Welcome to the first of a multi-part series chronicling the hijinks, escapades and even life-shaking epiphanies experienced on our recent adventure driving into the heart of Mexico. Fair warning…this series isn’t completely focused on dating and seduction advice, but if you read on you’re sure to find plenty of highly applicable information nonetheless. Most of all, I hope you enjoy this series as a quick break from your busy day and from the serious business of life…Cheers.
“Quieres whisky?”
The tuxedo-clad Mexican waiter catches me off guard.
“Absolutamente“, I answer solemnly but resolutely.
We’re now at the reception after Emily’s cousin’s wedding that, in the unforgettable words of Yogi Berra, “made this day necessary”.
Actually, it’s what inspired the entire trip.
And since we were already through what we had imagined to be the most brutal part of the journey by the time we made it to Ciudad Juarez anyway, we figured we’d do the “deep dive” and say hola to Emily’s relatives further south.
And believe me, the whisky was sounding really good by the time it was offered up.
You see, the previous thirty hours or so had been something else.
For starters, the drive from San Antonio to El Paso is notorious. Let’s just say that the first thing you see when you hit I-10 in San Antonio is a sign that says “El Paso — 538”.
When I say there is nothing in between that sign and the one that says “Welcome To El Paso, Home Of Some Pretty Good Carnitas Tacos”, I’m including the town of Fort Stockton, TX.
The only real distraction is a field of high-tech windmills at Sonora, TX rivaled only by a similar spectacle out near Palm Springs, CA–ironically also on I-10.
We actually ended up having to blow right through El Paso upon arrival and continue yet another thirty-five miles or so to Anthony, NM where Emily’s octogenarian grandfather lives.
Emily hadn’t the heart to tell me this until we got to El Paso. What can I say, she’s a true sweetheart.
True to form, in line with every other time I can remember driving into El Paso, it was at night when we got there.
El Paso is unique among larger US cities in that not only is it directly across the Rio Grande from a major Mexican city, but you can usually see the Mexican side pretty up-close and personal at all times while driving along the border.
It’s as if you could tee up a golf ball and use Ciudad Juarez as the green, having cleared a minor “water hazard”. Well, that and a gargantuan fence rimmed in razor wire…
This means that there is a massively-lit extravaganza to be seen from the driver’s side for at least 30 miles headed into the city. It’s a fascinating thing to behold, and vividly memorable.
We had arrived at Grandpa’s house at roughly 3am.
The house is pink. And it’s the first house on the corner after the exit, meaning he’s got an Interstate running through the front yard. It was like a John Cougar Mellencamp song reached out and whacked me in the head with a 2×4. In fact, by the time we woke up later that morning there were even women in the kitchen cooking stuff.
But then it got weirder.
I looked out the back window, and I was immediately reminded of George Lopez’ “Why You Crying?” stand-up bit on The Comedy Channel. The house behind Emily’s grandfather’s had tires and car fenders stored on the roof.
None of that was particularly problematic. It is what it is.
The real issue was that Junior (aka “Micky-Mac”), our six-month old son, didn’t seem to understand that his ‘rents were worn out and needed some shuteye before taking on the wedding in Juarez that evening.
Pretty much wide-eyed and bushy-tailed from crashing out in a car seat for the whole trip, Jr. was all about being awake…right when everyone else was bien cansado.
Nonetheless, we got our act together and crossed the International Bridge into Juarez later that morning, with Emily desperately haggling with GMAC for a blessed fax necessary to take the “Short Bus” (aka Emily’s canary-yellow H3) thirty miles south of the border. This would be necessary to continue the rest of the journey after the wedding.
Entering Mexico in and of itself was painless enough, though, as is typical.
You get to the Mexican border station and awkwardly park yourself between two speed bumps waiting for a green “pase” light to appear, which it thankfully usually does.
Emily’s aunt and uncle, parents of the groom, lived less than a mile from the border. We did our darnedest to be upbeat and all, despite zero sleep.
Let me tell you…getting your brain switched over to Espanol-mode is enough of a challenge when you are fully awake, let alone when your brain is playing “paper, rock, scissors” with you (in lieu of a full-scale civil war) for the right to shut down immediately.
So when Emily introduced me, and they said “Bienvenidos, Oscar!” in return, I didn’t even flinch. After all, I had seen this before elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. “Scot” is just one of those names that doesn’t translate well. So I put aside images of trash cans and Odd Couples. “Oscar” it was for the time being.
Worse, by default that made my kid “Oscarito”.
But the wedding was nice, as far as weddings go.
By now every woman should know that we guys mostly tolerate lavish wedding celebrations for the sake of the women involved. This is especially true when the wedding stuff is “traditional”. Consider there to be a positive correlation between “traditional” and “toleration”.
So with all of the above added up, yes…quiero whisky.
I began to ruminate upon the fact that even in Mexico the wedding must have cost the equivalent of 30-40K US dollars. And it couldn’t have been more “traditional”. For my money, I would have mixed in something different. Something interesting. Something that reflected the personality of the bride and groom.
But as we found out the next morning while watching the newlywed couple open gifts, the bride was very much in charge here, so…you know.
At one point during the gift opening ritual, someone noted that all the gifts were decidedly feminine. The groom half-joked that he had put things like a toolkit and a power drill on the wedding register, but the bride had removed them.
At that point I half-joked in return that the next time the bride wants the faucet fixed, she can do it herself…using her new 18/8 kitchen gadgets. Emily laughed. The bride didn’t.
This guy’s in for a rough life, I could tell already.
The wedding itself and the reception had gone off without incident, for the most part.
Never mind what was going on outside in the parking lot.
At one point Micky-Mac and I decided to go outside the hotel ballroom where the reception was being held to get some much-needed oxygen.
We were just in time to watch the hotel’s Toyota Hiace mini-bus wedge itself between a late-model Chrysler 600 and a Jeep Wrangler–both parked–and a sawhorse in the drive area that had apparently gone unnoticed.
A parking lot attendant unceremoniously yanked the sawhorse from the picture with a particularly disturbing screeching noise, one paralleled only by the noise created when the whole mess happened. I saw no indication that the respective owners of the other vehicles were notified as to what had transpired.
After the wedding reception–around 2.30 in the morning–the entire familia went back to the groom’s parents’ house where we were staying.
The house smelled like Mexico, which I’ve since determined is a scent crafted from a carefully choreographed program of cooking meat by-products and using Fabuloso-brand cleaning potions to clean up afterwards.
And true to long-standing tradition, there was a MASSIVE pot of menudo waiting.
At this point it would be useful to explain Mexican food.
If you live in the U.S. or Canada and have been to “Chi Chi’s” or “El Torito” you only really have half the story. And if you’ve been to “Taco Bell”, by the way, you have NONE of the story.
All of this is to say that half of Mexican food is REALLY, REALLY good. In fact, it’s pretty much as addictive as it is prohibited from your current weight-loss plan.
The other half? Well, you might like it too, for all I know.
But probably not.
Just make sure you ask LOTS of questions before eating anything you are unsure of…especially when you’ve never seen anything with a similar name on that “El Torito” menu.
So as far as menudo is concerned, you therefore ask questions. The answers would include “hominy” and “intestines”.
I went to bed hungry–without complaint. Emily joined me. Micky-Mac, being on a more predictable diet plan, had a full-course meal and miraculously slept soundly.
The next day, it would be off to Ciudad Chihuahua, or so we thought…
