Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, May 4th, 1973:
Monterrey was (and remains) an industrial city, the heart of Mexico’s iron ore and steel mills. A hundred twenty-five miles south of the Rio Grande, Monterrey is encircled by the desolate foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Back then, the city’s iron ore and steel mills chugged on, 24/7, spewing thick, black smoke from pairs of behemoth chimneys.
When they arrived, the dry air was thick with smog and desert dust. Bereft of shade trees, the naked, concrete streets of Monterrey baked, as daytime temperatures soared between 105 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. On the northern and concluding end of their initial sojourn south of the border, the pair of college dropouts, the blond, bespectacled impulsive twenty-year-old, first-generation Jewish American Chicago-born male, and his lover, a twenty-two-year-old Irish-American Philadelphian Main Line lapsed Catholic, Maura, booked a room at the Hotel Roosevelt, near the Centro del Autobuses.
In those days, the Roosevelt was not the remodeled three-story lower-middle-class lodge, with clean, tiled, spartan quarters that one now finds in Google Reviews. In 1973, the establishment’s clientele consisted of workers from the nearby satanic steel mills. Male laborers rented rooms in twelve-hour shifts. When one shift left for work, second-shift cohorts would take their place. Twelve hours later, the cycle was a rinse-and-repeat that defined the lives of hundreds of factory floor workers who lived at that hotel. To these men, la blanca gringa, was a novelty. For Maura was a striking Irish beauty with pale skin, thick black-brown hair, a buxom figure complemented by a soft, hypnotic voice. The eldest of nine children, she had been a surrogate mother to her siblings. Her insurance agent father left the seminary, two decades back to marry his Irish-American queen. The influence of the Church on the family could be traced, on her father’s side, at least two generations back. The genealogy revealed the following: four Catholic priests, two nuns, and a twentieth-century archbishop who tended to his flock in an urban hub on the Mason-Dixon line, from the Roaring Twenties to the outbreak of the Korean War.
Nothing in that suburban Main Line Irish Catholic upbringing, with its emphasis on being “a good girl,” on adhering to gender-specific norms of propriety, prepared her for the repetitive catcalls and overt sexual gestures directed toward her as they traveled through Mexico. If the Roosevelt was the harassment’s apex, it was because of the sheer density of young working men at the hotel who formed a lustful Greek chorus as the couple traversed the inner balcony of the courtyard as they walked down the hotel’s steps:
Ey, chula! Mira qué bien buena está!” “Oye, güerita, ven pa’cá, compa! (Wolf Whistle).”Ay, qué gordita curvas!”
Hey, hottie! Look, that whitey’s really fine! Hey, come over here, bro! Oh, what nice curves!)
The Roosevelt was a gritty flophouse, not necessarily safe for young, naïve Norte Americanos. For these wayward gringos, the Roosevelt was their sole available option, at that time. Retreating indoors during the blistering afternoons, the couple ventured out only early in the morning and after five in the afternoon.
During one late afternoon walk, as they sauntered by the nearby Centro del Autobuses. As was often the case during their travels, he was tempted by the rows of vendors selling tortas (a baguette-based Mexican sandwich) in front of the terminal. Between these enticements and his appetite was a road undergoing extensive repairs, full of open or partially covered holes that were inadequately marked, covered, or cordoned off. Unable to resist the allure on the other side of the road, with his eyes fixed on the prize, he, unlike the Tarot’s Fool card, took one step too many toward this tortaville. Immediately, he plummeted, more than six feet down, into one of the many deep pits in the road.
Maura beheld the instant vanishment in mute disbelief. Looking up from the bottom of the pit, her Fool, the young gringo, was equally stunned. Other than sporting a new, large, long, and bleeding gash in his left leg, he was unhurt, improbably still a recipient of The Fool’s divine luck. Revisiting the road days later, he discovered that he had descended into the only crater without subterranean rebar. Dozens of pits sported long, thick, serrated and rusted rebar columns, forming veritable tetanus grids. He could have been impaled, like Frida Kahlo, to the point of disability or suffered an intense and painful death.
His misstep did not go unnoticed by the locals. As The Fool slowly climbed out with Maura’s help, the gathering crowd hooted, shouted, yelled and laughed, clearly pleased at witnessing the plight of the young, blond and imprudent gringo:
Órale! ¡Se cayó el güero!” “Mira, compa! ¡Se desapareció!” “¡Como el Chapulín!” “¡Fue sin querer queriendo!” “Ay, vato, bien pendejo!” “Fíjate, güero!”
Whoa! The white boy fell! Look, bro! He disappeared! Like Chapulín! (A Mexican TV comic of that period known for pratfalls). He did it unintentionally on purpose! Oh, man, what a dumbass! Watch where you’re going, whitey!
The Fool’s mishap mirrored the over-the-top slapstick that was part of the nightly fare on Telemundo or Univision. Sensing an opportunity in the mix of the gringo’s shock, blood, and money, taxi drivers immediately offered their services. Los dos gringos declined the offers from the metered vampires. Maura accompanied him as he limped toward the nearby Red Cross Aid Station.
At the station, the leg wound was disinfected and dressed. As he left the appropriate donation for medical first aid, the paramedic who bandaged him up could not resist voicing his bemusement. Turning to his patient, and grinning, he asked: “Perdóneme, un pregunta, Señor: Dañó su cabeza?” (Excuse me, one question, Sir: Did you hurt your head?)
At the time, the gringo winced, hobbling out the door, as Maura’s emotions swirled in a complex, if largely unexpressed mix of relief, chagrin and embarrassment. Decades later, when asked what he might now say in response to the question, he paused, grinned and replied, in a jocular tone, “Quien sabe?” (Who knows?)
