pics from the past

My first wife Irene Wolt died last May.   I recently received some pictures that she had kept.   The amusing ones were of me with a huge bushy mustache and very very skinny.   Well, those days are way past.

Most of the pictures were of an extended trip we took as we moved together from NYC to Venice, CA.   the story actually goes back to how we got married.   We were living together and had a pretty stable relationship, but had no marriage plans.   We were going to leave the hotbed political scene in NYC and escape to join other NY friends in LA.   For the move, we were going to buy an old panel truck and travel along the way.   Irene's parents said (basically) "Get married and we'll buy you a truck."   In our sort of hippie daze we accepted the bribe with the thought we could look about 4 years into the future and still be together.   We did not think about the implications of splitting up on the parents.   The parents immediately went into denial on the bribe and got us happily (?) married.

Irene's parents had a hardward store in Livington NJ, and working in the back parking lot of their store I built cabinents, a bed, and a camp kitchen into the new 1970 blue Chevy Suburban when it arrived.   Great to work on carpentry with a whole hardward store at your disposal.

So off we went with all our belongings packed below the bed....and took ten weeks in Mexico on the way to California.  Irene spoke Spanish and was a great travel planner.   Many stories from the trip, but the one that swam up from the pictures was our meeting with Alfredo.   He was a young Mexican boy we met at a beach in Western Mexico, mostly frequented by American surfers.   I don't know how we met Alfredo, but here was his story.   He was clearly a bright kid, but his formal schooling ended abou 12, because for high school he had to live away from home and had no money or relative to live with.   His parents' backup plan for his education was to send him to this American hot spot to learn English.   It still rankles me that in Mexico an young person should need to learn English to advance, but that was how it was.

We ended up driving Alfredo to his home some hours away.  We have one picture of him sitting alone on a rock, and one picture of him and his family standing in front of their (I'll have to call it) grass house.  Luckily Irene labeled the picture so I know there was Elizabeth, Oscar, Alfredo, and Sr and Sra Lopez.   They invited us to stay with them that night and we slept in a loft space in their one room house.   The night of conversation we spent there was beyond magical.   I'm not romanticizing third world living.   I'm grateful for being able to span our language, cultural, and economic differences and meet heart to heart.   (My poor Spanish seemed to grow by leaps and bounds that night...probably due to the level of motivation to communicate.)   We sat at the table with the whole family.    The had a double door (call it dutch door) with the cow standing outside but looking in.   The chickens and pig were allowed inside.   I learned how Sr Lopez farmed....I would call it sharecropping.  He was a step up in the economic/social structure because he could afford a working mule rather than donkey.   We left the next day.   I know Irene and I wrote to Alfredo for a while.   But now I have no idea, but would love to know what he is up to now.   Old pictures....