GRINGO IN WONDERLAND

The Taxi Trap at TAPO

After nine hours on the road, the bus finally rolled into TAPO—the southern terminal in Mexico City. The ride had taken its time, weaving through traffic and odd little streets, with delays along the way. But we arrived more or less on schedule. I was tired. Groggy, maybe. Not alert.

The terminal looked closed down for the night, or close to it. A few men stood near the exit, directing people toward the street with that friendly-but-pushy confidence that should be a red flag. The locals ignored them. I didn’t. I’ve seen this setup before—in Mexico City, in Puerto Vallarta, and anywhere tourists meet taxis. I should have known better.

But one of them offered to help with my bag. “The taxis are right this way,” he said. I let him take it.

We walked past the actual taxi stand. That should’ve been the moment I stopped everything. Right then and there: “Dame mi maleta.” But I didn’t. I was too wiped out. And that’s how these guys work—on travelers who’ve been on the move too long.

The car wasn’t marked, wasn’t waiting in the proper taxi zone, and wasn’t anything special—just a plain Nissan, unwashed and unremarkable. “Fair price?” I asked. “Yes, yes,” he nodded. “I’ll show you on the phone.” Of course he would. His friendliness was thin, and I didn’t trust it. But by then it was too late. I was in the car, and my bag was in the trunk. A classic mistake.

He didn’t really know where he was going. We wound through side streets while he followed his GPS. I kept glancing at it, wondering what I’d gotten into. Eventually we ended up somewhere near the Zócalo—but not at my hotel. He pulled up outside a different one and said, “This is it.”

It wasn’t. But I got out and asked what I owed.

“Setecientos cincuenta,” he said—MX$750.

For a ride that should have cost MX$100, maybe MX$200 at night. I’d already made peace with overpaying—maybe MX$350, with the tourist tax. But this? I wanted to call him a thief, un ladron, but I didn't have my bag yet.  

I told him: “Cuatrocientos. No más.” I didn’t even have MX$750 on me. He grumbled but opened the trunk. At that moment I realized how vulnerable I was. If he’d driven off with my bag, there would’ve been nothing I could’ve done. But he didn’t. He took the MX$400—still a win for him—and drove off.

I looked at the hotel he’d dropped me at. Not the right one. I checked my phone: my actual hotel, El Catedral, was a 15-minute walk. It looked like a short hop on the GPS, but city blocks in Mexico City can stretch out. So I started walking.

The area was alive but not threatening—parents with kids, people heading home, fast food still open. I passed a McDonald’s, a few corner stores, and street vendors closing shop. One group, sharing drinks and laughter, nodded as I passed.

When I finally reached my hotel—through a side door—it felt like stepping out of barracuda-infested water and into calm. A bellboy took my bag and walked me to the front desk. No hustle. Walked back to his post before I could tip him. No angle. Just service.

I was finally where I needed to be. Safe, and reminded once again: in Mexico, the predators are real—but so is the kindness. You just have to get through one to find the other.

The check-in felt like an airline counter—pleasant but complicated. It turned out the reservation I thought I’d made through Expedia hadn’t gone through. What I thought was an email from them acknowledging that the reservation hadn't been made was instead from the hotel. Still, I had already paid for one night, and she was able to add the next three without a problem.

I kept thinking, This is kind of expensive, but when I saw the bill—MX$1,300 per night—I had to laugh. For a clean, modern hotel with bellboys, working Wi-Fi, and a perfect location behind the cathedral, it was a bargain. It came out to about $70 USD. There are cheaper hotels, but not many that feel this solid.

I took the elevator to my room. Still a little rattled, I tried to get the TV going. Took me thirty minutes just to connect the Wi-Fi and enter the password with the remote. In the end, I streamed a show on my laptop. I fell asleep around midnight and slept well enough—until 6 a.m., when my body told me that was that.

In the light of day I reflected on my $35 taxi ride, that I paid $20 for and it was just funny and a lesson, be vigilant; I don't have this down perfectly yet. The whole taxi scam cost me $10 extra. That’s it. A $10 lesson in humility. Not my first. Probably not my last.

It reminded me of Puerto Vallarta, back in 1995—a $3taxi ride that cost me $38. These guys have been around forever. The “luxury taxi” lie. The fast talk. The phone with the “rate” they never actually show you. The fake friendliness. They know how to spot a tired traveler.

When I refused his ridiculous fare, he got defensive. “It’s the night rate,” he said. Supposedly, everything doubles after 10 p.m. The meter doesn’t exist. The rate’s on his phone. Trust him. Only—it wasn’t 10 p.m. And I never saw the phone. Arguing with a petty thief over the exact amount of the theft felt pointless.

In the end, I paid MX$400, got my bag back, walked 15 minutes, and got some fresh air. I figure I paid an expensive but normal $10 for the ride, $10 for the lesson, and got a little exercise and night sightseeing to go with it.

We’re all God’s children doing our best—even Pepe the ladróncito.

I no longer pray for ladróncitos to burn in hell. I just pray that one day they have a spiritual awakening. 

A Gringo in Oaxaca

I am in Mexico. I’m staying in Oaxaca, at a small hotel near The Cathedral called El Parador de San Agustín, a block and a half from the Zócalo, the center of town. It’s a traditional Mexican hotel for business people and Mexican tourists, with a few guests from El Norte, mostly from the U.S. The building has a modest street façade with one entrance to the office and another leading onto a broad patio paved in brick. There are tables and chairs for breakfast, meetings, or socializing. The hotel’s architecture is classic; white walls and red accents, woodwork, and a second-floor gallery with iron railings overlooking the patio below.

The staff are warm and informal, often working from a desk near the entrance when they’re not attending to guests or helping other staff members. The small café faces the street with its own entrance, three tables against the wall on the sidewalk, and another entrance leading onto the patio. Two cooks run the café, preparing breakfast for guests and snacks for occasional walk-ins. They also tend a large stew pot with great care; beans and maybe something else during the day. The hotel is quiet and comfortable, shielded from the busy one-way street where police manage traffic at both corners.

Just outside, there’s a book stall: tables against the wall on the sidewalk and in the street, filled with books. Tarps stretch from the building across the sidewalk to cover them—makeshift but permanent, protecting the books from the nearly daily rain that visits Oaxaca during the summer. There’s also a modest clothing shop, a Banamex, and a great Gelatolandia. Foot traffic is constant. The hotel offers a peaceful retreat from that daily hum: a calm courtyard, clean rooms, and reasonable prices. $85 a night or $95 with air conditioning. I opted for a room with a ceiling fan and patio windows that bring in fresh air.

The staff are delightful. David is professional and friendly, a bit reserved. Jiero is thoughtful and prefers to speak English, so I’m happy to help him practice. His English is quite good. Eli, an English teacher at a private school, will not speak English to me at all in the best possible way. When I ask questions, he answers in Spanish and stays there. David does the same. I appreciate it deeply. This is how I learn. Dulce, initially shy to speak English, is a third-year university student studying business administration. Her English is very good, a good accent, and she is happy to practice with me. I’ve decided to speak only English with her in return for the kindness of others who stay in Spanish for me.

I can do almost everything in Spanish now; order meals, ask directions, converse. I have a large but idiosyncratic vocabulary and tangled grammar. But Mexicans are almost always patient and helpful and mostly understand me. They kindly compliment my accent and fluency, though I know I’m far from fluent. Still, I get by. My Spanish may sound tortured to me, but it works. I can talk to people here, and that means everything. In Mexico, the doors are open for Americans who make an effort. And with more Spanish, those doors open even wider. Even the simplest words; gracias, por favor, buenos días, are met with warmth.

¿Habla inglés? will often bring a reply of "Un poco," which can mean anything from three words to near fluency. Taxi drivers and waiters often say it with a smile and will make a good effort to understand you, even if their English is minimal. These days, people are using Google Translate, which is a great tool and I think it’s okay to refer to it, but only as a reference to help you, not waving the phone in someone’s face while it speaks for you. To me, that just looks rude.

Americans are here, mostly independent travelers, not cruise ship tourists or resort guests with packages. In Oaxaca, many are here on their own as part of a language program. Some speak only a little Spanish, but they come anyway. I admire that. It takes guts to travel somewhere unfamiliar and try to learn the language and culture. That’s part of why I enjoy talking to Americans. The tourists have stories, come from all over the U.S., and bring an earnest curiosity and appreciation.

That said, it can be hard to talk to fellow Americans here. We don’t blend in, and most of us aren’t trying to, but we also aren’t always open to meeting one another. I miss the easy camaraderie I had with tourists as a Park Ranger. Without the hat and badge, I’m just another visitor. Still, when I do meet American travelers here, I enjoy it immensely. They’re interesting people—the kind who choose to come here, who take the risk and try to learn. I respect that.

Mexicans, meanwhile, are remarkably open. You’ll never really blend in, even with language and cultural awareness, but you can become almost family. Some of my friends here call me casi Mexicano. I like that. For those who speak English, I sometimes say I’m a wannabe Mexican. It gets a laugh, and it says something true. I’ll never be Mexican, but I’m trying.

Oaxaca, in particular, is a place that encourages that effort. This isn’t Cancún or Cabo. There’s no industrial tourism here. The people are welcoming, the prices are fair, and the sharks are few. It’s not about extracting dollars; it’s about sharing culture. As anyone who’s been to Cancún knows, most Mexicans are helpful, seem to like the tourists and speak English. There are barracudas, thick in the tourist spots, ready to pick your pocket, literally or figuratively. Hotels have American prices when Mexicans wouldn’t pay nearly as much. Usually, it’s a good experience, though sometimes annoying. In Oaxaca, there are only a few sharks and no barracudas. Here, the sharks aren’t so aggressive.

One of the best parts of this trip is being here at the same time as my daughter, Paloma. She’s staying with a local family near La Basílica de la Soledad in La Colonia Centro. It’s the densest, most vibrant neighborhood I’ve seen—a beehive of life on Saturday mornings, with cafes, markets, churro vendors, families, and shoppers everywhere. Paloma is living with three American housemates—one her friend from Oakland and two from D.C. Paloma’s mother is a first-generation American with parents from Panamá. Paloma self-identifies as Afro-Latina. She is the only one of the four who speaks Spanish. Mexicans know she’s not one of them; she has an international school accent, but she told me she passes sometimes. She was very proud that in the laundromat no one suspected she was a foreigner.

The others, sweet and earnest girls, are mostly monolingual, though they’ve studied Spanish in school. Paloma said one, who is Latina but not fluent, has been a little standoffish—even cold. I’ve talked to Mexican Americans who are embarrassed that they don’t speak Spanish, and Mexicans have a rude term for people who identify themselves as Mexican or look Mexican but don’t know the language. It’s not easy. And those who try to overcome that barrier are admirable. Through the embarrassment, they decide to learn the language anyway. It takes courage.

I chose to learn Spanish not because I had to, but because I wanted to be part of this world. I wanted to acculturate. Also, I simply love being here. I love la gente. The people make this place beautiful. It’s a great country to learn in, and a great country just to be in. It’s a writer’s country.

I imagine myself in a room like this one as Malcolm Lowry, Graham Greene, or Katherine Anne Porter, with an overhead fan and a typewriter on the desk with a blank page. In my case, an empty computer screen. I know a lot about Mexico, its history, its culture, the story of La Virgen de Guadalupe, and maybe why Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo as if it’s the national holiday instead of the minor one it is here. I’ve had Mexican friends joke that if you want to know about Mexico, ask Jack. I’ve learned what I can, but I know I’m still just scratching the surface. I’ll never be Mexican, but I keep learning, and I keep coming back.

That’s what matters: showing up, learning, asking questions, saying gracias. I think people here can tell I love being in Mexico. They feel it. They respond to it. That’s the real magic. The warmth I get from others isn’t just about speaking Spanish and knowing the history. It’s about how I feel being here. The hospitality of the Mexican people is legendary. It’s said that Mexico is the most courteous country in the world. When you come with genuine affection, the doors are open.

Joe Biden Must Retire

 The Democratic Party needs to replace Joe Biden or they will lose the election. Biden’s ego threatens the Republic. Biden kept reminding us to look at the alternative. It made me angry being told I had to vote for Biden to save Democracy. Our choices are supposedly between an evil man who has no concept of Democracy and a geriatric egomaniac who we the majority of Democrats did not want. We were told we had to save Democracy by by voting for someone we never wanted and didn’t choose.

Many people think Biden did a good job in his three years in office. When he decided to run again for President he put it all at risk. I believe any of the possible Democratic candidates other than Biden could beat Trump. In the last year Biden’s reelection at best has been a big if. Now Trump has a good chance of beating Joe Biden. America’s future is at stake and Biden's bid to be reelected is too big a risk. The likelihood that Trump could win became almost a certainty with Biden’s Debate performance. Of course committed Democrats will vote for Biden instead of Trump but all those Republicans who hate Trump, undecideds and independents are deciding they don’t want an addled old man who will very likely die in office.

I think arguments about facts, actual competency, what’s good for the country, who would be better, all those questions are irrelevant. If Biden runs for President he will lose.

I don’t buy the premise that it’s too late to change. I think there is a good chance that given a decent choice between a functioning Democrat and Donald Trump that certainly all Democrats will support and vote for the Democrat and maybe a good number of other people who don’t want Donald Trump. I think that’s very likely. I don’t think the African American vote, the youth vote, the Hispanic vote, or any other way of divvying up the American voter is going to be important when the choice is between a reasonable person and Donald Trump. I’m counting on the Democratic Party to at least deliver up a reasonable candidate. I think that’s likely.

Let’s get on with it. Thank you, Joe for a lifetime of dedicated service. History will say you were a good Senator, a very good Vice President and maybe an excellent President. I’m not a Centrist. I haven’t been satisfied for a long time. But I always vote Democratic. Now give me a choice. Retire and enjoy your legacy. Anything else is risking the Republic itself.

Cycling

I learned to bicycle on a big red boys bike when I was five years old. I had to shift from one side of the crossbar to the other to pedal it. I remember falling on the crossbar numerous times and I’m sure I fell to the pavement but one afternoon I rode it without falling. I think it must have been my sister Ellen holding the back of the seat until I got started and then giving me a push off.

I got my first bike when I was nine years old for the best Christmas ever, a big red three speed racer bike. From then on that’s what we did. We hung out on our bikes, we stood around on our bikes. When nothing was going pm we rode our bikes in circles. Wherever we went we did it on our bikes. And sometimes we just bicycled; often on 9^th Street or coming down Orange Grove Terrace on to Sunset Canyon Drive to see how fast we could get going.

I got a paper route when I was 11 first with the Valley Times and then with the LA Mirror, I hung the double canvas sack filled with newspapers on my handlebars and pedaled up and down the hills between Olive Boulevard and Walnut Avenue six afternoons a week for nearly three years. I think my over sized calf muscles come from the hills of Burbank. Sometimes when it rained I got driven around my route by my mother or Ellen.

With my newspaper money I bought a Schwinn cruiser bike, fat tires, a tank on the crossbar, three speed, a light and a rack. It was a beautiful bike. Shortly after I got it my mother lent it to an immigrant family from Eastern Europe so their son could do his paper route. He got a flat and his father fixed the bike with a hammer. It never rode right after that. I didn’t know you could have it repaired and no one offered to make it good. After that it just sat in the garage. I still feel angry when I think about it. Maybe one day I’ll give that up.

When I was a teenager and before I was sixteen it was uncool to ride a bicycle. My last ride may have been when my friend Rick Sharp and his brother got the new 10 speeds and we borrowed his brother’s bike and rode from Burbank to Santa Monica Beach and back. It was a trip of a lifetime. It didn’t register that I could have done that all the time. It was a one time trip and we didn’t do it again. A lesson in life I didn’t get then:

IF YOU’RE A TEENAGER, GET A ROAD BIKE, ONE THAT CRUISES WELL, WITH A GOOD RANGE OF GEARS AND RIDE IT WHEREVER YOU WANT TO GO. IT CAN ENLARGE YOUR LIFE AND INDEPENDENCE BY 15 MILES OR MORE. WEAR A HELMET.

I didn’t start riding again until England when I bought a Raleigh three speed. In 1970 in England it seemed like everyone rode bikes everywhere. At a stoplight in town on a nice day there were more bicycles than cars. I rode my Raleigh all over Bedford and out to the country. When I brought it home to the US I sometimes biked from North Hollywood to my parents’ house in Burbank and I got a bike rack and would take it down to El Segundo when we went to Cathy’s parents.

Somehow it got put aside when we moved to Division Street, a steep hill, and it gathered dust until I gave it to one of Sean’s friends at St. Bernards. That would have been before 1980.

I liked bicycling but in all that time I never became a cyclist. Then in 1982 I got a perfect attendance bonus of $100 from my employer and I bought Cathy a used Schwinn Varsity and then for myself a Windsor road bike. They were 10 speeds and with my Windsor I became a cyclist. I rode it all the time and it became my preferred form of transportation. When I badly bruised my achilles tendon in mountaineering, I kept up my training for Mount Rainer by riding to work on my bike 13 miles from Eagle Rock to Beverly Hills and then back. One morning I was pedaling up Sunset and thought I needed a higher gear. When I went to shift I saw I was already in the top gear and I was going up hill. When I got sober I rode to meetings, so much they thought I had lost my driver’s license in my journey to AA. I hadn’t.

I was also a hiker in the San Gabriels and one day I borrowed Benjamin’s BMX bicycle and tried going up the Arroyo Seco behind JPL above Pasadena. As quickly as I could after that I bought a Schwinn Sierra mountain bike. I bicycled the San Gabriels, down the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, up to the top of Mount Monrovia and back down and back to the car. I routinely rode over to the Verdugo Hills and up from the streets to the fire road across the crest. Mount Lowell was also a favorite. One time I rode up Mount Baldy as far as I could and then hiked to the peak. The hours long hike back to the car was short and quick on a bicycle and I smiled as I passed my fellow hikers.

I had seen cyclists going up the Angeles Crest Highway to Mount Wilson and thought that was an amazing ride. One day in 1987 I tried it myself and was amazed that while it was hard, it was doable. I did that a few times and rode in the back of the Angeles Crest from Red Box up to Waterman a few times. I flew past a Highway Patrolman going downhill on Angeles Crest and heard from his car loudspeaker “58 miles per hour!”

In 1988 I bought a Trek road bike and put a third ring on the crankset. I bicycled to work in downtown LA sometimes and often drove my bike down to Glendale Avenue and cycled to work. It was downhill mostly and I didn’t work up a sweat and had a nice ride back. I never did touring but I thought about it. I did long rides, mostly by myself, sometimes with a club. I loved cycling. I bought an old cruiser bike and fixed it. I had a mountain bike, a road bike and a cruiser and I used all three of them. Later in Mill Valley we got a tandem. I lost the tandem in the divorce. It’s probably hanging in a garage somewhere and never used.

I used the BART and the bike to go to San Francisco Juvenile Hall from Oakland. In the 1990s I stopped mountain biking, it was too hard on my back. When I became a Ranger on Mount Diablo I enjoyed the long rides up the hill on my days off and sometimes I’d go short distances on the back roads. On Angel Island I used a bike to patrol the West side of the Island and on my own time I rode around the island frequently and taking a ferry to Tiburon and rode through Marin County on days off.

In retirement I’ve continued to cycle. I bought a Jamis Coda commuter bike when I bought Adam their first bike in 2014. I try to bicycle every day and it’s still my favorite form of getting around. My 20 mile rides in my 60s, became 15 miles and then 10 mile rides as I aged. Now days I try to ride 5 miles or thirty minutes each day, I often do 10 and 15 is doable. At 76 years old my good health and mobility is because I am a cyclist. I love it.

Foreword

This is the Foreword for the autobiography I have posted on this blog.  The next step is put this in a hard bound format and publish a few copies to give my kids and grandkids.  And organize the biography in this blog.  

My purpose in writing this book is to leave a record for my great grandchildren and their children. When I was 12 years old I spent a couple of weeks with my grandfather, Munroe Lashley. He told me the family history and he knew it to his great grandfather Thomas Lashley who had been a Captain in the Confederate Army. He knew the Lashleys were from across the pond and had started their American journey from South Carolina Piedmont. In the Duggan Family my grandfather and his brothers told their own stories and everyone adored their mother the Duchess, my great grandmother whom I met. Her husband was the youngest son of Michael Duggan, the immigrant from Ireland to Missouri.

These stories are the stories I would wish to have from my Great Grandfather. I wish I were a better writer. My own vision of an autobiography would be more complete and better writing than these, but this is my answer to the Hollywood saying “Do you want it done or do you want it perfect?”

I was inspired to write this book when a friend quoted his father from his biography. I was surprised Richard’s father was a published author. “No,” he said, “he just wrote it for us.” A book, I thought, had to be good enough to publish and I wasn’t capable of that, but I could make a record for my family. I am not Emily Dickinson who wrote poems that were only discovered and appreciated after her death. When I write I want people to read it and for that I started a blog, Stories I Tell Myself, and all of this was published there first as a blog post.

I have some readers. One or two I know about and some who are a mystery to me. In 11 years I’ve had over 15,000 hits on my blog. In the world of blogs it’s not much, but it’s a few. I suspect most of them are tractor programs from remote parts of the world looking for personal data, but some of them, maybe a few, are from real people, people who know me and people who don’t.

For my family, people I’ll never meet, I’ve put in as much detail as possible, places, dates and events. It’s a personal history not a general history but I hope it gives a sense of what it was like to live in the last half of the 20^th century and the first part of the 21^st. I think of my grandmother who was born in 1892. When she was born there were no cars on the road. When she died in 1963 the country was crisscrossed with freeways and cities jammed with cars. She went from horses to cars, from trains to planes from telegraph to television. And like her I’ve seen some changes to the world and this is how it felt. It has been an interesting time.

I’ve told the stories honestly, not fictionalized anything I experienced. The people I admire I’ve used their real names. People who would be embarrassed by these stories, I’ve changed the names and clouded some of the facts. People I disliked or had bad experiences with I’ve changed the names. My experience was bad, but of course, there are two sides to the story and people I don’t like aren’t necessarily bad people.

I hope you enjoy these stories. I hope they tell you something about where you came from, who your ancestors are or just what it was like to be an ordinary man in this place and these times. Maybe they’ll inspire some of you to write your own record, an essay at least or a book. Thank you letting me tell you these stories.

Conclusion

This is the Foreword for the autobiography I have posted on this blog.  The next step is put this in a hard bound format and publish a few copies to give my kids and grandkids.  And organize the biography in this blog.  

My purpose in writing this book is to leave a record for my great grandchildren and their children. When I was 12 years old I spent a couple of weeks with my grandfather, Munroe Lashley. He told me the family history and he knew it to his great grandfather Thomas Lashley who had been a Captain in the Confederate Army. He knew the Lashleys were from across the pond and had started their American journey from South Carolina Piedmont. In the Duggan Family my grandfather and his brothers told their own stories and everyone adored their mother the Duchess, my great grandmother whom I met. Her husband was the youngest son of Michael Duggan, the immigrant from Ireland to Missouri.

These stories are the stories I would wish to have from my Great Grandfather. I wish I were a better writer. My own vision of an autobiography would be more complete and better writing than these, but this is my answer to the Hollywood saying “Do you want it done or do you want it perfect?”

I was inspired to write this book when a friend quoted his father from his biography. I was surprised Richard’s father was a published author. “No,” he said, “he just wrote it for us.” A book, I thought, had to be good enough to publish and I wasn’t capable of that, but I could make a record for my family. I am not Emily Dickinson who wrote poems that were only discovered and appreciated after her death. When I write I want people to read it and for that I started a blog, Stories I Tell Myself, and all of this was published there first as a blog post.

I have some readers. One or two I know about and some who are a mystery to me. In 11 years I’ve had over 15,000 hits on my blog. In the world of blogs it’s not much, but it’s a few. I suspect most of them are tractor programs from remote parts of the world looking for personal data, but some of them, maybe a few, are from real people, people who know me and people who don’t.

For my family, people I’ll never meet, I’ve put in as much detail as possible, places, dates and events. It’s a personal history not a general history but I hope it gives a sense of what it was like to live in the last half of the 20^th century and the first part of the 21^st. I think of my grandmother who was born in 1892. When she was born there were no cars on the road. When she died in 1963 the country was crisscrossed with freeways and cities jammed with cars. She went from horses to cars, from trains to planes from telegraph to television. And like her I’ve seen some changes to the world and this is how it felt. It has been an interesting time.

I’ve told the stories honestly, not fictionalized anything I experienced. The people I admire I’ve used their real names. People who would be embarrassed by these stories, I’ve changed the names and clouded some of the facts. People I disliked or had bad experiences with I’ve changed the names. My experience was bad, but of course, there are two sides to the story and people I don’t like aren’t necessarily bad people.

I hope you enjoy these stories. I hope they tell you something about where you came from, who your ancestors are or just what it was like to be an ordinary man in this place and these times. Maybe they’ll inspire some of you to write your own record, an essay at least or a book. Thank you letting me tell you these stories.

The Pandemic

My grandmother died in 1918 and though it was in childbirth, a few months before the first signs of the flu, in my mind it’s always been connected to the ‘18 flu. After 1918 nothing like the World Flu Pandemic has afflicted us for over 100 years and then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. We learned we are just as vulnerable today as the world was in 1918.

In December, 2019, there were reports of lock downs and quarantines in Wuhan China, a city most of us never heard of. In 2020 the news was full of the novel coronavirus but but like Ebola and other outbreaks it was a virus far away and didn’t seem relevant to the United States.

In 2019 my sister in Iowa began having seizures and we made a couple of trips to see her. Our second trip was in February 2020. In January the virus had broken out from China and isolated cases were showing up all over the world including the United States. At first outbreaks were traceable back to China. A cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama. But by January there were cases of “community spread” on the West Coast. The first case in the Bay Area was January 31^st related to China and then the first “community spread” in the Bay Area was February 28^th.

On February 23^rd, when Adam and I went through O’Hare Airport in Chicago a few people were wearing surgical masks, mostly Asian. In Asia masks are common during cold and flu seasons and Asian ethnic communities here, but it always seemed a little neurotic to me. I wasn’t worried about the novel coronavirus yet, but in the Chicago airport some people were.

As March began it became obvious that the novel coronavirus was loose in the United States. By mid-March cases were multiplying each day, 4 became 8, became 16. Trump was incompetent as a national leader. In the first week in March a cruise ship in the Eastern Pacific with hundreds of infections was looking for a safe port. Trump said, “he didn’t want to bring the Grand Princess’s passengers back to land because doing so would increase the critical count of US coronavirus cases. I don’t need to have the numbers double of one ship that wasn’t our fault. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” The ship parked outside in International Waters outside of the San Francisco Bay March 4^th and finally March 10^th docked in Oakland.

By March 15 Alameda had community transmission unrelated to travelers. It was in the Bay Area and infections were multiplying exponentially. A few cases in February had become hundreds of cases by mid-March. Adam’s school canceled classes for March 15 and said they would consider what to do after the weekend.

Saturday I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things The atmosphere at the Nob Hill in Alameda was tense and there were people with full carts, some with two carts. The shelves where there had been toilet paper and sanitizer were empty. Sunday we went to Shop Rite in our neighborhood. It was crowded but less tense. Monday, a free day, it was announced the school would close indefinitely and school would be by distant learning online. On Tuesday March 17, the six county Bay Area declared a regional Shelter in Place order, closing schools and all but essential businesses. On Thursday March 19 Governor Newsom issued a statewide Stay at Home order.

It seemed like we were under siege. When I bicycled in the East Bay Shoreline Regional Park on Wednesday, the maintenance worker wasn’t sure I could be there, it was still being argued. Not until the next week was the order altered to allow outdoor exercise. Similar orders in Europe and Asia were being enforced by cops writing citations and making arrests of anyone outside their apartment for anything but essential trips.

On May 28^th twelve cases of COVID-19 were reported at Cardenas Supermercado in our neighborhood. My brother-in-law Alan Bruemmer, Kate’s brother, had Multiple Sclerosis. His MS required frequent hospital visits. He was infected and died in December, 2020. Alan’s death was the only one of two of someone I knew. An elderly neighbor Mrs. Smith lived two doors down from us. Her house was a gathering place for her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At first the family stayed away but after a couple of weeks the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren returned. Some wore masks but younger people in our town were less careful. Mrs. Smith died of covid during the summer.

A high school classmate, a gentleman with whom I had reconnected 15 years before, had gone full Q-Anon on rumors and paranoia. In our last phone conversation in November 2020 according to Bill the pandemic was a plot and a hoax and the vaccine was dangerous. I was shocked that he believed it all. I knew he was a Republican, but he had always seemed rational to me. He died of covid in August 2021 unvaccinated. Until today, March 31, 2023, Suzette, Adam and I have been uninfected. We took precautions and when vaccines were available we got vaccinated.

In the first days we wondered when things would return to normal. They never have. Early in the pandemic I heard a radio host respond to the question, “How are you?” with the answer, “Under the new normal I’m doing pretty good.” 

I’d been baking our bread for over ten years. I buy active dry yeast by the pound and it lasts a year or more. In the beginning of the pandemic my supply of dry yeast was running out. Baking at home had become a national past time and yeast and flour were hard to find. I found a 25 pound bag of flour at Shop Rite. I made a sour dough starter at home and three years later I’m still using it.

The year before the pandemic I had gotten interested in specialty coffee. In November before the pandemic I bought an espresso machine. And so in the pandemic I indulged my interest in coffee, exploring the Peerless offerings at their roastery buying from a table in the doorway and then online at Amazon. My coffee obsession reached a new level. We began doing weekly shopping trips online at Amazon. In April we went to Starbucks in San Leandro and waited 45 minutes in a long line of cars to buy our drinks at a drive-up window. It was a real treat.

In the beginning of the pandemic I thought if we could take the proper precautions we might eradicate the virus. We watched the various indexes, the Worldometer, the CDC maps, the New York Times maps, the State Data sites, the County Data Site. Reading charts like baseball statistics, trying to parse out infection rates R(t)s, deaths, infections, testing and ICU capacity. We watched the transmission rate closely, wishing it below 1.00 where maybe the virus would die out. Or a vaccine, only vaccines take years and that wasn’t going to happen soon.

At first we didn’t go anywhere unnecessarily. We stopped seeing friends. Gary, our neighbor four doors down and I began meeting for morning coffee on his porch on Tuesdays. We sat and discussed the pandemic and politics for an hour and a more. We met like that for 2 ½ years.

By May, 2020, I realized masks could make a major difference. Experts were not recommending masks. I think it was more they were in short supply and they didn’t want to start a run on masks that would worsen the shortage for health care workers. I wore a bandana over my face and slowly China was able to ramp up their masks production and we could all get masks. In June California mandated masks in indoor settings and the pandemic prevailed. I ordered 50 surgical masks from Amazon. There was no longer any hope of stopping it before it became widespread.

In June I talked to a friend in Redondo Beach who had gone inside a restaurant to eat. Restrictions were easier there and I was jealous. We hadn’t been to a restaurant for months. At first delivery had been fun and then it was boring Then we went for a drive to Inverness and went to a deli where after we ordered our food we could eat outside at a picnic table. It seemed such a special treat that day in June. I remember the first time we went to a restaurant with outdoor dining at Jack London Square. We had to have our temperature taken and wear masks except at our table. After that we returned to the restaurant scene outdoors as often as we could.

The pandemic deaths in the United States were in the thousands each day. The vaccine was rolled out with a limited supply in December, 2020, an incredible accomplishment by the scientific and medical community. The pandemic peaked in January, 2021 with over 4,000 deaths per week in California alone.

There was a scramble by people to get the vaccine. At first you had to be 75. I was 74. Then there were loopholes and cracks and people I knew spent hours on the phone were able to get in for a vaccine. By the end of February I got my vaccination and in March Suzette got hers. The worst spread had been among the elderly decreasing with age and children mostly were unscathed.

There was this sense of new freedom. By June, 2021, fewer than 100 people a week were dying and it seemed the dying were the unvaccinated. There was another surge in February of 2021 at a third of the death rate of 2020 and since then the virus has been with us, many people infected but fewer deaths. A few vaccinated people died but overall it was at a rate 50 times less than the unvaccinated. Death was no longer a strong possibility but more like the flu a remote possibility. After my vaccination I never worried much about dying of covid. And then the variants started infecting vaccinated people, but like flu, a couple of weeks of being sick for most people staying at home, not hospitalizations. Today there are antivirals that are very effective if used early.

In the first flush of enthusiasm and relief I made plane reservations for a vacation in Puerto Rico. I was feeling protected. Later we changed to Chiapas Mexico when Adam’s close friend made plans with her father to return to where they had spent a year before. And we went to Chiapas. Chiapas had experienced low infection rates at the worst of it in Mexico and the vaccine was generally available by the time we arrived in July. We were careful on the plane. Mexico was much easier than the United States. There was no political divide. Mexican society has much more social cohesion and most Mexicans were careful about protecting themselves and their neighbors. Stores and nearly everywhere else required you to put a hand up for a temperature check and wear a mask. An attendant at the door enforced the rules.

There was no worry about scofflaws or skeptics. And the rates of infection showed it. For a month in Chiapas we were aware of covid but didn’t see any infections. The locals were concerned and acted so and the covid they had they blamed on International tourists like us but there wasn’t active animosity. Leaving for the United States we had to have an antigen test within a few days of our departure. It was hard to find, the demand was very high and the availability limited, but finally at a pharmacy we were able to make an appointment and it was an easy process.

Back in the States the politics were poisoned. Areas like the coast of California and liberal regions were safer but even here compliance wasn’t universal, the possibility of non-compliance, the lack of will was obvious, unlike Mexico. In Mexico everyone paid attention. In coastal California most people did wear masks indoors and in Eastern California it seemed to be a statement of patriotic independence to ignore it. We went to Yucca Valley where many people were defiantly unmasked and many gave us the fisheye when they saw our masks.

The Omicron variant came while we were in Mexico and at home there was renewed caution with people more careful about mask wearing. The Zocalo, a favorite cafe in San Leandro, allowed people inside but only after showing proof of vaccination, washing your hands, and wearing a mask. The whole staff was masked of course.

Vaccines were approved for 12 and up in 2021 and Adam got theirs when they turned 12 in October.

I went to Iowa in November, 2021, my sister was in hospice. In Iowa people wearing masks were in the minority. The politics were that lock downs and closings limited our freedom and was bad for business. The Republicans apparently were practicing Social Darwinism. After all the worst effected by the pandemic were the elderly, the poor and people of color. It was so amazing that it was clearly a political issue for Republicans, Trump at first had been on the side of prevention and caution, but when the Populists angrily denied acts of empathy and thoughtfulness as infringing on their freedom Trump followed.

Slowly the pandemic waned, less transmission. The politics continued toxic. The Democrats won back the Presidency.

This is the new normal. Life doesn’t seem constricted. We do what we want, go to restaurants, shop, travel, and visit with friends. Some people are more cautious than others. Here in the Bay Area most people seem respectful, putting on masks when asked to. Our Unitarian Church started in person services again in March 2022. We were more conservative than most churches. There had been some intense discussions about requiring vaccinations or not. We are still required to wear masks indoors except when eating.

Hugs and closeness, not everyone is comfortable riding in the same car with other people, sharing an elevator, inviting people into their homes. One friend still won’t eat indoors with other people.

There is this feeling of unease that’s always there, mostly unconscious. It’s a constant we’ve all learned to live with. We’re never going back to what we called normal but things today are normalish. Nature has shown us our own fragility. Life is a gift.