When I was driving on the highway in Mexico, I suddenly noticed that my tire pressure warning light came on. This handy little invention saved me from changing a flat tire twice before.
But now, on the highway in the middle of nowhere–or so it seemed in my panic when I saw the warning light–I knew I had little time to get to a gas station to check the tires. I didn’t want to have to change a flat on the highway, especially since it had been miles since I saw anything resembling a shoulder where I could pull over.
Luckily, I saw a Pemex gas station a few minutes later. I had the attendant check my tires and he told me that my front driver’s side tire was low on air. Suddenly, I remembered driving into a pothole that swallowed my entire tire in Celaya. Then he pointed out a hole in the sidewall.
When you go to the tire shops in the U.S., damage to the sidewall automatically means that you have to buy a new tire. I asked the attendant if there was a tire repair shop nearby. He told me to keep going a couple of more blocks until I saw the sign that read, “Vulca.” As I pulled up, I didn’t see any new tires. I pointed to the hole in the sidewall and asked the vulcanizador if he could repair it. He nodded and immediately jacked up my car and removed the tire. He took the tire off the rim and patched the hole from the inside. He repaired my flat in about ten minutes. And he only charged me thirty pesos, which was about three dollars.
I was so grateful to have averted changing a flat tire that I tipped him twenty pesos. We were both extremely happy by the transaction. Well, I drove more than two-thousand miles on that repaired tire. I’m still driving on it! That makes me wonder about all those previous new tires I bought because I was told that sidewall damage couldn’t be repaired!
While driving through Mexico, I noticed two things about dogs. One, not many people keep dogs as pets. And two, stray dogs didn’t scare people like they do in the United States. In America, if someone sees a large, unleashed dog, they feel automatic dread and run for cover.
I don’t recall seeing a pedigreed dog even once during my last two trips to Mexico, except for my cousin who has an English sheepdog. Most of the dogs I observed on the street were large mutts that were some shade of brown. They usually stood on the curb looking at the traffic as if they were waiting for an opportunity to cross the street. These dogs looked calm and relaxed and didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. I saw more dead dogs on the highway in the U.S. than in Mexico. These Mexican dogs coexisted peacefully with the people, which surprised me. They often sleep on the streets and sidewalks, and no one bothers them.
When I was a boy, I remember laughing at one of the pushcart food venders in Mexico City because he sold hot dogs. I just never imagined any Mexican wanting to eat American hot dogs. But I laughed even more when I saw the sign on the pushcart that advertised the hot dogs as PERROS CALIENTES! A literal translation of the name for hot dogs.
In English, I never pictured a four-legged furry animal when I thought of hot dogs. But in Spanish, perros calientes did not evoke any appetizing image of one our typically American foods (As American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie, so the saying goes.). I pictured an actual dog on a hot dog bun.
Well, on this last trip to Mexico, I noticed that the venders who sold hot dogs no longer advertised them as perros calientes, but rather as hot dogs. I asked my cousin in Celaya why that was, and he told me because the name conjured up the image of actual dogs, which they didn’t want to eat. Well, in Mexico, according to my cousin, there are people who eat tacos made from dog meat. So now hot dogs are sold instead of perros calientes.
I don’t know why, but I really loved Kung Fu Panda! And I got to see it at the movie theaters three times! It got a lot of pre-release publicity because Jack Black starred in it. The early previews at the theaters didn’t exactly make the movie look all that good. Then, I saw Jack Black plugging the movie on the Jay Leno show. I laughed when Jack Black, with a serious face, announced that the movie was based on a true story. When the movie was released, my sons wanted to see it, so I took them. I really wasn’t expecting much. But I loved it! I laughed throughout the movie because it was genuinely funny. And it was about kung fu. I still love martial arts movies–dating back to my high school days when I went to the movie theaters downtown to see four martial arts movies for a dollar. Even though Kung Fu Panda was merely a cartoon, it was historically and culturally accurate in many respects. However, since it was a comedy and a cartoon, you had to suspend belief about many events, or you wouldn’t enjoy it.
Well, we saw the movie in the U.S. when it opened. Then we went to Mexico. In Celaya, my cousins Carmen and Ignacio took us to the mall, which was newer and much nicer than the malls by my house. I was surprised to see that they had a multi-screen movie theater there. My sons wanted to see a movie there. I had warned them earlier that the movie might be in Spanish only, and perhaps they might have English subtitles. I had not been to a movie theater in Mexico for about thirty years. Well, some movies were dubbed in Spanish, and some were in English with Spanish subtitles. Most of the shows sold out. We ended up seeing Kung Fu Panda. It was dubbed in Spanish with no subtitles. My sons didn’t really like watching the movie in Spanish because they didn’t understand much of it, and they didn’t remember all the details from when we saw it in English.
I enjoyed watching it in Spanish because it had been a long time since I had seen a movie in Mexico. And the translation was done very well. Of course, Jack Black was no longer play Po, the kung fu panda. It was a famous Mexican comedian whose name I no longer remember. He was very funny as Po. The audience really loved the movie and laughed at the same parts as American audiences. I guess that’s the test of universal humor. It translates well. My favorite translation was in the scene where Po enters the training room with the sparring equipment, and we see the five kung fu masters training and avoiding getting injured or killed by the machinery. Then Po ends up on this machinery, and by sheer luck and naivete, he survives. At one point, his legs are split wide open and he is about to take a shot to the groin (in a PG movie!). Po says, “My tenders!” and the audience laughed uproariously. So, in Mexico, when this scene was coming up, I wondered how they would translate it. Well, instead of saying, “My tenders!”, he says, “¡Los panditas!” Well, in Spanish this was much funnier than the English version. Los panditas translates to something like “the little pandas.” Po is referring to his future progeny: My babies! Even the children laughed at this joke.
Well, while in Celaya, I met three of my uncles from the U.S. My Uncle Manuel decided to take all the children to see a movie. There were fourteen children and twelve adults who went to the mall to see the movie. And we all piled into four compact cars! We all waited while Uncle Manuel bought the movie tickets. Guess what movie we saw. Kung Fu Panda! This time my sons wanted me to sit between them so I could translate for them. My sons enjoyed the movie a little more when I translated it for them. The movie was still funny the third time around.
Hello again. I’m finally back. Some of you may not have even noticed that I was gone for a while, but I was missed somewhat by some of my other readers–actually, only two. Two readers actually emailed me and asked me what had happened to my blog.
Well, I went to Mexico for a few weeks, and when I returned and wrote my first blog entry, my website stopped loading because of spammers. My ISP took a while to solve the problem. In reality, I think I solved the problem myself. But I’m not sure. My blog suddenly started working yesterday after I tinkered with it.
So now I’m ready to write again! I feel well rested after my road trip to Mexico and my prolonged rest from blog writing. I will write a blog entry first thing tomorrow morning!
Okay, I made the switch to this website because hackers have taken over my blog on my website at http://davidrodriguez.us. I will take a while to make the full transition, so please be patient. Thanks.
Chicago USA 