NNAOPP Update
November 2015
San Miguel de
Allende, Mexico
Earlier I wrote of having dinner
with 84-year-old friend, Bob Fay, when he shared stories of friends he has come
to know while spending the last sixteen winters in San Miguel de Allende,
Mexico. I was mightily
entertained, and he assured me that his retellings represented merely the tip
of the iceberg. I told him,
"I would love to meet these guys." By the next morning Bob wrangled an invitation from Howard
and Bill, former Kansas Citians, now permanent residents in San Miguel, to stay
in their home to listen and record some of their remarkable adventures.
Below is
a snippet from the emerging story about their time with Sally Rand, the
celebrated burlesque fan dancer from the 1930's:
Anna was an elderly black lady who oversaw the operations of Bill and
Howard's 8,000 square foot Hyde Park (KC) mansion. They would explain,
"Anna ran the household, she just let us live there." On the first morning of her stay, Howard
was in the kitchen with Anna when Sally walked in totally nude. "Good morning. Got any coffee? Do you have any garlic salt?"
Anna handed her a cup of coffee and poured a dash of garlic salt in
Sally's hand, and she disappeared.
She was 70 at the time, but she had the body of a 30-year-old.
On the third day Howard encountered an irritable Anna in the
kitchen. "What's the
problem?"
"Mmm! Mmm! Mmm" she murmured, "We're sure seeing a lot
more of Miss Rand than we want to.
I have a feeling she is going to be here for some time." Sally followed the identical routine
every morning for the next five years, much to the delight of the gardener who
timed his coffee breaks accordingly.
And after the prickly start, Anna and Sally developed a deep friendship
becoming inseparable.
We arrived
at Queretaro two hours behind schedule, but Howard was gracious and waited even
though we were responsible for his being over an hour late for the fundraising
luncheon he and Bill were hosting for 70.
We drove
down a narrow, cobblestoned street surrounded by tall stone walls and entered the
handsome gate leading to Howard and Bill's one-acre estate. We walked into a courtyard packed with
well-dressed people. Howard made introductions and began working the
crowd. Liveried waiters offered margarita’s and hors d'oeuvres.
We were
seated at a table set up on the lawn and began the first of a five-course
dinner. A 10-piece Mariachi band serenaded the crowd. Howard took me
aside to comment on the piece being played, "Lost Child." One
of the trumpets played a wailing lament from somewhere distant in the house.
A second answered boldly from the gardens. This continued as the
trumpeters moved about, finally coming together, all to the accompaniment of
four violins and four guitars.
Bob
introduced me to our dining companions, and several said, “Oh you’re, the Nude
Nuns guy”, and they would recite a portion of the book. Bob told them I
had come to write about Howard's stories, and I was quickly invited to Chicago
to speak to a ladies' book club.
Their home is one part art gallery, two parts
Architectural Digest gracious living, and three parts world-class botanical
gardens, all enclosed in immaculate white adobe, tile-capped walls 9' high. There are over 100 different
species of trees in the garden. A
museum quality display of American Indian and pre-Columbian artifacts fills the
entryway. The living room is long and narrow with art covering the interior
wall. Even though my art appreciation capabilities are non-existent, I did note
the presence of a Thomas Hart Benton. The exterior wall features a large
fireplace bracketed by glass doors leading to a veranda and on to the gardens.
Bill's jewelry studio occupies one corner of the hacienda with a separate
entrance off the front courtyard.
I was most impressed by the bronze-framed and beveled glass doors and
windows. It was like looking
through a chandelier.
We
rested after lunch in preparation for a 6:30 dinner party. Our guests arrived, both attractive 50ish
women, neither of whom knew the other. The first just moved to San Miguel from
Palm Beach having just sold her orchid growing business. She knew all of
the characters in the book, The Orchid Thief, and proclaimed that she,
too, was an orchid thief. She told of a trip to the Peruvian Amazon basin
searching for orchids. Her companion, the chief botanist for the St.
Louis botanical garden, was arrested, but she escaped. The also spoke of a
trip to Burma in search of exotic orchids. She is tall and slender and told of once losing to Chris Evert
in a national level junior tennis tournament. She is an heiress of a family whose name you'd recognize,
and she despises Chilangos, the nouveau-riche Mexicans who apparently treat
everyone shabbily.
The
second lady hailed from Toronto’s aristocracy and was uncommonly gracious. She
seemed genuinely interested in my book and the stories that brought me to
Howard and Bill’s. We learned that her godfather was Edward Brooke, the
late senator from Massachusetts, and her cousin is Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I told them that I know the owner of
the now defunct Prairie Village Standard station. At one point in the conversation, I mentioned ‘my wife’, and
she seemed mildly disappointed saying, “Oh! I thought that you and Bob were
partners.”
Howard kept us on a busy schedule throughout our seven-day stay
attending cocktail parties, lengthy comidas (lunches), dinners, impromptu
gatherings and house calls in and around San Miguel. We made side trips to nearby Queretaro and Celaya, traveling
by car and bus. The premo bus from Queretaro to San Miguel offered luxurious
accommodations, think first class on Lufthansa, for the modest sum of 115 pesos
($7 U.S.). My expectations
upon arriving in central Mexico had sadly and erroneously been formed from
exposure to border towns. Open
eyes quickly dispelled these misconceptions. San Miguel and Queretaro are beautiful and prosperous
cities.
Our visit was timed to coincide
with the Dias de la Muertas festival.
I'll readily concede that the Mexicans do a superior job of honoring
their dead. On Sunday,
November 1, deceased children are honored. We strolled past several blocks of street vendors en route
to the cemetery. They offer
everything needed to create shrines and decorate tombs for the dead. They also sell tasty treats, my
favorite being long sugared donuts.
The cemetery was packed wall-to-wall with celebrants. Men were scraping and repainting the
white gravestones. Children played
nearby, even sitting on the tombs.
Artistic shrines were created from the petals of yellow magnolias,
colored sand, and photos and personal items of the dead. Mondays are even more crowded when
adults are honored.
The dominant architectural
feature of San Miguel is the Parroquia, located in the center of a 64-square
block section of town dating back to 1520. It towers over the Jardin (Garden), the largest of the
town's plazas ringed with laurel trees manicured in the shape of giant drums.
Seventeenth, and eighteenth century haciendas border the square. They were once the homes of the wealthy
owners of the silver mines in nearby Guanajuato. Most, but not all, of the grand haciendas are repurposed as
hotels, restaurants, museums, government buildings, and retail shops. They are
typically two-story edifices built around a large courtyard. Entry is gained through a wooden or
metal gate sufficiently large for carriages, and each stone threshold reveals
the wear of centuries of carriage traffic. One can almost imagine the grand
lifestyles enjoyed by their 17th century inhabitants.
San
Miguel de Allende was recently designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Situated at 7,200 feet, it is known for
its moderate temperatures, flowers blooming year round, steep cobblestone
streets, and 16th and 17th century colonial architecture. There are no stop signs, stoplights,
fast food restaurants, or evidence of use of motorcycle helmets. There is a large expat community
estimated at 5,000 full time and another 5,000 seasonal residents. The restaurants, shops, parks, and
plazas bustle with activity. A car
is unnecessary. Most destinations
are in easy walking distance, cabs are readily available, and first class
inter-city buses are easy to navigate.
In the evenings, party-goers
packed the Jardin and the surrounding areas. On Sunday morning we watched teams of artists build shrines
around the square. The two adjacent cathedrals on the square held mass before a
full house. At night people dress
in black and paint their faces in varying interpretations of what the dead
might resemble. This usually
involves a white base with the mouth outlined in black and extended with
stitches like the Frankenstein monster.
Everyone was friendly and festive.
Hank's New Orleans Oyster House and Bar, just off the Jardin, is one of
the most popular bars in town, and they were showing the Royals / Mets
game. Go Royals!
One evening Howard and Bill hosted a cocktail party for a dozen
people, and everyone gravitated to the veranda. Abell, the butler, expertly served drinks and hors d'oeuvres,
an interesting assortment of guests chatted, and all was convivial. Howard called for everyone's attention
and said, "You may not realize it, but we have a famous author in our
midst." I thought to myself,
"Cool. Who?" Then he held up a copy of Nude Nuns
and Other Peculiar People and continued, "It is customary that we have
the author come forward and read the last page of his book. Chuck." I was caught unaware, but I was able to stumble through the
story about the Nude Nuns in the hot tub, and I appreciated Howard's kind
setup. He would repeat the stunt
on two more occasions with different audiences.
We met Hugh Carpenter for dinner
at The Restaurant . He is a friend
of Howard and Bill's, a frequent visitor to San Miguel, a wine and food critic
from Napa, CA, the author of several cook books, and a nice guy. After being introduced, he said,
"Oh, so you're Howard's biographer?"
I noticed that his publisher was
Andrews McMeel in Kansas City, and I shared the story of receiving a speedy rejection
letter from that fine firm and being told, "We don't accept book
submissions from people like you."
He explained the fickleness of dealings with publishers, "I've had books that did well and
sold over 200,000 copies, and I've had some that were bombs, barely selling
100,000. By the way, how many have
you sold?" I mumbled into my
hand with a barely audible, "closing in on 1,500."
*****
Howard, 80, is the scion of a
pioneer KC family, an art collector, former college administrator, the
headmaster of a private school, a horseman still riding 2-3 hours daily, and a
hands-on philanthropist. He is funny and uncommonly irreverent, and he gets
away with it. He will say or do
something outrageous, and the recipient will say something like, "Oh,
Howard! You're such a
pill." Anyone else would be
clubbed to death like a baby seal.
Bill, 72, is the son of a barber growing up in Mexico, MO (later
creating confusion when in the process of becoming a Mexican citizen), a decorated
combat Vietnam War veteran, a one-time escort to Imelda Marcos, and now a
celebrated jewelry designer. He is
also a calming influence on Howard.
Howard, Bill, Bob, and I shared
three formal story-telling sessions, each lasting 3-5 hours. As Bob foretold, the Sally Rand tale,
was but one layer of the onion.
Once home, I wrote feverishly trying to get as much on paper as possible
while still fresh and ended up with 33 pages of material. The Howard and Bill and Sally story is
still a work in progress, but it will definitely find a prominent place in Book
II.
I'm still chasing a few other
stories, but my goal is to self-publish Book II in the next few months. I am confident that dozens await.
*****
Being run ragged by an 80 and
84-year-old this past week has given me an entirely new perspective on
aging. A few years ago, a
95-year-old acquaintance told me, "Chuck, if you've got anything that
needs doing, best get it done before 80." I somehow let that self-limiting notion settle in my
impressionable psyche. Time spent
with Howard and Bob has proven to be the perfect antidote.
Quite a few sales trickled in
during the trip to San Miguel.
People who said, "I'll go online and buy your book," did. On a totally different note, Lucy and I
had articles published in the November issue of 'Mission Hills Living
Magazine.' I'm sure father /
daughter articles have appeared before in a single publication, but it can't be
that commonplace. Go Lucy! She is far the superior scrivener. I'm now gaining confidence that I might
some day earn literally tens of dollars from this writing gig. I'm not exaggerating! At the very
least, I'm meeting some interesting people.
And that is what passes for news
from here.
Chuck
p.s. If you have any interest in additional San Miguel tidbits,
read on:
One of the many interesting
people we met was Mary Calderoni, a strikingly pretty artist from a small town
in Texas. She once earned her
living whipping cigarettes from peoples' mouths, ala Lash LaRue. She offered to demonstrate, but I
declined.
The highways to Queretaro and
Celaya follow valleys bracketed by distant mountain ranges. The natural terrain features scrub
trees, grasses, and cactus of varying kinds. There are large swaths of land reminiscent of U.S. corporate
farms lying in stark contrast to smaller cornfields still harvested manually
with hand-stacked cornstalks dotting the fields. Ancient stone fences border many of the properties,
especially the vineyards. It's not
England-like tidy, but I found the countryside to be surprisingly pleasing.
Queretaro is a large, modern
city, 1.5 million, founded in 1530.
It is growing rapidly, presumably as the spillover for commerce from the
overwhelmingly large Mexico City, population 25-30 million. The dominant architectural feature is
an aqueduct built in 1738 that still brings water from the nearby mountains to
the central city. The parks and
plaza are beautiful, clean, and busy.
The cathedrals compare favorably to anything one might see in
Italy.
The road system is not radically
different from the U.S. with two-lane and four-lane highways. The two-lanes
become four when the slower traffic moves onto the shoulder. This forms a 'sort of' passing lane in
the middle. It was a bit
disconcerting at first, but I eventually calmed down. One must die of something. The biggest surprise was the ubiquity of speed bumps. Hitting one of these treasures at 40
mph would launch a vehicle skyward and destroy every working part. Accordingly, people slow down, but then
speed up quickly. It's not quite
as terrifying as riding in a car in China, but it's close.
The roads in the colonial
district of San Miguel are extremely narrow with room for one car only, having
been designed for burros. There are wider streets that allow two small cars to
pass, only if one stops, and the other inches past. It's absolutely amazing that cars retain their side view
mirrors. The major thoroughfares
are paved with flat stones, offering a smoother ride, and easily accommodate
trucks, buses, and the heavy traffic for the city of 150,000.
Houses require neither heating
nor cooling systems. Fireplaces
are used infrequently in December and January.
While traveling back to Queretaro
to catch our flight, we encountered two disheveled young guys standing in the
middle of a busy, high-speed two-lane highway at the intersection of the KC
Southern rail line. They held up
signs saying, "Need money to get to U.S." Howard speculated that they were most likely from Central
America and would soon be hopping a northbound train, assuming they don't first
get squished by an 18-wheeler.
