Old Friends

Buen dia. It is a wonderful breezy day here and we are hoping for a good storm. If you entered the 'Big Rain' Contest, I can report, we have not had it. However, we had a little chipichipi, which is a light rain, on both Wednesday and Thursday, late in the evening. We may have received around fifty raindrops at our house. It is the start of something big and that is what we are waiting for. Not to minimize the chipichipi, but the contest is about the big stuff.

Today is the twenty fourth, the official day the rains begin in the state of Sonora. It is known as Dia de San Juan Bautista.
Below is a photo of last night's brilliant sunset. When the horizon starts to get cloudy, the sunsets are remarkable.

We woke to a cool and cloudy morning. I am still going out early in the mornings. Day is breaking a little later, around four forty-five and I am usually out on the road by five. There's a place I like to go. The street is heavily cobblestoned and hard on new old bike so I usually make it part of my walking route. Two old friends. One on one side of the cobbles and one on the other side. They are like bookends that have been there for over a hundred years, separated only by a narrow cobblestone street.

Looking into the front door of Number 23, I can see the old vigas, the wood beams that are still remaining, varro blanco in horizontal patterns between the rotting wood.

Old iron scroll work and ladrillos, unfired bricks, still cover and outline the open windows.

A large overgrown yard backs up to the casa where the ladrillos have caved in after years of exposure to the elements and graffiti has covered what is intact.

Across the street, the friend sits still and quiet.

On the outside wall, triangles offer small glimpses into the casa and looking inside the wood framed window, there is evidence of this being a fine casa at one time. Lovely arched doorways lead from room to room and while the vigas have since fallen or rotted, their square openings can still be seen.



It is surrounded by crumbling walls. Its jardin, or garden, is filled with tall palms and mesquite trees and flowering bouganvillea.

Back inside, a newer brick wall was erected at some time.

When I stand near each of the casas I can feel the old energy, and I have my own story. Maybe these two little casas were once part of the the large hacienda next door. I think maybe ranch casa, like ours which was once a ranch house for the old tequila factory.

Two sisters and their large families. Children playing together in the cobblestone street, chasing dogs and chickens, tossing rocks and cans. The smell of wood smoke coming from the old ladrillo asador, the cooking grill, in the back yard of twenty-three. Young girls grinding corn and chopping onions, old grandmothers, in flowered aprons, frying tortillas on a comal, the griddle. Fathers and grandfathers coming home from working on the hacienda, training horses, feeding livestock, gathering water from the main well at the alameda.

Can you see it?

I love this walk, love standing in the street beween the two casas, letting my imagination go. Alamos is old, and it is full of stories and secrets. It just opens itself to imagination.

I still have time for a little siesta and maybe a nice dream about those two casas and what it might have been like long ago.

So, que le vaya bien, linda lou