The Holidays in Mexico City

There are so many good stories from my Mexico trip that I took with and while playing on the University of Dubuque Men's basketball team. It was the trip of my life. I also happened to play the basketball of my life against the best players in Mexico, including seven players from the Mexican National team, two of which were also on the Mexican Olympic team. I had my only career real game college dunk in Mexico, a real beauty, on the first day after arriving in Mexico City via Acapulco and Chicago on an airline called Air Mexicana. That part of the story has been told in a previous post. That post was basically about the first day of our trip including a partial summary of the basketball side of things. As I have mentioned before, my laptop was on the fritz for a while and during that time I discovered the proper order of some important events and stories. So when I restarted writing again after getting the laptop working I went back in time in my mind to my freshman year and wrote a couple important tales, which have been included in my last couple of posts. So back to Mexico now during winter break of my sophomore season. The second day of our trip in Mexico was Christmas day. We played games versus various club teams from the region almost everyday while in Mexico City and in between traveling to games we traveled around on a large luxurious tour bus with a beautiful woman as our tour guide. I believe she was an important government official, perhaps the head of tourism in Mexico City even. Its hard to remember the exact order of how everything happened in our travels from day to day and from game to game. We played a few weaker teams and actually won some games, but we played the really good team with the national team and Olympic team players on it twice. Our hotel was real nice and we stayed with and did some traveling with a womens team from Scranton, Pennsylvania. There was a Dennie's Restaurant across the street from our hotel in another hotel nearby, and that was about it for anything resembling American style food. Coach allowed us some free time to do what ever we wanted at night when we as a team made it back to the hotel at a decent hour after a day of playing and sight seeing. On Christmas night we were at the Hotel and used the chance to take a walk around. The city was like nothing I had or have ever seen. There was old beautiful Spanish architecture along with modern sky scrapers and so forth everywhere. There were people living in every store front and in every square inch of park space or where ever there was open space. The word was that the people from the surrounding mountains had been coming into the city looking for work and ended up living in what ever space they could find. There was a fairly nice large park just down the street from our hotel with thousands of people and families living in giant card board boxes. It seemed unusually organized and the area was neatly roped off from the sidewalk and street. There were markets with puppet shows and musicians and magic acts and all sorts of street entertainers and vendors. Everywhere there was a festive atmosphere. There was one stage set up with some musicians or performers, I'm not sure what to call them, all dressed up in really intricate costumes in a Christmas scene like setting and they were allowing kids or people to get on the stage and have their picture taken with them. One of my teammates in our little group had the idea of getting on stage and getting our picture taken with the performers, so we did. I think that these particular performers were from India. They did that purely East Indian side to side head movement when they were performing that I have always found so strange and hypnotic. The feeling I had at that particular time on stage with the fellas and the entertainers was one like I have never felt before. I don't know the words to describe it. It all seemed like a dream. The guys in the photo included Big B Growley, Brag Havatake, White B aka Sneaky Sig, Bad Shamron, Johny Duke, and myself. Cray Murphy and or Feldi (a JV player on the team and on the trip that I forgot about) might also have been in the photo. The photo itself changed hands between players a few times through the years. I think Big B. ended up with it; I used to see it around at his mom's house in the ICE (which happened to be a house once owned by the legendary author Kurt Vonnegut). I've been thinking about the possibility of making a documentary someday about my basketball upbringing, something akin to the legendary award winning skate board documentary "Dog Town Z-boys", and the photo from that Christmas night in Mexico would be a cornerstone photo representing the Mexico trip. There were photographers at many of our games and even in the markets ready and pushing to sell you a photo.
On one of our many outings we were taken to a major business center that had plazas, business buildings, old architecture, restaurants, etc... There were people everywhere. Some really young kids dressed in simple white clothing sang some harmonizing Mexican melodies on the sidewalk as an older gentleman, presumably their father, played the guitar. During that whole day a stark naked Indian, naked except for some rags that hung around his neck, followed us around off at a distance, usually about a block or so away. He was just letting it swing in the breeze and hang free, and he was unusually well hung, I mean really unusually, and he was quite tall. He was very dark skinned with scraggly hair down to his neck. I looked at everyone on the team to see if they were watching what was happening, and it seemed like I was the only one to take notice. Coach was looking at me funny and seemed to be watching me. I even made a remark to G - Money like "What's with old boy following us around. The guy is hung like a horse." G- money started laughing and coach and everyone looked at us like we were way out of line or something. I had a sincere straight look on my face and I didn't think it was funny. To see such a sight was disturbing yet very curious at the same time. Everyone else in our group looked away and ignored it, most wouldn't even look at me looking at them not looking at the naked Indian, even when he was beaten down in front of our eyes by a policeman with a night stick. What was the message there? What did that naked man want us to see or think? It seemed like I was the only one that was human in my reaction to that situation. I've always felt that there was something unusually significant about that experience, like it was something that I saw or was supposed to see that was such a powerful and unforgettable once in a lifetime event that it compelled me to have to write this story. I felt great compassion for all the struggling people I saw in Mexico City. During my post-Dubuque years studies at the University of Iowa while obtaining my B.A. in history I took several classes pertaining to Mexican history. They included Colloquium for History Majors: Women of Latin America, The Mexican Revolution, and a class on The Conquest. I also took two years of Spanish and several of my teachers were from Mexico and I studied the Mayans in a class called Introduction to Native American Studies. So, now, while writing this some 20 years after the trip, I know much more about the city and the history of Mexico City and of Mexico in general. The Aztec Indians ruled the majority of Mexico before the arrival and conquest by Cortez the Killer. The Aztec capitol was located in an enormous valley surrounded by mountains and was in essence a giant floating city situated in the middle of huge lake where Mexico City now stands. Cortez's men fought the Aztec's on the causeways which connected the mainland to the city. Overtime the lake was filled in and it now no longer exists. There is so much pollution in Mexico City because of the mountains that surround the city. The exhaust from automobiles and from factories in the city are trapped in the great valley unable to escape. The smog was very apparent, very visible, and the air and the sun were always hazy. During our travels in our tour bus we embarked several times up into the mountains. On one occasion we must have been on the side of a mountain because I could see for what seemed like miles of sloping hills going off into the distance. As far as I could see in one direction there were shantytowns, or actually it was one giant shantytown. There is a strange juxtaposition in this little story about the shantytown. Most of the guys on the team (all but Big. B and I) did not take to the Mexican cuisine, so our tour guide took us to a Mexican McDonald's. The interesting part was that it was very near the edge of the giant shantytown, maybe even across the street, I can't quite remember, but it was definitely close. The food at McDonald's didn't taste much like the McDonald's we were used to. They use corn oil and corn flour for cooking much more in Mexico. There were some jokes made about the possibility of horse meat in the McMexican burgers. Later that day we passed by the 1960 Olympic Stadium and heard a brief history of it. It was located in an enormous and immaculately clean acreage surrounded by a huge steel fence. I can't remember if it was a park or what. We were on a bit of a hill overlooking the grounds, which must have been many square miles in size , and off in the distance in this huge area that looked like the worlds biggest golf course (the grass was perfect and there was no garbage to be seen) we could see the Olympic stadium shining bright in the sun and looking like it was an enormous spaceship or something. It was the size of a small mountain and it was a real contrast in the foreground of the distant mountains that lay far off in the horizon. Our tour guide also took us to the central plaza in the heart of Mexico City. For some reason my teammate Goofy wanted me to try and enter the entrance area into the subway terminal, and when I did so an armed security policeman stepped in front of me and pointed his machine gun at me and waved me away. Goofy then wanted me to take a ride with him in a horse and buggy around the central plaza, so I did and he payed for it. I learned in my Mexican history studies that while they were building the underground subways preceding the Olympic games they dug down and hit the old causeways that Cortes himself and the Aztecs fought on. Hence the subways were built on the old causeways and beautiful murals depicting the beauty of the Aztecs and Mexican history and of the Spanish conquest were painted on the underground subway walls. The murals are said to in part have told the brutal history of the conquest, a fact that is not hidden but celebrated by the government as part of their unique heritage. On another one of the nights where we had some free time we went out to a nearby club. On the way, just outside our hotel, we flagged down a car full of local fellas, rapped a few minutes with them and asked them where to go, and even persuaded them to part with a few Tecate servesas, which we promptly slurped down right there in the middle of the street. The club was an upstairs joint, nothing to big or fancy. There were some attractive Mexican girls in the establishment and I even found the courage to step up and talk to one. She acted like she didn't speak English, but later I caught her talking to Zeke in perfect English and once back home I saw a whole bunch of photos with Zeke and the Mexican cutie I had picked out. Good for him, and the funny thing was Zeke wasn't even known as a ladies man. In fact in my three or four years of knowing Zeke I had never seen him have a stronger connection with a girl than he did with that girl that night in Mexico City. The Mexican basketball fans all thought that Zeke was Michael Jordan or something. Besides dance music and such the DJ in the club that night played some contemporary hip-hop like "Jump Around" by House of Pain and "Hip-hop Hurray" by Naughty by Nature. The team did a step line dance (black fraternity style of dancing) around the whole bar and everyone in the club got in line behind us and joined in. At one point I was standing up somewhere drinking a beer and out of nowhere Brute Mahone, the hick from Indiana, comes up from behind me and grabs me and plants a wet one right on my cheek and says, "You got more moves than a hundred dollar hooker. Its a pleasure to be your teammate." I think I may have started that crazy stunt when I was real drunk one night while trying to embarrass one of my oh so tough and oh so cool, too cool, teammates. The truth is I loved my teammates like brothers. There were some not so nice moments on the trip and some friction within the team. In our hotel in Mexico City Big B., White B., and I were roommates. Zeke, Lil Lamb, and G Money were across the hall. They called themselves "One, Two, and Three " which were their positions on the court. I tried to say, "Hey yeah, and I'm Four," which was my position. They didn't like that and were like "NO, no,no..." Their reaction was predictable. I think they felt threatened by the possibility of me taking their starting positions due to the way I had been playing on the trip, especially with leading both JV and Varsity in scoring and also dunking in the first game and all on the junior teams best player. About three days or so into the trip I was walking by their room or standing in the doorway and Zeke came out of the bathroom and flicked water in my face. He was like, "That's toilet water cous!" Lil Lamb chimed in as the dominate instigator, "Oh man, Zeke through toilet water on you." He kept saying that over and over. I was like OK, thats how they want to play? Big B. and White B. saw the incident and pointed out the obvious fact that they were trying to conspire a plan to bring me down. We formed our own plan which included Big B. shitting on a newspaper, White B. sliding it under the door, and me knocking on the door, and then running. The plan worked all to well, way to well, because I heard Zeke got shit on his clothes somewhere. I was in our room when all of a sudden the door comes flying off the hinges and Zeke comes charging in yelling. Surprised I stepped back and tripped on the bed while he swung on me and hit me with two glancing blows on the top of my head (I never felt a thing). I was like, "What the f--- you doing?" He really wanted to go but somehow it was avoided. Soon after that I ran into Zeke in the elevator while going down and he asked if I wanted to go right there. I should have. The thought of physically assaulting someone makes me sick for the most part, and I have always been more scared of hurting someone then of being hurt. Me and Zeke were pretty closely matched in size and strength and in everything, but we never went. That situation put an uncomfortable riff between Zeke and I forever there after. Coach said he didn't want to know what happened and we all had to pay for the door, which really sucked seeing as how I had about the least amount of money as anyone on the team. I had to borrow ten dollars from Murph in Acapulco. Back to Brute Mahone for a minute. He was one of those guys who always started some sort of drama in every situation, be it a game, a trip, a party, you name it. On this trip the drama revolved around his girlfriend who was back in Dubuque. He had been calling her non stop and was planning on borrowing money from coach for an early plane trip home. We had a big team meeting and Brute explained to the whole team that his girl friend was talking about suicide and that he needed to go back. He left to make another call, but came back a little later and much happier. He apologized and said he wasn't going home early now. He then said, "You know how you all have been trying to gang tackle everyone on the team at least once this trip, well you still haven't gotten me yet," then he swung open the door and ran out of the room like we were all going to jump up and chase him. No one even flinched a muscle and you could hear crickets chirping for a few moments before Zeke and then everyone else started laughing hysterically. Another interesting story about our stay while in Mexico City involved meeting this local fella named George who was educated in the states and spoke perfect English. He even found our hotel and called our room and asked if we wanted to go to a party. Bad Shamron and I ended up traveling out with him and he showed us around one night. He introduced us to a high class female street worker he knew well, and she went up to Shamrun and opened her coat to reveal some incredible cleavage. I told that story to the whole team and told about and demonstrated the cross eyed look and huge smile on Shamrun's face while eyeballing the street workers huge jugs. I told our friend George that I thought his lady friend was a bit too old for my liking. I think that was exactly the way George liked them and he seemed puzzled that I didn't agree.