HOW TO LEAVE SOUR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 18

HOW TO LEAVE SOUR

OR some of its guests, Rancho La Rosa turned out to be other than they had expected, and for simple and complex reasons they left sour. One of the simple reasons was creature comfort. This was only important about 15 days a year, when the weather was bad. It’s pretty hard to be desperately discomforted if the sun shines all day, as it is apt to do for the rest of the year. But even then, a cool night will sour a number of gringos who have lost the art of keeping warm, even in bed, without central heating. One lady, although advised by letter against the approach, decided to travel by bus from Los Angeles to La Rosa, via the border crossing point at Tijuana. This entailed four changes, and some walking. The first change, at San Diego, is easy. You get off again 15 miles later on the last few yards of U.S. soil at San Ysidro, and walk across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. A walking gringo, with luggage, is rare in «that region of mass automobilism, and Mexican border officials regard them suspiciously, particularly if they look poor. The lady stood in the rain (it was one of those fifteen days) and emptied her suitcases for the Mexican customs, and gave all the wrong answers to the questions of the immigration officials. They had no intention of stopping her, but she made it difficult, for them because she was conspicuous and said the wrong things. Her clearance was a matter of time, and by the end of that time she was very wet and night was falling. She took a taxi to the Tijuana bus depot, but the taxi driver took her for a sucker and drove all round the town first. The booking clerk at the bus depot listened to her in ‘uncomprehending politeness, and courteously sold her a ticket to Mexicali, which is on the same road as La Rosa, but about 90 miles past it. At Mexicali, several hours later, she was lucky to strike someone who knew English, knew La Rosa, and was willing to put her on another bus and tell the driver where to let her off. When she got down at the La Rosa gate in the middle of the night it was still raining, dark as ink, and the gate locked, She scrambled over and walked a quarter of a mile up the drive. and stumbled

from building to building till she woke someone, up. After a certain amount of splashing around hunting for keys, she was established in a br detached casita, and her kerosene heater lit., Next morning, a ' Sunday, the rain had stopped, and she got a ie to eight o'clock mass. Hoping to come back to a warm room, she locked her door and left the heater burning. Another guest, returning from an early morning walk, saw smoke pouring from the window. Afraid that the householder was suffocating while asleep, she forced the hone with a fruit knife and dragged out the penening heater. Everything inside was smothNees in soot. This was too much. When the lady

returned from church she called down strong curses on everything connected with La Rosa, and demanded a refund of her reservation deposit and immediate passage back to Los Angeles. Fortunately, the same people who had taken her to church were driving to the vicinity and were quite willing to give her a ride. Some took longer to work themselves into impossible positions, There was a man who owned an hotel in Chicago. His wife had died, he was no longer young, and he used to get qualms about the effects high hotel living was having 6n his ageing tissues. So most winters he’d drive south in his black Cadillac (never more than a year old) and endeavour to rejuvenate at La Rosa. He was partial to a particular casita which he personally equipped with a luxurious inner spring mattress, and he approved of El Profesor as a man of great wisdom who might: help him live a little longer. But one winter he arrived late in the evening, without warning, slightly high and bringing a stranger. The casita he recognised as his was occupied, the occupier already bedded down on the inner spring mattress. The hotel man blew up a storm, reducing a timid member of the housekeeping department to tears. He and his friend then left to make a night of it at a Tijuana hotel. He never came back for the mattress. We heard he died, and that the Chicago property was on the market. We got a few working members who wanted to impose their private obsessions on El Profesor’s working principles, and some who accepted La Rosa’s hospitality, but preached a new panacea each month. ("This is really advanced: shows how backward El Profesor is . . .") We could lose these glacly enough, the wrenches and heartbreaks were over honest differences of opinion, the old friends who wore out their friendship. But although these had their acute phases when life at La Rosa suddenly lost its zest, the place had a deep vitality which quickly healed gaps left by sour departures, The thing to do was work with those

who stayed.

G. leF.

Y.