The Touch Of A World That Is Older

The house where we stayed had colored tile everywhere. It was as if the house had a rare and festive form of cancer where ceramic tumors grew and metastasized into all the colors of the rainbow. It screamed party.

The house where we stayed used whale vertebrae, shells, and what was possibly a porpoise skull as decorations in the beach sand.

The house where we stayed was surrounded by houses of similar size and build; which is to say large and cement. They clung to an exclusive section of the beach like some gringo city state preparing for a battle against poverty.

The road between the house and town was twenty minutes of mostly empty sand and scrub. Here there were the billboards that seemed conspicuous in their absence before, advertisements for the new resorts and condo complexes whose cranes were already there like the sniffles that are the coming attractions for the flu on its way.

The road between the house and town was empty for the most part, but if you looked far enough off the road, you could make out the small, corrugated tin shacks that served as the houses for those who didn’t vacation in Puerto Penasco.

The main part of the town didn’t seem to feel like a Mexican seaside town, but felt like the American idea of a Mexican seaside town. Enough Latin feeling for the waddling and sunburned retirees from Idaho to feel like they’re on vacation, but not too foreign to make them feel uncomfortable.

The main part of the town was made up of shops that sold some fairly tacky crap. If you’re looking for shot glasses, or blankets, or sombreros, cheap silver jewelry, or clever T-shirts which feature a cartoon Chihuahua drinking or puking or humping someone’s leg, then here is where you find it my friends. It only takes a short while to realize that all the shops essentially sell the same things; not so different form America actually.

The main part of the town was filled with people trying to get you to buy things, or charter a boat, or come to a free breakfast where they will then talk you into investing into one of the resorts currently being built by the above mentioned sniffle cranes. While I didn’t notice it, my brother and his wife were bothered by the sense of the people not being overly nice. I seemed surprised by this being the two of them spoke Spanish fluently, but this didn’t seem to make a difference.

The road back to the house was a good place to discuss things we had encountered in town. My brother and I discussed the gregariousness of the denizens of Puerto Penasco. I told him I understood why people wouldn’t be too into visitors. For years the place had been a playground for the students of the colleges of Arizona, a place to wallow in irresponsibility and cheap tequila, streets used to puke and piss in. And now older, richer white people were buying up all of the beach property and building ostentatious houses that the natives could never afford. And they were probably being treated as if they were dirty, ignorant and Spanish speaking obstacles in front of the next thing to purchase. I understood a lack of niceties.

The road back to the house had a billboard which seemed to bother me more than it should have. It showed an artist’s rendition of a new condo complex to be built with a suitably Latinized English name. Below this illustrated monstrosity were two simple words: “Paradise Perfected.”

And I had been living under the notion that paradise was perfect by definition.

To be continued…

*Musical note: I was completely unaware that Huey Lewis and the News had made so many albums, but my dad cleared me up of this misconception. I was completely unaware of the ills that an hour and forty minutes of HL and the N can cure (which is for the most part dissolving the plague of anger and apathy the hour and a half of James Taylor had created just before.)


Feb(r)uary Song of the Day: “(Red)” by Califone (following up the Giant Sand, Califone is the brittle wind that erases the street signs and makes the journey raw.)