband smile on my face and said, “Hi, Honey.”

“Don’t hi homey me. I know I’m supposed to be glad to see you but right now I can’t even fake it.”

Now I am not exactly the sensitive type, but even I could see that something was wrong, and I knew that it was my fault. I knew it was my fault because in any marriage when things go wrong it is always the man’s fault. Such is the nature of the female, or maybe it is God’s law. The fact that I lived in the middle of a desert with no phone on the other side of the world was no excuse. I spoke to her in my most sympathetic husband voice, “What’s wrong, Honey.”

“What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I just walked three miles and back, trying to get something to eat. I don’t have any cash and they won’t take my credit cards. I’m hungry as hell. That’s what’s wrong, and—and I drank the water.” By now, she was almost in tears. I nearly asked, “Did you tell the bank that we were going to Mexico,” but I have been married long enough to know better than to ask such questions.

I knew nothing about Porto Vallarta except that there was a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant there.  I knew this because I owned a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company hat. Across the front in big purple letters was written BGSC. It looked like a college hat and I always got a chuckle when someone asked me what the BGSC meant. Also on the hat in very small letters around the bill was a list of every town in which there is a Bubba Gump’s Restaurant. I remembered that Puerto Vallarta was one.

Now was the time to be a knight in shining armor, anything for my lady. “Let’s go to Bubba Gump’s,” I said while praying that fifty bucks would cover the cab ride to the restaurant, the meal, the cab ride back to the condo and a cab ride to the bank in the morning.

A look of relief came to her face and a slight smile, “Okay,” she said. Thank God, I found a cab on the street in front of the condos, “Tu sabe Bubba Gump,” I said in my very best Spanish.

“Yeah, man I know it.”

“You speak English?”

“I used to live in the States.”

“No kidding. You sell timeshares?”

“Si.”

I studied Spanish for three years in high school, two in college, plus I had studied it as an adult. I am in Mexico where they speak Spanish and everybody I meet tries to sell me a timeshare while speaking better English than I do. Next time I feel like speaking Spanish I will go to Miami.

“Will you take American dollars?”

“Si.”

“How much to Bubba Gump’s?”

          “Nine dollars” I quickly calculated. The trip there and back will cost eighteen dollars. That leaves thirty-two dollars for tips, the meal and a cab ride to the bank in the morning.  It is going to be close. Maybe we can find a cash machine that will take my card or maybe Bubba Gump’s will take it. I paid the driver and tipped him two dollars, leaving me with forty dollars. There was a cash machine next to the restaurant. I tried it but no dice. I hope the restaurant will take the one of my cards. “Honey order whatever you like.  I’m not very hungry. I ordered something cheap and a margarita. I couldn’t resist the margarita.  Anne ordered something inexpensive as well. Good, I thought. We are still under budget. The fare came to twenty-seven dollars. All my credit cards failed so I paid cash. When we left the restaurant, I had twenty-three dollars. The cab ride back consumed twenty of it leaving a balance of three dollars.

Next morning I scrounged up two dollars from the bottom of my suitcase and shaving kit. We found another cab in front of the condos. I asked, “How much to take us to the nearest bank in dollars,”

“Three, Senor.”

“Bueno vama nos.”

I paid him the three dollars and gave him a one-dollar tip. I entered the bank with one dollar in my pocket while praying they would help us. A lady banker waited on us. She helped us call our bank and we were saved.  Now I would not have to stand in front of Home Depot looking for work. After that we had a good time–that is we had a good time after we got over Montezuma’s revenge.  They mean it when they say don’t drink the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Georgia Redneck in Vienna

Mozart Festival in Vienna

 

Mozart and me 

In 1969 at West Georgia College, I once argued with my Music Appreciation Professor that Iron Butterfly’s “Ina Godda Divida,” the sixty’s psyechedelic hit song, was on a par with the classics. Today I can barely stand to listen to it. If you are not familiar with “Inna Godda Divida,” there is a reason. Not only is it not equal to the classics, it isn’t even good rock and roll, but such were my thoughts in 1969. I must have been smoking that whacky-weed. Come to think about it, I was.

To the surprise of many, I grew up and over the years I came to love classical music, thanks mostly to National Public Radio and Bugs Bunny. Learning about classical music from National Public Radio requires no explanation. Everyone knows they play it, but Bugs may require a little clarification.

I am not the only one. I have heard others say this, “I first became interested in classical music while watching Bug Bunny mow Elmer Fudd’s hair with a lawn mower as the overture to Rossini’s Barber of Seville played in the background.” If you recall, Bugs and the gang made a series of cartoons set to the classical music.

By the time, I went to Viennain 2007; I knew the classics. I was particularly fond of Mozart, thanks in part to the movie “Amadeus,” but I had not exactly been hanging out at concert halls. I was a middle-class man and I didn’t feel I would fit with Atlanta’s rich who seem to be the only people who take an interest in the music in my city.

I was more than a little nervous as my wife, Anne, and I approached a concert hall in Vienna. Not just any concert hall, but one in which Mozart had played. I picked up our ticket from will call. An usher escorted us to our seats, five rows back in the middle. I questioned the usher, “There must be some mistake. Are you sure these are our seats?”

“Yes Sir,” he said in German accented English. I wasn’t going to argue, but I had paid only fifty Euros appease for the tickets which should have put us in the nosebleed section. We had the best seats in the house.

The concert hall made anything we have in Atlanta look like a barn. It was deep with history, all the greats had played there.  It was elegant, emboss entirely in gold, and the many large chandeliers were crystal. The orchestra entered dressed in costumes from Mozart’s period. I was transformed to another time. When they began to play, I was transformed to heaven. It was a high points in my life and I could not help but think look at me, a big Georgia redneck sitting in a world class concert hall in Vienna Austria and acting right too.