Southern Mexico Postings by Hound Dog

Please allow me to set the record straight on a matter of communication. Dawg used to post often on Mexico Connect, the on-line e-magazine on the subject of my experiences in Southern Mexico from Oaxaca to the Yucatan Peninsula from our home in Chiapas. I stopped posting there because I was summarily booted from those forums because of an altercation I was having with a moderator over there who, herself, has since become history for reasons unbeknownst to and of no concern to me. That is not the point, however. A member of the Mexico Connect readership just inquired as to why I no longer post information about Southern Mexico on Mexico Connect and he was informed that I often post on this forum which is true. However, my posts about Southern Mexico usually appear on The All Mexico Info Group Oracle out of Morelia because that group of forums had a section on Southern Mexico whereas this forum concentrates on the Lake Chapala area primarily. Both are great places to read expat forums but if any of you are here seeking my comments on Southern Mexico, I suggest you link to www.amigo.foroactivo.mx . Meanwhile, I will still be posting about our experiences at Lake Chapala here when we are in Ajijic and hope you will join us here for those and, normally, over there for discussions of beautiful Chiapas, Oaxaca and other areas down south.

Not that Dawg thinks he has anything to say - just responding to an inquiry.

[quote="CanuckBob"]Thanks for the reminder dawg...............

So how are things going in Southern Mexico?[/quote]

It is damp and miserable CB. We have a roaring fire in the fireplace and if I may be so presumptuous as to remind God - this is supposed to be the dry season. We´ll be back in Ajijic in a couple of weeks and a bit of sunshine would be appreciated. See to it please.

I apologize, by the way for the post advising the few who give a damn where to find those Southern Mexico anecdotes from Dawg but someone there mislead others as to where to look for them and when one only has a couple of potential fans, one must hold on to them for dear life and if I post on Mexico Connect under my wife´s name I´m dead meat as far as she´s concerned. I am such a wimp.

Thanks for the link.

Wimp? Don't think so...and you might remind her that she has posted under your name on this board. But, your writing style, is very distinctive and a dead give-a-way.

[quote="ferret"]Thanks for the link.
Wimp? Don't think so...and you might remind her that she has posted under your name on this board. But, your writing style, is very distinctive and a dead give-a-way.[/quote]

Thank you, I think, Ferret but, while I don´t want to overexpose myself with excessive yakking, your comment reminded me of something from my past.

When I was a kid growing up in South Alabama in the 1940s and 1950s, I was raised mostly by African American nannies as was the custom in that place in those times and , as would be expected of a youngster, I became quite attached to them because, well, they were my nannies. In the mid-1950s, I had a nannie named Manty Mae to whom I had become somewhat emotionally attached and Manty Mae once said to me something I have never forgotten.

She said, "Boy, I can read writing but I can´t write reading."

Well, what the hell; now, many years later I find I am living with another nannie posing as my wife who is from Paris and moved to the United States in the 1970s with, then , somewhat limited English language skills and married ole Hound Dog in Mobile in 1971 and, continues, to this day, to find herslef able to "read writing" (in English) but not to necessarity "write reading" if you get my drift. So, her prose may give away that fact even though, as a graduate student from the Sorbonne who speaks and writes English as a second language, , she remains greatly my intellectual superior even though I may sound more adept with the written word on English.

Hell, I can hardly speak English and she speaks French, English, Spanish and a bit of Tzotzil. Dawg is falling way behind.

I can easily discern who is writing. HD is often witty, sometimes outrageous, but always entertaining. Doña B. has a smooth, informative style that is always a pleasure to read; it never contains rants or off-color asides.

She said, "Boy, I can read writing but I can´t write reading."

What an incredible piece of wisdom! Manty Mae was wise beyond her years.

I happen to like the way you write. It's real...kinda like sitting at the knee of a really good story teller when we were kids. I also admire Brigitte's knowledge but yours is a little more grass roots.

BTW, having been raised in the south in the 40's and 50's...if you haven't seen the movie "The Help" then you have a real treat in store. It's exceptional and they're going to have a real hard time nominating "Best Supporting Actress" because there's at least four of them in that film alone.

Thanks for the hint on thre movie The Help, ferret. That may be hard to find in Chiapas but I´ll look for it when we return to Lakeside.

Since you were kind enough to mention that movie as a good reminiscence of growing up in the Jim Crow South of the 1940s through the 1960s, I remind you of one of the great movies about that era starring Whoopie Goldberg and Sissy Spacek and called The Long Walk Home . The movie was a very authentic look at the Montgomery bus boycott of the 1950s which I remember vividly to this day since I was raised in a small town about 40 miles from Montgomery, a place I visited often with my parents sometimes with one of my nannies in tow. Montgomery was the big city to us and a bit exotic and the big thrill for a kid was to visit a local Jewish deli that served great pastrami sanwiches on rye or pumpernickle. Talk about great exotic food not found in my home town. We would take those sandwiches over to Montgomery´s Oak Park and Manty Mae often sat us while my mother went "big city" shopping. The only way Manty Mae could legally enter that "whites only" park in those days was with white kids in tow while sitting them. Things could get a little hairy during the bus boycott and there was high tension in the air. The Long Walk Home brings back those memories and I recommend it highly.