A Coupla Conversations

So I sez to da wife, I sez....

There is a homeless woman who begs outside the hotel where we stayed.  According to ROWD she's been there for at least the past three years (since he's been going to Cajamarca).

She is very old, filthy, with few teeth and shoeless.  One morning she approached me and I had to say I had no money (which was true - all I had was a cigarette and a lighter on me).

Rather - I tried to say in Spanish, "I'm sorry but I have no money."

But what I think I said was, "I'm sorry but I don't like money."

She laughed and walked away.

At breakfast I told this to ROWD.  He said, "I gave her 50 soles once (about 35 cents) and now she won't leave me alone." 
"ROWD, she's homeless.  This morning around six I was leaning out my window and I saw her peeing in the gutter."
"You know why she doesn't wear shoes?  Makes her look more pitiful.  She can afford shoes!  I could GIVE her shoes and she wouldn't wear them."

 ..............


During another breakfast:
ROWD:  "I'm glad you're here, it's nice to have company and you get to see the company and the mine."
"I've enjoyed it."
"Makes me think about when you were little.  When I would yell at you or punish you, you'd just cry cry cry."
"I guess I didn't want to disappoint my father."
"You were so SENSITIVE.  It was just AWFUL."
"I'm still sensitive, I know that.  I try to be aware of it and not take things too personally - but my friends don't mind and I think it makes me more empathetic than most.  Folks that have a problem with it, I try to avoid."
"But now you're grown up and I never expected you to turn out to be the woman you are now.  You are strong and confident and you've travelled the world."
"What do you mean?  How did you expect me to 'turn out'?"
"Just a housewife like your mom."

Family, the Official Ones, and a Bit of Baseball

My Mom gave me a gift certificate for Ancestry.com.  I've been looking up friends' ancestry left and right, and ordering all kinds a cool copies of records for folks.

Kendall is from Ireland (did the red hair and name give it away?); Chippy is Old-School Brit; Marie is Czechoslavakian.... and Me?  

I am - wait for it - Bohemian.  Bohemian!  Does this shock anyone?  No, no it does not.  I am so thrilled I can dismiss any responsibility for my actions to: Dude, I am a BOHEMIAN.  I have no modern-day morality.  Now if I can work in paganism I AM GOLDEN.

That said, my father's family is a different story.  My Dad never speaks of his father, and as well he wouldn't.  My grandfather was a cruel, abusive drunk who beat his wife and eventually his kids.

I met him once when I was little.  He gave me a fifty-cent piece. 

When off from working the railroad, he played minor league baseball, a catcher.  He never made it to The Show.  Not because of lack of talent but because he couldn't stay sober.  And that's saying something for back in The Day, when no one cared if you were a sot.  Often he was so drunk during games he could barely get out of the crouch - but in the heat of the game, no one got past him at home plate, no pop up was missed.  He was hands down one of the best minor league players in Texas.  

I wonder who he would have been, had he been able to put down the bottle.

If anyone, maybe a man who did not beat his son, my father.