The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
I spent every 4th of July of my childhood with cousins in my grandmother’s front yard (or on the roof of her chicken house) watching fireworks that were shot off from the county fairgrounds a few fields away.
Anyone from the Midwest old enough to have grandchildren has a black-and-white photo, tucked away in a shoe box on the top shelf of a closest, of a dozen little kids wearing pointed party hats sitting on the front steps of what could be the American Gothic house.
Some of my most vivid memories of Mexico will come from the people I see along the streets. People whose names I don’t know and who I have only fleeting contact with.
And, suddenly, I heard music. A cadence of drums and horns and a rhythmic clomping that I couldn’t identify.
I reread some of my old columns this week and I found myself wondering where I was when I wrote them.
The pickup truck pulled out from Oxxo. It was an older model with a single bench seat and a paint job that might have been blue in years past, but was now as grey a midwestern winter sky.
This week was two months to the day from when I’ll be leaving Mexico and heading back to the Midwest.
