Thursday, November 20, 2008

Country is Too Dang Big

Well, here I am in beautiful downtown Manteca, California, home of Dave Oliveria of Huckleberries on line fame. After contacting Dave's brother, Edward, I learned of DFO's birthday which is today. I quickly blew the whistle on him in his mega-blog.

I departed Wellton, Arizona, after a whirlwind tour of the area, the VFW, in which it appears there is a different party every night. We went to Lost Cojones, Mexico, er ... Los Algodones, Mexico, which in Spanish is "Cotton." I didn't see much cotton, but jewelry was everywhere, plus Nick-knacks of every kind. I bought a plaster of paris hand painted turtle with baby turtles crawling on it's back for Debra, the wonderful lady that lives next door. Debra is picking up my S/R's in the morning as well as feeding my cat.

Some things you can buy cheaply in Lost Cojones are: Booze. A one liter bottle of Kahlua like coffee liqour is $6 as well as a bottle of one hundred 300 Mil. Amoxicillin for the same price. One can get just about any prescription drug down here without one. A bought a very nice full size sombrero with red velvet and a lot of gold braid for $22. Leather goods are dirt cheap as well as silver jewelry. Those in the know take refrigerator magnets with them so they can tell Steel from the real thing.

Burger night at the VFW, which happens on Mondays, is unreal. Last Monday I attended with Liz & Larry Justus along with Jim & Jean Campbell. Jim can't stay away from a kitchen and yes, you guessed it, it was he that was flipping the burgers. 278 of them. In the depth of Winter, they have served as many as 425 in one night. November is still lightly attended, because many don't migrate south until after the holidays.

I made Manteca in one hop, taking around 12 hours for the trip. I left at 8:30 am Mtn. time and arrived at 7:30 Pacific time in Manteca. I'll be here through Thanksgiving, then back north where I will spend the rest of the winter contemplating those expats sipping a cool one on the patio in 85% weather, which it was while I was there.

I filed a story that should have published in the S/R Thursday, (today) from Wellton and my other story in the River Journal that will come out 12/1 before I left. See you all around the first give or take a day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am envious of your fun in the sun. It's great to get outta Dodge this time of year. Our friends, the Smalleys, from Bayview are down there for this and every winter. Seems like folks like them have the best of both worlds; Bayview in the Summer and AZ in the winter. I warned them, however, that the way things are going in Bayview, they might not recognize it when they get back home in the Spring!!!
We do love your blog, etc, you are one of those talents with verbage that I read often in hopes of absorbing some of the gift.