Chedraui Owie

[DonJuane]

Well thank you! I really don't know what to say except that this may actually be in all my years the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Humbly teared, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart. What a very kind soul you are indeed!

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I do love Mexico! From the time I was a child on our Texas farm I remember the migrant workers who would come through to help harvest our crops. My father loved the people as I did and I remember them coming to our old beat down Victorian farm house and bringing food and spreading out their guitar amplifiers and pulling out their accordions and all the fun and wonderful music they shared with us. With our living many miles from our closest neighbor, three channels on the B&W TV set and with our only going to a school as a diversion, which incidentally was large enough to only graduate 4 seniors each year, this was really as if a space ship had landed each year when they came to our farm and brought in all the excitement.

The sad part about the entire thing though was that I have to also report that my mother and father would tell me not to share any of these stories at school because the people of the nearby town (population 254) would not understand and would begin to look down upon us. So I think this was likely the first thing that made me a little different from everyone else and with this and the injustice of it all, I was able over most of my life to understand more and more how the unfairness of the human spirit could create so much grief for so many people. The strangest thing is that not much seems to have changed over the years and today maybe it's even worse.

The last five years of my career in the IT field, everyone viewed me as the odd one. I had papered my office in book pages of household items with their Spanish names printed over them. I always dreamed of going to Mexico one day and in 2006 I took early retirement and have been on the road here ever since. Guanajuato used to be my "safe place" to get away from other Gringo infused enclaves, a place I was forced to speak Spanish and things moved a little slower than normal with the lack of traffic and noise and being face to face with local people in the callejones the only option while getting about. The local people of GTO who I met on the streets were interested in stopping to talk to me and it seemed like a world away from the rest of civilization. When I walked around town I might see one or two Gringos here who might ask how I was and how I was enjoying GTO, I would ask the same and we'd be on our way (no meet up for drinks or sharing future development plans). Not so much any more. But change is inevitable, is it not?