¿Plaques?

     ¿Plaques?

     “¿Name?”  Tshirt asked as she tapped the front license plate of the automobile sitting in the mechanic’s garage.  She was our translator.

     Yes, “plaques.”  The guys all nodded, some excitedly, as they watched us.  What were these strange Yankees doing here in their garage on the main drag in the non-tourist part of town?

      We were off on an adventure.  It was 1995, our 25^th wedding anniversary.  We went to Cancun to celebrate. 

     It was Spring break, March.  That wasn’t a good choice.  Not because the natives were restless.  The detraction came from the U.S.  in the form of college students.  College students who were there to celebrate their Spring break.  Of course there were responsible students there, but they are not the ones you notice.  You notice the ones who felt being a United States citizen in Mexico gave them license to indulge in any kind of lewd behavior spurred on by over indulgence in alcohol. 

     Far from the typical story of a corrupt gendarme collecting a bribe to keep a transgressor out of jail, we saw uniformed folks patiently trying to herd drunken youths away from committing crimes or endangering themselves.  We asked one man if this was normal behavior.

      Oh yes he said.  It’s pretty much this way from February through May.  Not many families like us here during Spring Break.  Well, we could see why.  Nobody told us.  We forgot to ask.

     We didn’t come to Mexico to see drunk American college students making fools of themselves, so we boarded the bus into the old part of town where the natives lived and shopped.  We were there for mercenary purposes, too.  A liter of bottled water cost four or five dollars at the hotel.  The very same jug in the downtown supermarket was about 75 cents.

     Even here in the local market place, we saw inebriated students.  It made us ashamed to be Americans, not a comfortable feeling for a tourist.  But Bill rose to the occasion.  He said the best way to learn about a new location was go on a quest, or have a project to complete.

     Bill had this old sixties era Dodge van.  It was a dog.  Once he took New York native Joe to Denver (from Kansas) in the van.  Early on Joe had misgivings.  Joe remarked that he could look down and see the pavement passing beneath them through the rusted holes in the floorboards.

      Bill assured him all was well.  He had what his old mechanic friend deemed necessary for a successful road trip: a log chain, jumper cables, toolbox, and a gas can.  They were prepared to handle any problem, should one arise.  Bill fully expected that a problem would not arise.  He was right.  They made the trip without incident.  Joe declined any further road trips with Bill after that. 

      Bill loaned his Dodge van to favorite students at Halloween.  They painted and decorated it appropriately for the season.  Then they could chase about town hauling their friends to parties or using it to go trick-or-treating.  They rarely cleaned the van up after their holiday.  The decoration would weather off as the van sat parked on the street or in the alley.

     The van was the object of Bill’s Cancun quest.  Kansas issues only one license plate per vehicle.  Bill decided a Mexican license plate would be fitting and proper on the front of the poor old van.  On the morning of our third day, we set out on our quest. 

     We took the bus to the far east stop in town. We dismounted and started hoofing it back west.  Staying on the main drag, we could catch a bus back to the resort if we wearied of our sojourn.

      On our leaving the airport on our first day in Cancun, we changed busses near the resort area.  Tshirt stepped up and asked the driver, in Spanish, if this bus would take us to our hotel.  The bus driver eyed her and said “Yeah.”  What a disappointment!  Everyone in the resort area spoke American English.  No chance to really use her Spanish.

      Here on our quest, many of the folks we encountered knew about as much English as we knew Spanish.  Tshirt would get her chance to try speaking Spanish for real.  As the cab driver who was drafted to be our Rocinante in our Quixotic adventure said, first gesturing toward us, then to himself, “No Spanish, no English, no problem.”

     At our first stop, we decided we needed to know how to say “license plate” in Spanish.  Tshirt tapped the front plate on the car sitting in the garage and asked the dumbfounded mechanics, “Name? What’s it called?”  The question took a while to soak in, then in a chorus, not quite coordinated, they all brightened and said “Plaques”.  “Plaques?” we echoed.  “Si, si plaques.”  We all were excited.  We had communicated with them, they with us. 

     With Tshirt’s Spanish and our gestures, we managed to get it across that we wanted to buy an old auto license plate.  Disappointment registered on the mechanics’ faces.  No plaques to be had.  We thanked them and walked on. 

     Stopping in various garages and dealerships along the way, we figured out that there would be no old license plates lying about as there were in nearly any of our garages.  Two places stood out in our adventure.  One must have been an upscale dealership.  The floor, even the pits in the garage, were tiled with pale yellow tile.  They were spic-and-span clean, too.  Any grease that hit the floor must have been quickly mopped up.

     The last place we tried turned out to be a motorcycle shop.  No, they had no plaques, not on premises.  The owner had a salvage yard where he might have a motorcycle plate, but that wouldn’t do for Bill.  However, the proprietor did have a control handle and cable that Bill needed for one of his cycles.  It too was at the salvage yard some miles away.

      If we would come back at four o’clock, he would have the handle at the shop.  We did make a special trip and arrived back at the motorcycle shop precisely at four.  When we showed up, the owner threw his hands up in the air and his face registered shock and surprise.  He never figured these Gringoes would keep that appointment.  Off he rushed.

      We waited.  It was difficult to converse with the mechanics.  They knew no English.  They weren’t as friendly and outgoing as the boss.  We walked up and down the street.  Close by an eatery had a stack of meat that looked like a giant hornet’s nest.  It was shingled around this drum which turned over a fire.  It wasn’t quite done yet, they explained when we wanted to try some of it.

    Five o’clock came.  Still no owner.  One of the boys went out and came back with a six pack of Corona.  Shoot, we should have bought it for them.  It might have loosened them up a bit.  As it was, they stayed to themselves and shared their beer.

     We had about given up on the guy ever coming back, when he did come back.  He had the motorcycle handle complete with cable, and he had a bagful of motorcycle plates, one from each Mexican state.  He had the motorcycle part right away.  It took some time to find a plate from every Mexican state.

     We already had the plate we wanted by that time, but still, what a deal.  He asked for 50 pesos or something, which he obviously thought was way overpriced.  Bill gave him a fifty and he was overjoyed.  The mechanics laughed and nudged each other.  The boss sure had put one over on the Yankee tourist.  

      When we left the motorcycle shop earlier that morning, we wandered into an older marketplace in town.  The streets were narrow and winding.  We ran across a motorcycle cop directing traffic away from a street that was temporarily blocked for some kind of work.  On a lark, Bill told him what we were looking for. 

     At first he just shook his head.  Then he brightened.  The city-run (or state-run, maybe) impound yard would have lots of plates.  He wasn’t sure they would give us one, though.  He pulled out his business card and wrote an address on the back of it.  While he was writing, we directed a few cars away from the street he was blocking.  The drivers would give us a suspicious eye and try to turn into the street.  Then they would see the cop and divert to another route.

      With the address, we flagged down the first taxi we saw.  We showed him the address on the back of the card.  No way.  He wouldn’t take us Yankees to that part of town.  Turn the card over.  The cop sent us there.  Well, okay, reluctantly, he agreed to take us.  Soon, he was in the spirit of the quest.

       His English was better than he had first let on.  He gave us a tour of the town enroute to the outskirts where the police junkyard was. The driver assured us this was a police junkyard, not a taxi junkyard.  Taxi drivers didn't get into accidents.  We laughed.

      When we got to the yard, it was fenced, gated, and locked.  Bill approached the gate.  The cab driver honked.  Finally, a guy came to the locked gate.  It took a while for Bill to make him understand what he wanted.  The gatekeeper disappeared. 

       A crew of linemen across the road watched and wondered, joked and laughed.  I yelled at them, “Crazy Yankees!” and made the circles around my ear with my forefinger in the universal symbol for insanity.  They laughed, agreed, and continued watching.  We milled around the taxi and watched the gate. 

     The gatekeeper came back to the gate, and sure enough, he had an old Mexican license plate in his hand.  He unlocked and opened the gate enough to give Bill the plate.  He started to close the gate, but Bill offered him a twenty.  He opened the gate, took the twenty, looked at it, looked at Bill, looked at us, and brightened up enough to challenge the sun.  He was thrilled.  He waved the twenty towards the linemen.  They laughed and cheered him and us.  

      On the way back to the hotel, the driver took us on another route.  He showed us the section where the doctors and the lawyers lived, where the teachers lived, when he found out we were all teachers.

       Back at the hotel, the price of the taxi ride was something ridiculous, like 5 pesos.  It seems that a taxi ride anywhere in the resort area was 10 or 20 pesos, but anywhere downtown, for the natives, was like maximum of 5 pesos.  The driver wanted to charge us the native rate.  Bill gave him a ten and I gave him a ten.  He was happy and so were we.  Later, the Goodwife read that average pay for workers was less than 5 pesos per day.  No wonder we made them happy. 

      We had met a lot of people, had seen a little of the local culture, seen very little of drunken college students, had had a good time.  With our second trip to the motorcycle shop, we had had a very adventurous day.  It would be the highlight of our Cancun trip.