Growing up Mexican continued...

El Guapo remembers.....

The man was a cousin Luis, I had never met. He grabbed our bags and loaded them into the old Suburban SUV he was driving. Luis drove us to his mother's restaurant. My mother's sisters and cousins wept with joy. We had not told anyone we were coming. It wouldn't have helped. They didn't have a telephone. The family restaurant was a small one room store front with some rooms to rent in the back building. My Mother's cousin Estella ran the restaurant. The clientele were workmen from the local jobs. There wasn't a menu. Whatever Estella cooked that day was the meal of the day.

Estella gave us a couple of the rooms to rest for a while before dinner. At dinner we told her of our plan to go up into the mountains to visit the rest of the family. She offered to find a cousin with a pick up truck to take us the following day.

As luck would have it, we had arrived on the 16th of September. It was Mexico's Independence Day. A big celebration was scheduled for that evening in the town square. What an opportunity! We were going to celebrate Independence Day in small town Mexico.

It was a short walk to the zocalo. There was a brass band setting up near the fountain. The local people were gathered. The National Anthem was played as a small group of uniformed federales marched up with the national flag. The men all saluted. "Mexicanos al grito de guerra..." was sung loudly by those gathered. At the end of the song, fireworks were fired from the roof of the Town Hall. An errant skyrocket started a small fire on the thatched roof of a small shack near the square. It was quickly put out by a group of men. The band played for an hour or so as people danced and mingled.

The celebration ended all too soon. I still wanted to enjoy the evening so I looked for a cantina. There wasn't any in town. The whole town seemed to shut down at 9 p.m. including the only hotel.

I noticed a couple of white people in the square and walked over to them. They were very surprised to hear the English language being spoken to them by an apparent local. I told them I was also a visitor. They were a man and woman from Canada. I asked them if they knew of a bar nearby. They said the house they were staying at had beer in the refrigerator. Just then, their host came up. The young Mexican man invited me to join them. He led us through the town and down some back streets. We arrived a a small house. The Canadian couple had rented a room in the young man's home.

We sat in the kitchen and shared the only bottle of beer to be found that night. The conversation flowed freely. The man was curious at my ability to switch back and forth between english and spanish as I engaged all at the table in conversation. He asked me how I came to be in Creel that night. I told him about visiting the family. He asked where I was staying. When I told him at Estella's he quickly said "My Tia Estella has a restaurant." We looked at each other. He says "Primo?" I exclaimed, "Primo!" I had stumbled onto another cousin I had never met.