The Caballero and the Cow (1965-1)

Ok, one last hitchhiking story.

In the middle of Plotnik's illustrious college career, Berkeley changed over from semesters to quarters, meaning Plot got a 5 month summer vacation! The next thing he knew he was in Southern Mexico, hitchhiking with two American girls, whom he had just met, dark-haired Marlene from Massachusetts and blond Kate from Ohio. The three were attempting to get from La Ventosa, a tiny beach village south of the larger town of Salina Cruz, near Tehuantepec (look at the Ithsmus, where Mexico gets skinny on the Pacific Coast), north to Villahermosa, on the Gulf of Mexico. The plan was to then take the train, which you could still do in 1965, if it didn't derail, which it did periodically, because Mexican rail workers were not allowed to strike so they'd show their displeasure from time to time by wrecking the tracks. Villahermosa was the rail junction for the train into Yucatan which stopped in the jungle at the ruins of Palenque.

You'd think it would be easy to hitchhike with two beautiful women in rural Mexico. And it was, at least at the start, where there was a relatively large town and therefore trucks and therefore truck drivers with skinny moustaches.

The first truck dropped them on the other side of Juchitan.

(This was a tiny road-crossing village where Plotnik had a week earlier bought a beautiful nylon stringed guitar from a guitar maker. Plotnik was carrying that guitar as he waited by the side of the road with his two friends.

(The guitar maker promised Plotnik he had not used green wood. But a month after Plottie got back to Berkeley, when the weather got a little cooler, the guitar split all the way up one side. Green wood.

(A month or so earlier, Plotnik had also purchased a case of 12 bottles -- glass bottles -- of horchata, a delicious rice and almond drink he had tasted in a market somewhere in Mexico City, and asked the horchata maker to MAIL THE 12 GLASS BOTTLES back home. Three months later he got a call from the post office telling him to come pick up his package and bring a mop.

(Our children wonder why, when they do stupid things, we are not completely astonished?)

A ride in a small pickup with a farmer and his family dropped Plottie and the two women somewhere in the middle of nowhere. And it was July or August and HOT HOT HOT HOT and the three gringos were now standing on a strip of steaming asphalt, at the epicenter of nothing and nothing, with one road in view, stretching off into the dry cactus on one side and dry cactus on the other, and after the little pickup pulled down a dirt road there was not one other vehicle that passed for the next three hours. Did we mention HOT?

They took turns. Plot stood on the road while the two girls rested. Then one of the girls stood out there. Then the other. Then Plot. But why bother? There were no cars, no buses, no trucks, not even a burro, nowhere to walk to and, of course, they were college students. They had Plot's canteen with water in it and that would not last for long.

Finally, from out of nowhere a huge tractor-trailer came lumbering up the road. Plot and the two women saw it and heard it for five minutes before it got there. They decided on the sure-fire option. Blonde Kate stood out on the asphalt and held out her thumb with the most winning smile possible, while Plotnik and Marlene waited in the ditch.

The truck's brakes SQUEALED! He slammed to a stop up the road and the three Americans took off running and sprinted to the truck's cab. Fortunately, Plotnik had been learning Spanish. Here's how the conversation went:

PLOT: Hello, sir. Thank you for doing us the honor of stopping. Allow me to...

TRUCKER: The girls are with you?

PLOT: Yes, yes. The two women are of good families and...

TRUCKER: Both the girls? You?

PLOT: Why yes, sir. We...

TRUCKER: I only have room for the two women.

PLOT: Ah, well I'm sure we can squeeze in and...

TRUCKER: No, I only have room for the two women. It's against the...law to take more.

(Interjection here: The LAW? The LAW? In rural Mexico in 1965 or 1865 or 2065? Are you freaking KIDDING ME?)

GIRL ONE (hopping into cab next to the driver): I'll go.

GIRL TWO (also hopping into cab, next to Girl One): I'll go too.

TRUCKER: You can ride in the back.

PLOTNIK (looking into rear trailer, spotting a cow): But...

TRUCKER: Look, Caballero. I've got to go. Do you want a ride or not?

GIRL ONE: Yes we do.

GIRL TWO: Yes we do.

PLOTNIK: Pinchi mierda.

Oh, there is so much more to this story, which doesn't really end until Isla Mujeres, but let's just say here that Plot climbed into the rear trailer, which was open to the sky, and populated by one old, skinny cow, tethered to a heavy rock. On the floor of the trailer were a lot of cow pies and other clumps of organic origin. There was hay. The truck started up and the exhaust stack spewed directly into the trailer. Plot heard the radio switch on in the cab.

For the six hour ride to Villahermosa, Plot rode under the sun, and then the sunset, and then the stars, and it was really hot and then it got really cold. Every once in a while he could hear laughter from the cab, when the wind was right, like the prisoners on Alcatraz used to smell Veal Cordon Bleu wafting from the restaurants along the Embarcadero on New Year's Eve. Also, trumpets from the Norteno music on the radio. Laughter and trumpets. The driver and the two women, Plotnik and the cow.

But a gig is a gig. And it all worked out, eventually. But first, the cockroaches in Villahermosa. Ohmigod, the cockroaches. We'll go on tomorrow.