Another of Eric’s letters to a son-in-law, this one to Bob Bernhardt. In 1993 Pro Esteros was 5 years old and Laura and Patricia Martinez (sisters) were in charge and doing a wonderful job. We had an annual meeting in Ensenada and they got better as the years went on. This one I remember in snatches – the really elegant Colonial Center on the main street through the city, the winery – a grand old building with great atmosphere and not-great wine, and much of the program. But not Nocy Karkour. I just googled him and he is very much alive and active, and makes nifty music, but he doesn’t fit with Eric’s description. But then, Eric always embroidered his stories, and often got carried away by his own rhetoric. He would start with a kernel of reality, then let his imagination and love of words take over. Mostly his audience enjoyed it, but if it was my story (which was often the case) I was often a silent critic, correcting his exaggerations in my head as he embellished or eliminated, or whatever. And a shared event would be utterly different for me from his re-creation. I used to get very exasperated; now, of course, I miss it.
June 29, 1993
Dear Bob,
Happy belated Birthday greetings! I thought until I used Barbara’s wits that they would be “belated” up till September or beyond. But I am informed that you will be arriving in Rochester around the 29th of the month of July, so I guess I’m early. (If you work out that reasoning, I’ll incorporate it into a computer program, which is the way in which we deal with all matters, that used to require thought, these days.) Having gotten off on what I deem is a passably light-fingered note – for you, the Prince of Hilarity (among other distinctions, to be sure) – I shall do my best to continue in that vein, though without great confidence.
We, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I, have just about gotten back from the annual PRO ESTEROS General Meeting, held this year in Ensenada; and thereby hangs a spate of loose-limbed impressions it is my pleasure to share with you. To begin with, I must recount the culture shock entailed by crossing from the land of the free to the land of only the brave. If it wasn’t clear theretofore, the slightest immersion in the physically (if not spiritually) toxic waste to our south explains why hordes lined up next to the ineffectual fence separating Tijuana from Imperial Beach, waiting for a break in the border patrols to dash madly across the Tijuana estuary, risking rattlesnake bite and highway creaming, to get at the Yankee dollar. So help me God, whole families were lined up, at one o’clock in the afternoon, along the north side of the Mexican excuse for a paved road that follows that divide for some three or four miles, until it cuts south. There they were, men women and children, with all of their possessions, being organized by innumerable coyotes for a leisurely stroll through the sewerage of the Great Muck Swamp (largely created by their compatriots) to the nearest freeway. An Uzi could have taken them out in a single burst – which I am morally certain our border forces have contemplated. The theory here must be that there is probabilistic safety in numbers; as with AIDS, only a certain percentage will fall.
I had scarcely gotten over shaking my head over that spectacle when down the coast we started, hugging the ocean, because Barbara reasonably wanted to avoid the three extortionate tolls exacted on the “super highway” between Tijuana and Ensenada. Now I suppose that one cannot make to much of the condition of both the “super highway” and the “libre” route that parallels it (although one could give it a shot). What with the condition of the inner city streets of Los Angeles County these days, the Mexicans have lost whatever advantage they had over us in potholes and other road hazards. The only thing to observe is, you wonder what you are paying thru the nose for on the “super highway”.
But what deserves commentary is the manic depression induced by the ambience. When I was a boy, my mother and my grandmother occasionally used to make me visit relatives in Hoboken, New Jersey. It is one of the saddest, gloomiest memories of my (gratefully) lost youth. Now I’m not claiming that these two eyesores of contemporary civilization are precisely comparable, but they have a close atmospheric affinity. If Hoboken is (or at least was) a cesspool of industry, the coastal stretch in question is one of tourist taste. If we didn’t have the word “kitsch” we’d have to invent to do justice to the vulgarity, the gimcrackery of commerce along that unbroken line. Post-modernism has stylistic integrity compared to the eclecticism that meets the eye for just about one hundred kilometers. Moorish, classical, fantasyland, biedermeier, the Taj Mahal – you name it; most reaching a precarious twenty stories into the air, and so jerry-built that they look like they will melt in the gurua (that’s a word I picked up in Lima, which names the foggy miasma that hangs over the coast of Peru from June til September, all day long; here, blessedly, it usually rolls out to sea by late afternoon) that aids and abets, not only the disintegration of all architecture, but also the sinking of the spirit. But I have not yet caught the essence of the style. I am closer to the mark when I point out that some structures are made to look like tassels, or ice cream cones, and that their colors – when they have not yet run – induce nausea.
Of course we all know that Mexico is capable of exerting great charm – down around Oaxaca, or maybe Guadalajara (let’s skip Mexico City). Perhaps that is a function of the absolute poverty of the unspoiled countryside. Relative prosperity is, I suspect, the curse of this scene. Here coke bottles, beer cans, kleenex. toilet paper (well, of a sort), gum wrappers, cigar and cigarette butts (down south one doesn’t waste a butt), waste oil, and spit, all ground up into an abrasive muck particularly hard on rubber soles, and then liberally strewed with human and canine feces, cover the everywhere domesticated ground out of which all of these pretentious piles of tarot cards rise, just like the excrescences they are. But of course, it’s only relative prosperity. What I am describing is for the carriage trade, “wealthy” gringos; on the left side of the road, clinging to to rising ground, are the lean-to hovels of those who service these tourist enclaves. Noteworthily, although three out of four of the vehicles with which one shares the course, and US licensed, you don’t see any Mercedes or Porches on the road, and only an occasional Cadillac. What you see from the States are six-pac motor homes or pick-ups. This is a resort for Teamsters, postal workers, bikers, and Social Security retirees. Which also enhances the ambience, for I leave to your imagination the garish marts of trade scattered among the high-rises to which I have been trying vainly to do justice. – So I’m a snob!
Anyway, in the slough of despond, we eventually arrive in Ensenada; and with that the scene radically changes. Not because Ensenada is any prettier, less vulgar, more scenic – for the most part, it ain’t. Things improved, dramatically, once the program planned by our Mexican chapter leadership, Laura and Patricia Martinez-Rios, took hold. They put on a day of activities which set the standard for any future events of this kind. Indeed, we’ve all decided that hereafter we must regularly hold our general meetings in Ensenada under their management It began with an afternoon of activities in the vast and gorgeous central rotunda of an historic “casino” which has long since been taken over by the municipality and turned into a community center. This was built back in the thirties when gambling was legal in Mexico, and to Las Vegas-like specifications. That is to say, no expense was spared to make it grand and lavish. It is not to say that the bad taste for which Las Vegas is noted consumed the ample capital obviously available. On the contrary, this was designed on the model of a Spanish grandee’s palatial hacienda, rich in gorgeous paneling, intricate tile-work, vivid murals, splendiferous chandeliers, vaulted wooden inlaid ceilings – all fit for a state assembly. The surrounding gardens vie with the best England has to offer, and are maintained to that standard by the city.
In such an atmosphere almost any program would have looked good. But in point of fact, Laura and Patricia’s agenda would have stimulated in any venue. We had a fascinating lecture on the history of Baja California, with emphasis on Ensenada; a great talk on wetlands research by Eduardo Palacios, our Mexican biological star; a set of songs by a professor of the university and her accompanist setting some really clever environmental lyrics to familiar Mexican music, and so professionally performed that none of us could believe that they were both academicians, not stars of the pop world; and the afternoon ended with adjournment to the bar (a phenomenon in its own right, relic of the days when the rotunda was the main gaming-room, for roulette), where we were treated to a buffet worthy of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Then, for that evening, they had arranged a benefit concert by “NOCY y su Grupo”. The location was the city-centered warehouse of a venerable Ensenada winery, replete with moldy oak casks stacked high along its long walls, and redolent of fermenting grapes, with an earthenware floor and a cavernous wooden beamed vault above – as wonderful a site for a strident combo as one could possibly conceive; especially when I add that the concert was accompanied throughout by wine tasting, with pieces of cheese and hunks of sourdough bread, at huge deal tables by the entrance, back to which you were encouraged to return for refills as often as you pleased. I don’t recommend the wine; but after a glass or two, who cares.
I don’t know whether Nocy Karkour has come to your attention. But let me tell you, he ought to. This guy is a guitarist of legendary accomplishment. I don’t think I have ever been so impressed by the instrument before. Patently a classical guitarist, who to my utterly innocent ear was worthy of mention along with Segovia, the emphasis in his performance was on jazz and flamenco, of either of which he was equally the master. He was backed up by a dazzling drummer, and another guitarist. And thereby hung, for me, a puzzle. Let me first say that the whole affair was amplified to latter-day standards; you couldn’t hear your neighbor shout. Now Nocy affected what I would call, probably in my ignorance, a classical guitar – not one of those long necked Elvis Presley-like things, with the funny kidney-shaped sounding chamber. That’s what his back-up used; and it was of course wired, like they usually are. But Nocy, who in the course of the evening roamed up and down the aisles deafening us one by one, wasn’t wired at all. And yet, let me tell you his sound buried all the competition. I couldn’t figure it out, until he turned as he went by me and I saw this enormous belt over his back, with a sizable black box attached – which I later discovered was a transmitter which sends his sound to the multi-thousand dollar amplifiers, wireless.
He was sweating like the proverbial pig. But not only under the weight of that load. This guy’s virtuosity, his sheer dexterity, was to me awesome; and he kept it up for a solid two hours. I was dazzled by the play of those fingers. I thought to myself, “Gosh, this guy ought to be playing before fifty thousand screaming fans in Dodger Stadium, not down here in the sticks in front of a mere hundred geriatrics like most of us are.” What I learned was, yes, he commands staggering fees, which of course PRO ESTEROS was in no financial condition to provide; but out of social conscience, and sympathy with the cause of the Mexican chapter, he and his combo came down from LA at his own expense for a mere six hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, after Barbara and I left from sheer exhaustion, they put on a second show which lasted to public dancing by his now besotted audience, in bachannal, until the late hours of the next morning. And he and the members of his combo bought PRO ESTEROS T-shirts! This was a coup by Laura and Patricia of such monumental proportions that we feel the Board of Directors ought to resign and turn the whole endeavor over to them.
I’ve got to describe Nocy: He’s a Frenchman, but looks more like the a Creature from the Dark Lagoon. He’s not black, but swarthy, and ugly, enough to give one apprehension upon encounter in a dark place. He has lank greasy-looking hair, that straggles down around his face like lichen, and he’s built like, if not a linebacker, a middleweight wrestler. Mephistofilean is not quite the right adjective, rather “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” comes closer. Yet once he opens his mouth, the entire apparition dissolves in a sophistication and courtliness that bespeaks advanced degrees from the Sorbonne. His agent, who worked the audience like a Renaissance courtier, is a handsome black, so gracious that you shrink in embarrassment at your own clumsy naivete when you presume to put him questions. Nocy’s wife and daughter, who were in attendance, could have passed for a queen and princess of the Antibes.
In short, it was one of those experiences you can’t believe even after living thru them. I submit that the meager US contingent that deigned to put in an appearance were equally stunned, and I’ll bet once the word gets round next year will produce a flood of re-considerations by the no-shows. We made headlines in the local papers next day.
Well, that’s about as much as I’m prepared to share with you this time around. As a matter of fact, you will correctly conclude that I have reached the bottom of my provincial barrel. We don’t live in the fast Bernhardt lane, and wait rather for you to regale us with fascinating anecdotes about the hoi poloi, and the luminaries of your circuit. But you know we love living in your aura, and I fear I am insufferable to my associates with my “son-in-law, the conductor” gambits. Have a fabulous summer, see and do it all – but remember you are ever for us, the same old Bob!
Lovingly,