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Show THE ZEPH YR/DECEMBER 2003-J ANUARY CASAS del NOCHE A TRUTHFUL 2004 playing great Mexican music in those obscure little cantinas off and away from the main drag. The fact that over half of them were cathouses didn’t hurt the music a bit--in fact, it helped because the girls were partial to songs of far-away places and tender sentiment. Enrique knew all the best spots. The girls hung out at the bar or sat at the tables--mariachis wandered in and out and the bartender put nickels in the jukebox whenever there was a lull. We’d come with our entourage, take over one end of the bar or a corner of the room, order Carta Blanca or Dos XX, play guitar, sing with the kids, or dance. The girls would gather around Juan who'd blush all colors through his smile and Rojo would untwine tender arms from around TALE* By Katie Lee his neck from time to time, saying something like...”Ya me no tientes, Chiquita”, or, “Sabes On a hot Sonoran summer afternoon, ‘long about 1940 Enrique was leading our pack down Obregon Street. Rojo, Juan and I had a quart of Carta Blanca in each hand and the kids, Hector and Maria, were right behind. Hector had the guitar. The plan was for Enrique--whose mother ran the government subsidized whorehouse over on Canal Street-to take us to a new “kloob”, later. First, more music, song, beer, more cantinas y casas del que tengo novia...posible mas tarde.” They'd laugh, look puzzled or petulant and go to Enrique for the reason Rojo didn’t want to go to the room with them. Seemed Enrique was like a brother to them. ie ae noche. Catalina, accepting me on terms of song—la gringa:cancionera--and not the competition. Sometimes the girls would get so distracted singing with us, or so caught up in the music that they forgot to go to work. Like the night--insensitive slobs that we were--we had the effrontery to sing Augustin Lara’s, Cada Noche Un Amor in one of the cantinas. At the end, with all the putas and even the bartender joining in, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house and certainly nobody wanted to go back to business. That’s when Enrique had to get us the hell out of there. Enrique was a mystery--could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. He was graying at the temples and in his neatly trimmed Ronald Coleman mustache. Under caterpillar thick lashes, his dark brown irises floated panned gold. You wanted to keep staring into them. A sinister-looking scar covered his left cheekbone and from somewhere deep below gravity came that extraordinary voice which escaped in a kind of whispery rasp, betraying a blend of local tobaccos, Waterfill & Frazier, tequila, mescal and alcohol They didn’t quite know what to make of me. But after I sang a few songs with the wandering trubadores, or Hector and Maria, they learned to call me by my Spanish name, puro. God knows about his past. His present always looked hairy to me. He was never They didnt quite know what to make of me. But after the wandering | sang a few trubodores...they songs with learned to call me by my Spanish name. Catalina accepting me on terms of song--la gringa cancionera--and not the competition. photograph without a fresh cut, black eye or bunged up limb. I’m sure he knew where to get anything anybody could want in Nogales, but all we cared about was hootch, beer and music. Enrique probably wasn’t a pimp because he hardly ever had any money, never wore fancy new clothes, never owned a car that we knew about and he wasted a lot of good pimping time with us. He took on new life when we came to Nogales, was our guide-knew every shopkeeper, vender, bartender, mariache and tortilla slapper in town; was our bargain finder, taxi getter (when we didn’t bring the car across), was somehow a friend of the local Jefes and he was our entrepreneur. He'd found Hector and Maria for us--could have been the kids manager, but he acted more like their uncle. I reckoned his most valuable asset was that of protector. My Tucson companions seemed not to share this reckon--they were convinced he was planning to sell me into white slavery and was just playing it cool. If Rojo hadn’t spoken good border spanish and understood a lot more than he let on, Enrique would probably have been our interpreter as well--not too good in view of their suspicions. 1 knew enough to get by and could fool the locals into thinking I understood, as they whipped through their tongue with the speed of light. But, we all could sing in Spanish and Rojo could also play the hell out of a guitar. This got us into, and fortunately out of, the kind of places where a trio of young smartass sin verquenzas could ordinarily expect trouble--the Nogales brothels, the places I learned most of my good Mexican songs. Hector and Maria were about fourteen and twelve then, before the war, and holy Christ how they could sing! We'd hit the border on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, send out the word for Enrique and wait at La Caverna bar over on Elias street, playing silla calor (hot seat) with whomever was sitting in the booth wired with the old Ford coil--the button was behind the bar and we knew the bartender. Pretty soon our friend would amble in and we'd go off to find the muchachos. They went everywhere with us and sang the whole night for fifty cents. I remember after the war we bitched a lot because tourism hit Nogales like a tidal bore, bringing the brother /sister act another set of values, so they charged us ten cents a song after that. How did we get so lucky? None of this tacky Rancho Grande-JaliscoCielito Lindo-La Paloma stuff, no--good songs like Hace Un Ano, La Barca de Oro, La Feria de las Flores, Destino, Mi Ranchita, Traigo Mi Quarenta y Cinco!, La Panchita, Adios Mi Chaparrita-always Adios Mi Chaparrita, no matter when we parted, drunk or sober (hardly ever sober) in a cantina or the middle of the street, together we sang--”no llores por ti Pancho, que si se va del rancho, muy pronto volveras, aye, que, ca-rye!” Back then--1940--if you didn’t hang out at La Caverna you could hear mariachis a by Herb Ringer This late afternoon, asummer sun honed in on Mexican pink, turquoise and yellow walls that were streaked with the territorial markings of both man and beast. The acrid smell fairly crackled in the heat as it mingled with open doorways, delivering a nostalgic bordertown potpourri of sweet heavy tobacco, beer with real hops, cilantro, chili, leather cured in cow piss, carbon (charred ironwood) and an occasional whiff of marijuana. Enrique stepped into the shadow of a two foot archway and disappeared. We followed through a cool hallway and turned a corner into a ramada-type enclosure looking out on a watered-down square of dirt floor. Bougainvillea splattered a ten foot wall then spilled into the open sky. A woman and a girl were tending steaming pots over a carbon fire., beneath a ramada. A child, no more than seven was intently forming corn tortillas. “Que tal, mamacita?’ Enrique asked, encircling her waist--she was not his “little mother”, it’s what he called every woman in Nogales over fifty--with his other arm he brought the child to him, huskied some rapid Spanish and pushed him toward the door. “Comidas,” our guide said to us, “you guys gotta eat--we got a long night in front of us. Besides, the muchachos are hongry, even if you ain’t.” Five minutes later the child returned--not at all like your general run of maOana-with a pint of tequila in a paper bag. From I'll never know where appeared six cold bottles of Dos XX, soda pop for the kids bilious enough to camouflage green tree frogs, and huge plates of machaca tacos--crisp, juicy with salsa and HOT! We dove in. When we hit the street again it was dark. We sang and played our way south up the side streets off Obregon. Wherever light streaked out the doors and archways onto the sidewalk someone was usually inside playing an instrument or singing. This part of town belonged then to the people of Nogales. It wasn’t full of hawkers and ticky-tacky trinkets, nor was it paved. Music floated on the damp and dusty air; the night blossomed, burst in bloom and then...faded. } reason 5) reason Iswitched to tequila con limon--a libation of some magnitude. For me it has all the subtlety of a blackjack and will produce a temperature somewhere around one hundred and three. The stuff never seemed to bother Rojo much, Enrique not at all and Juan didn’t drink it, or much of anything else; just stood around keeping a close eye on everything, smiling his wonderful smile and singing. He was the driver. S t Enrique said it was time to go to the new “kloob”, but we couldn’t take the kids, too late, and besides we couldn’t all get in the car. It was quite a way out of town. We dropped them off at the mercado and went south; only way youcan go, really. Like the ribs PAGEI4 |