From My Notebook in 1975: All Roads Lead To Los Angeles

Good day everybody.

The news in general is so awful that I’m ignoring it, and finding some peace and pleasure in going back into my journey notes again. It’s May in 1975, and I left you last in the beautiful town of Guanajuato, but the USA looms large on the horizon of my thoughts.

From Guanajuato I reckoned that I was three days away from Nogales and the border. There was no denying that I felt the pull of it. After almost two years on the road, I knew my curiosity and enjoyment of the passing scene was beginning to fade. I was tired and couldn’t help longing for an undemanding environment where I could hand my problems with the bike over to someone else and simply relax. Triumph had offices in Los Angeles and would be expecting me. I became more and more fixated on getting there.

From Guanajuato the road led through Leon to Guadalajara.

Monday: Breakfast in Leon. Chocolate cake and coffee. Hot day. Arrived (in Guadalajara) at lunchtime. Ernesto Renner meets me at a fish restaurant. (He must have been one of the many friends of friends. I can’t remember him now, but thank you Ernesto) He has a bus business. Tres Estrellas de Oro. Little office with electric kettle, coffee and Carnation milk. Room full of new beds and mattresses in plastic. He is much younger than I anticipated. Puts me up for the night and sends me to the Kri-Kri where I chill out to records of acid rock and the blandishments of willowy waitresses in toy aprons.

Tuesday: Culiacan-Los Mochis-Navajoa.

The big disaster. After Culiacan the jacket blows off.

For those who don’t know, the jacket was an original RAF bomber jacket worn by my girlfriend’s father, when he flew Lancasters over Germany. She gave it to me to wear, and it was priceless. I had used it throughout my journey so far. But northern Mexico was unbelievably hot and for once I couldn’t wear it. I tied it down over my luggage – and lost it.

I was devastated.

The loss sets off a strange train of thought, to do with abandoning Jo. Coldly I contemplate it as a natural consequence, weigh the feeling. Think of the jacket as a sentimental burden. The decision to stop looking for it is a protection from the pain of a prolonged parting.

Wednesday: At Los Mochis, much advertised to me, I find nothing to please. Find the sea miles away. – a strange Fellini beach – abandoned beach restaurants haunted by drunken merrymakers – a sign prohibiting litter and immorality and, near it, a vast heap of beer cans, etc. Dirty water, warm as soup.

Thursday: On to Navajoa. Prices are now sky high. Stop at motel where she has no linen. Just for use of room she won’t take less than 70 pesos. I refuse. In town at last I find the Colon – built like a prison wing, two floors, gallery, gates barred. But clean and high ceilings. The trouble with the bike has now become acute – chronic misfiring od right hand cylinder. Spend morning trying to find faul – discover the Zener is kaput. Put a hot wire from switch to coil, but no improvement. Then I find that with choke fully in it runs smoothly at 50mph. But I’ve lost my screwdriver and pliers. The heat on the roads is scorching – forearms burn – altogether I feel that events are conspiring to keep me south of the border – and I am now seething with impatience to get into the States.

On corner of the street near the hotel is a big bar where a lot of men drink draught beer at a counter. They are all well-dressed, smart. Strike up conversation with my neighbour. Seems content with life. Plenty of work, though prices are rising. Someone comes by with a device that measures machismo – two electrodes that you hold in each hand, and a dial to measure the flow of current. Not knowing what it is I take the two, rods and get shocked. My companion tucks his hands under his armpits to hold on better.

From my position at the bar I can watch, through the mirror, some men at tables near the counter. One group of four catches my attention – they are playing dominoes – and with a sense of mounting shock rising within me, as often happens with a sudden realisation of danger or excitement, I become aware that one of the men is ME. Or, simply put, he is physically very close in his hair, mustache, features, colour, etc , but his expressions and mannerisms are as close a reflection of mine as I can imagine. The effect is entrancing. He is in great good humour, joking, gesturing, smiling a lot – tending to dominate the mood of his table as I do myself when that particular confidence moves me. I studied him for a long time to see whether I could judge how I liked him, and whether others seemed to. It seemed inevitable that he would notice me but as best I could tell he never did. It’s strange now to feel that my life continues in Navajoa even though I move on.

There’s live music, the barman is very professional, there are large and small cervezas – 2.50 and 3.50 pesos. The big chunky glasses come frozen and frosted from a refrigerated cupboard. He challks the beers up on the counter in a zigzag – WWWW . The system can lead to arguments.

Friday: To Hermosillo. Spent the morning fiddling with misfiring. This part of Mexico is not of great interest. A reduced version of US affluence around. Oh, but there are some endless arid areas, and a few times off the side of the road was a fenced off area designed to become a poblaçion for resettled people – presumably from the city – unfortunately like concentration camps. Shades of Oscar Lewis haunt me again. [Google Oscar Lewis – he’s interesting.]

The bike continues to run well but only at one speed – 50mph – guzzling gas.

Saturday: To Nogales and the US border.

Mentally preparing myself for a rough time at customs. When I get there I’m surprised to find that there’s no Mexican exit post, only the great complex of US customs, multi-laned entrance like toll gates or a supermarket checkout. Buy a large, iced orange drink with my last pesos, and then dive in. The reception is the opposite of my last experience at Brownsville five years ago.

Dips his hand casually into a pannier, then says “OK” and sends me to immigration.

“What can I do for you?” asks the officer.

“You can let me into your fair country,” I reply.

“That’s good to hear,” he says. “We don’t hear that much these days. How long would you like to stay?”

“How long can I have?”

“I asked you first.”

“Well, three months should be fine.”

“OK.”

Sweet memories south of the border…

From My Notebook in 1975: On the Road to the Land of Gringos

Still in Oaxaca 1975, I was going to continue with extracts from my notebooks as I moved on through Mexico to the USA, but I find them harder to transcribe. Compared with the bare-bones existence of the Andean lands of “No Hay” Mexico seemed quite prosperous, but the prosperity was an illusion. It was created by the availability of goods from the USA which only a few Mexicans could afford.

I arrived in Oaxaca at lunchtime and found it full of Gringos.

“Find a vegetarian restaurant with rooms, called ‘Pices’, opened some years before at the prompting of US visitors.. Meet a Gringo who lives in Oaxaca and trades Indian stuff to (American) stores. He has a small eagle he offers to show me but doesn’t return.

Instead, I meet three other Gringos: A disillusioned screen writer and wife, and a highly nervous dislocated person who walks with short arthritic steps and flits disturbingly from topic to topic, anxious to communicate, fearful of boring, hard to follow. He’s a law school student, probably the victim of a breakdown. He too is planning to trade hammocks. The others are into blankets. Christ, everyone’s at it!”

The hotel had an outside shower with the water heated by a small wood-fired boiler. There was a small stack of firewood. The guest lights the fire and goes on adding wood as long he or she wants more hot water. I was taken by the simplicity of it.

“There must be things to see here but now my interest in Spanish towns is satisfied by a glance at the facades and an hour in the plaza. Church interiors disappoint, and it’s the general disposition of buildings and spaces that please, or otherwise. The Cartesian arrangement of Spanish towns is very apt for Spanish thought, echoing their ideals or wishful thinking. They would like everything to be orderly and just but are hopelessly exposed within these rigid frameworks.”

Well, that’s what I wrote at the time. I don’t know if I agree with myself now.

“On towards Mexico City. Uneventful ride. Stopped to look at small village, but less interesting close up. Went to another to get water from a tap. Took pictures of church and children.

Later followed a path uphill towards micro-ondes (short wave) transmitter to sleep away from the road. Was attended by peasant and his son as I made camp. Others on bikes had been here before me. The man had worked in California (as a bracero) and been badly treated but was evidently pleased to see Gringo visitors. Had my usual dinner, though Oaxacan chorizos were starchy and inferior.

Next morning mother and son came to visit, with tortillas. I offered tea and cheese. Rode on to Mexico City, but now one cylinder is smoking badly.”

In Mexico I was hoping to find Bruno at his girl-friend’s house, and got thoroughly soaked while looking for it. but he had left for France three days earlier. She and her friends let me stay while I found a mechanic called Cojuc, who did some work on the bike. I knew that if I could make it as far as L.A everything could be taken care of there. On a Sunday in June, I left for Guanajuato.

“Easy ride. Good roads. But beginning of valve trouble (still unknown). Begin to experiment again with plugs, under flyover bridge. Very hot. Set off expecting more rain, but country looks dry and sky is clear. The ride into G. is astonishing, because of the endless vaulted tunnel that winds round the top of the hill apparently beneath the foundations of the town to shoot up eventually into the heart of it, by the plaza.. Altogether as impressive an example of preservation and restoration I have seen – (Ouro Prêto, Salvador, Cuzco, Paita, Antigua).

Good feeling. Strange that I’ve never realised before how much more self-respect a city or town has when there’s a university. There’s a graduation party in the square. Small group playing – girl with tambourine, two guitars, drums. Stands all around the dance floor with chile achile, choklo, tacos, and ice tubs full of soft drinks. Watched a cockroach make its way unscathed among all those scuffling feet – a lesson in probabilities.”

I remember that a shiny new bus drove up and disgorged a party of high school kids from the US. The girls all wore shorts and it was the first time in probably six months that I had seen a naked leg. I found it shocking, and almost obscene. The Mexicans around me, who always covered their legs, must have seen this many times, and were unaffected. Another cultural lesson.