Trip to Monterrey Mexico

        Against the warnings from the U.S. State Dept., I went into Mexico on May 1. I dared not take my car, for fear of a hijack. Instead I took the bus. The trip itself is about 3 and a half hours by bus. It is non-stop, except for the miilitary inspections. One never knows how many of those there will be. One also does not know if they are really soldiers or make-beleive ones. There was only one military stop and they did not get on board.
          My trip to Monterrey was two-fold. I wanted to visit with friends and pseudo-relatives and I wanted to gather information about the family. I started working on the geneology and needed hard facts and dates and juicy gossip.

            Monterrey has a bizillion people. It is the industrial capital of Mexico. It is surrounded by mountains. The geography and the traffic makes the city unbearably hot in the summer. The iconic image of the city is Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Mountain).  However, this time there were storms in the area and although it did not rain, the temperaturs was very pleasant, which was a surprise for trhe month of May.

Mexico, Monterrey, and the people I know are divided into two classes, the "have" and the have not."  I needed time with all of them so I will share my views.

HAVE:

The people with money are well known to all by their address or "colonia." These folks have all the conveniences of modern life. Those that I visited are pseudo-relatives because I have not yet determined our connection. Until I see it on the geneological flow chart, I won't really know. In Mexico, your grandmother's aunt is your "aunt." The "grand" or "great" is not mentioned. The lines get blurred.

This is Javier and Rosa, the nicest and most attentive poeple. He is a retired engineer and university professor. She is a retired surgical nurse. They shop at the malls, WalMart, and the modern grocery stores. There is a house helper that comes in 2 times a week, as well as someone to wash the cars and care for the patio garden. The following pictures show their environment.

HAVE-NOT:

The people on the other side of the equation are also known by the "colonia" where they live. These folks are barely getting by. Their houses have the necessary conveniences, fridge, stove, washer. There is no central air or en-suite bathrooms. No one comes by to wash the car because they don't have one. The cleaning lady lives on the property. They are not likely to shop in the fancy store or malls because of price and inconvenience.

Jose Juan is a life-long friend. He is a welder/ wrought iron artist. Although he is officially "retired" he must continue to take on odd jobs to make ends meet. I don't know how much formal education he had, but it was not much. He worked all his life to help his siblings get an education and help his family survive. My aunt's house was right across the street from him.

Ester is Jose Juan's mother. She had 13 children. In the photo she is cleaning a chicken to make my lunch. The woman in the shadows is one of the daughters, Socorro, who lives on the property, in the back with her husband. She is the one who does the daily sweeping and mopping. She has never lived anywhere else.







Their backyard/patio is the work spcae for Jose Juan and Socorro's husband, who tinkers with carpentry jobs. The neighborhood is their life. Their shopping is restricted to what is close by. The abandoned building below used to be a grocery store many years ago.

Another abandoned building (grocery store) on the corner. By the way, when you drive in this colonia remember that the stop signs are across the street from you and the street names are on the buildings infront of you, not on sign-posts. In the picture below the stop sign is covered with flyers and the name of the cross street is barely visible in yellow, "Libertad."

The center of the city was a tourist mecca until the violence, the abductions, and the killings. Oh and the fact that the State Dept. issued those warnings against travel into Mexico. It is still a vibrant city and the downtown is still open for business.

Giant plaza downtown with elaborate fountains and sculptures.

Hotel Ancira caters to tourists and those with gold credit cards. There is a very nice bar and buffet.

I could not resist. This restaurant is right across the street from the Ancira and its name was no doubt intending to bring in the "gringos." If you don't get it, give it a moment.

This old church is in the poor colonia, a few blocks from my friends' house. I was built in 1895. It seemed much larger when I was a kid. Now it is dwarfed by the concrete monster that took its place. You can this newer church in the first picture in the foreground to the Saddle Mountain.

The Monterrey version of the Statue of LIberty celebrates the breaking of the Spanish and dictators' chains. The giant archway used to be a"drive-around" but now it is a drive-through arch. Like many European cities, Monterrey has statues in honor of this or that hero, this battle or that one.

What can I say? I saw this outside an upholstery shop and had to take the picture. If I could have, I would have bought the shoe and had it recovered. Crossing the border would have been interesting though.

Conclusion

 I always enjoy my trips to Monterrey. This time I found some interetsing tidbits about my aunt and other family members. The trip left me wanting to go further into Mexico in search of my family's origins.

I stayed with the "poor folks" 3 nights and 4 nights at the other colonia. I enjoyed my 3-night stay with Jose Juan and his mother better than the other nights. We walked or took the bus around the city. There was no A/C in the house, but I felt more comfortable, at ease. I was able to be myself. I will be back in  mid-June.

Until next time.

Joe

Onions

Onions

This may seem like an odd topic to address, but it is a pressing topic at the moment. I was surprised to learn how varied the onion family was and how pretty their blossoms are. The fried "onion blossom" are especially good, not really a flower. Consider these onion pix.

 However, these pretty pictures are not the focus of my post. It is a greater evil - onion skins.

      My house is directly across from an onion processing plant. These folks receive the crates full of onions, both local and from Mexico. The onions are "cleaned" and sorted, bagged and shipped out.

The onions are of three varieties - white, yellow, and purple.

The problem for me stems from the processing of these.

Noise

Once the plants begins to process, the noise begins. There are 5 giant "fans" on my side of the plant. I am not sure what their purpose is, but the noise from these is unbearable. I cannot shut it out when I am inside the house. Having a conversation outside is a shouting match. This noise is almost 24/7 at the peak of processing. For some strange reason, the plant is closed on Sundays.

Litter

As the onion is being sorted, by hand and as it make its way on conveyor belts, the outer layers of skin are shed. These skins are easily carried by the constant south winds that blow in March and April.

This is the biggest culprit. The conveyor belt takes unwanted onions and other refuse to the bin and fills these trucks for ultimate removal. The wind is blowing in your face as you see this picture. The conveyor belt is not enclosed = littering. The top of the bin is screened, but the screen is detached in several places = littering.

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Onion skins at the bottom of the conveyor belt andf all around the truck. These will find their wings in time.

Eventually the flying onion skins make it across the street and into my yard. The location of the conveyor belt and the trash bin and the location of the giant fans are on the west side of the plant - my side. Here is what I have to deal with when the wind is blowing.

 If I did not clean these on a regular basis, the entire lawn would be covered and ultimately suffocate the grass. This has happened before. Raking is too much work. I use the skills I learned from dealing with falling leaves and the leaf blower. I blow the skins to the back fence - going with the wind. Once there, I wet the skins and ultimately collect them.

 This problem has been ongoing for as long as the plant has been there. Unfortunately there has not been someone here at the house to address it as it should . Calls to the plant about the littering have been responded with "we can't control the wind."

I am hoping to be more forceful. I found a city statute that clearly addresses littering. I will also offer some solutions to the owners - sweep the grounds, fix the screens, spray the litter with water regularly and then pick it up. I will wait until the end of the onion season to confront the culprits. I heard that there are 4 more weeks remaining. It could end earliuer if we get a good soaking rain, that stops the harvest. Time will tell.

This has been a good onion skin week. There was little wind Saturday through Tuesday. Today the wind was strong but it was from the North. I don't know what suckers had onion skins on their property. The end is near.

Joe

Electric gate

The idea

    I see my relatives with electric garage door openers. I see the elegant gates on TV open effortlessly and automatically. Why can't I have one? I have a chain-link fence and a gate that requires my getting out of the car to open it and to close it before  I can drive off and after I drive into the property.

The Gate

What is wrong with this picture? The gate opener was installed following the instructions to the letter. I watched the video that showed me how to install and what it would look like after. The video showed the elegant gates I mentioned.

The problem is not with the gate but with the slope of the drive-way. The problem begins about 3 feet from the fence and mainly on the left side. To have an electric gate opener, the solution was to raise the gate to clear the offending surface. It works but it looks bad.

What this means is that the concrete, which is about 4 inches thick, will have to be removed and the area resurfaced. This will allow the gate to be brought down in line with the rest of the fence.

 My brother-in-law loaned me his sledge hammer. It took only a few minutes to find out that my dainty hands were not made to sledge anything. I quickly realized why people were likely to hire Mexican day laborers for this kind of work. I have not resorted to that. I will investigate the renatal and use of a Jack Hammer.

Kitchen finally and bathroom

I have finished with the Kitchen make-over. I am very grateful for my brother-in-law's (Lauro) help. If it were not for him, I would still be working on it. Since the last batch of pictures, a hole was cut in the wall to the living room and the counter-top was cut and glued into place. The hole in the wall was the easy part. It is about 3.5 ft by 5 ft.  The amount of light has increased and I can see the TV from the kitchen.

The blue that you see through the opening is in the front bedroom, past the living room and the hallway.

The one thing that I dreaded was the the ceiling would cave in when we cut the wall studs. Luckily that did not happen.

The counter top looks like granite but it is faux granite. I bought this at the Habitat store in San Antonio in September. It sat in the driveway until last Saturday when it found its home. It does not sit perfectly because we installed on the original counter, and that was far from level.

Bathroom

Some time back the bathroom had been remodeled to make it ADA accessible for my aunt. So, this room simply needed a paint job. I used the very light yellow from the cabinets for the walls and a contrast color on the wall facing the toilet. I tried to match the color from the frames already in the room. I think it looks great. I also removed the existing and unneeded medicine cabinet. I will start looking for a different faucet set.

Hallway

There is not much to see other than the shiny painted surface of the hall that leads from the bathroom to what was my aunt's room.

Kitchen cabinets

      Re-doing the kitchen cabinets had been on my list for more than 2 years. The two or three weeks that I spent here in the summers was never enough time, while I was working. Yesterday I finished this tedious task and I learned some things along the way.



Things I learned

1) When going from varnish/stain to paint, sanding is not enough. Try a stripper.

(Sorry, I could not resist)

2) Doors that are used to hanging a certain way for more than 50 years do not like to be removed. The hinges have gotten used to being tilted just so. Doors may not fot properly after the treatment.
3) The prime lesson about painting is "primer." Be generous.
4) Be patient.

Cabinet pulls

I cleaned scraped and painted the old pulls and for now decided to have new pulls on the top and the old ones below. If I decide that I don't like the old ones, I hope to be able to find the new. I bought them on clearance.

Old                                                       New

You cannot imagine how much crud was behind each pull

What also helped the look was the de-cluttering.

 

The clock will change colors before long. The new counter top is waiting its turn in the carport. There will be a new backsplach to replace the floor vinyl tiles above the sink.

The blue cabinet became my pantry to make room for my bar glassware. One must keep focused on priorities. Its doors will be painted with the darker yellow and the sides "white." Actually the color on the cabinets is the palest yellow before you get to white.

The curtains are gone. I think I will construct some "Roman shades." Of course, the curtain-less window is also an option.

A section of the counter top is visible on the left. It is faux granite and a great find at the Habitat store in San Antonio.

The next step in the kitchen transformation is cutting through the wall to the living room. This will happen this week. I checked with a carpenter friend and he assured me that it does not matter if the wall is weight bearing or not because the size of the cut is not of significant - 68 in. (wide) x 45 in. (height). I just saw an episode of "remodeling realities" that dealt with a load-bearing wall demolition. Yikes!!

Your ideas and input are welcomed!

Joe



Juana Beatrice Vidales (Mi Tia)

My aunt (Mi Tia) died on January 2, 2011. She was born on May 26, 1916. She was 94.

(18-20 years?)

January 1
      I already wrote about her experiences on Christmas Day. New Year's Day was a relatively normal one for her. She had a good dinner and was belligerent. She went to bed around the same time without incident. Around 3 a.m. I awoke to her talking. My room is down the hall from her's and I am a sound sleeper, so you know that she was talking loudly. I went to her room and saw that she was under the covers, in bed, and talking. I could not make out much of her talk. It was the "talk-in-your-sleep" talk. I went back to bed.

January 2
     She was breathing deep and seemed in a sound sleep when I checked on her around 6 a.m. The care provider arrived at 8 a.m. and 10 minutes later the provider came to tell me that she was having trouble getting my aunt up. "She seemed unresponsive to commands and loose." I went to see what was up. I immediately knew that all was not right. Her face seemed distorted to the right and drooling had occurred. Her left side was unresponsive. I grabbed her left hand and asked her to squeeze. The squeeze happened on the right hand. When I uncovered her to mover her legs, she did not make an attempt to cover herself. This was out of the norm for her. Above all else, she was concerned about making sure she was covered. It was evident that she had suffered a stroke.
       There was a history of TIA with my aunt. These are otherwise known as "mini-strokes." People with TIA history don't always have a major stroke, but there is a good likelihood that a big one is lurking. I called the Hospice nurse and he was of no help. He suggested that I wait a couple of days to see if she would recover. I could not see myself caring for someone with a stroke for three days. This was further proved when it took three people to clean her up and change the bed, my sister, the provider, and me. I spoke to the supervising nurse for Hospice and told her that we needed to start the process to transfer my aunt to a nursing home. This would have happened the next day, Monday.

       Around noon on the 2nd, my sister asked my aunt if she wanted something to drink or eat and she mumbled something that sounded like not now. A check of her pupils showed that they were totally dilated, not a good sign. Around 3 pm, I lay on the couch to watch a football game and dozed off. Around 4:30 I went to check on her and she had died. The supervising nurse from hospice came to clean her, check her, and then pronounced her dead. The nurse suspects that either the original stroke or a second one may have been the cause. The nurse called the funeral home and they came to collect the body around 7 p.m. By this time all of my brothers had arrived and seen her.

(in her 40s?)

                                                               Pre-Arranged Funeral
        I always thought that when someone had a "pre-arranged funeral" that all that needed to be done was to put them in the box and in the ground. NO!
       The one good thing that my evil sister-in-law and evil Chicago relative did for my aunt was to talk her into letting them make funeral arrangements. My aunt was not interested in discussing death. She resisted the idea of a last will and testament. When she sold the property in Mexico, the funeral arrangements were made and paid for in cash. (I now wonder if she didn't lose some extra cash in the transaction.) In any case, the casket and funeral home expenses were made. My mother transferred a cemetery plot to my aunt. The "opening and closing" cemetery costs were also paid. I think that is another rip-off.

Funeral home
        The day after my aunt's death, my sister and I begin to make the arrangements. We had a copy of the receipt for the funeral home coats. We go through the preliminary questions and then we are told, "This is what is not covered." What happened to pre-arranged? The grieving family can easily be suckered into spending many more dollars before they are aware. Things that we were offered that meant more money that we declined were extra viewing time at the funeral home, an extra limo, a DVD of her pictures, a lengthy obituary in the paper with photos, and others. We did have to pay $100 for the city police escort, mandatory. There is a cost of $21 for the first copy of the death certificate (mandatory), other copies are less. We got three copies. We added some information to the newspaper obituary, beyond the notice of death, $136. The funeral home also told us that the flowers for the casket were not included, $200. However, we argued that our copy of the receipt had a charge of $200 for flowers, the funeral home copy did not. They honored our receipt.

Church
         The decision was made to have a mass at the St. Joan Catholic Church, across the alley from the house. My sister went to make the arrangements and asked about the cost. She was told that there was not charge. However there was a $100 donation. HUH??? I thought it should have been less because the priest was busy elsewhere and the one conducting the mass was a deacon. I don't really know what a deacon is or how someone becomes one.

Cemetery
         At the cemetery, there were three obstacles. The plot had been transferred, but when my brother went to finalize the transaction, his name was added as an "owner." This brother and his wife had been involved in this pre-arranged funeral. He needed to go to the cemetery office to release the plot. The opening and closing had been paid, $545. The sister-in-law went to pay for this and her name was on the receipt we had. Again, she needed to go and "release" the transaction and make it my aunt's. This had to be done before the ground could be dug. Although not happy that they were inconvenienced, my brother and his wife signed the required forms.
         Since my aunt had no other living relatives, all of the nephews and niece had to sign a form stating that we agreed to have her buried in that cemetery. We were told that there have been families that argued over where to bury someone and lawsuits followed. If the survivors agreed there would be no need to dig up the dead in the future. A brother traveling 250 miles and one delayed by work responsibilities had to sign before Noon the day of the burial or there would be no burial.

(on her 85th)

After the burial, we gathered at the house. The Chicago relative, my brother and his evil wife did not join us. The wife had a funeral to attend in Houston and did not attend my aunt's funeral. The Chicago relative continued to not want to mingle with us. My sister and I tried to explain to those gathered how my aunt had deteriorated and how it was for her in the last couple of years. 

My brother and his wife live 5 miles away and had not been to see my aunt in about 2 years, the last time Miss Chicago came to visit. There were never any calls to see how she was doing or how the caregivers were doing. However, these two women put on quite a show at the funeral home. They cried, stroked her arm and her hair. They hugged her. Those who did not know them would say that there was a closeness between them. There has been no further contact from them.


(90 years?)

My aunt suffered much in the last 10 years. In the last year she deteriorated tremendously. Her mind was not always firing on all cylinders. She did not know what day it was, or what season it was. The last years of her life was an existence. I do not wish that on anyone.

Joe