My Cleanest Dirty Shorts

In 1985 I moved to a fishing village on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula. I lived in an abandoned house and slept in a hammock. My first night I got a crash course in mosquitoes. However, the second night, a mosquito net lovingly in place, I swayed in the hammock, felt the trade winds touch my skin, and learned how magical sleeping with the sound of the surf sliding up the sand can be. Although I was camping in the shell of a house, I was happy.

Sometimes I had to drive to Cancun to get a tomato, or to trade a VCR player for dental work. The one tin roof market in town got beef once a week. Everyone in town knew to be at the market that day for beef. A butcher, wearing shorts and sandals, winking at house wives, stood at a table in the center of the market, and sliced off cuts of meat.

When I first arrived in the one-street village, I thought the locals were all crazy. I'd be walking around the square on a hot evening, and pause to chat with a taxi driver. In mid-sentence the town lights blinked a few times and dimmed. Without another word the man frantically ran along across the street to a restaurant and slammed the door as he entered.

I had begun to think the odd behavior a local affliction, before someone told me that the town power supply was not dependable and often the electrical current dropped to 40% of the norm. The locals had learned the hard way that the reduced current would fry refrigerator motors. Their mad dash away from me was an effort to save their refrigerator.

I have also included a few stories set in Europe. Nor could I resist writing a story about the time I was told to leave Israel. If you've never been told to get out of a country, well, you just haven't Lived. In the same chapter is a description, a memoir, of a shoe-string trip I took through Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya. The trip ended when I was jailed in Mombassa, Kenya.

I hope you enjoy the stories. KRH

Dettagli