‘Old Gringo Down In Mexico’

I gotta funny message from a friend I’ve made over the last few years… a fellow seagoing mariner who’s an expat retired several times over!!!

He messages me…

“Hey Chief, what do you do with a baby Pelican?”

I was taken back just a bit! Was this some kind of riddle… a joke?!? Is this Ol’ Seadog try’n to test my Salt… wants to see how much he can knock of me shoulder boards?!? I mean… What ‘DO’ you do with a baby Pelican!?!

“This ain’t no shit! A Baby Pelican flew into my office window and he’s just hang’n out!”

I reckon it’s just the kind a thing to suspect from such an ol’ Swabbie!

“Have you observed any of them nature shows about the birds that stick their neck out like a periscope and pumps its head up & down and warbles wildly flapping it’s wings like an epileptic with feathers trying to get the lady bird’s attention?  You should try it! Report back and tell me what happens!!!”

“Uh-Uh… Ain’t gonna do that!!!”

Yeah… I’ve gotten to know this Shipmate over time, though we’ve never cordially met! We have something in common… we like to reminisce of the ol’ gin mills, dens of sin, strip joints, short time alley stand-ups, and questionable no shit adventures inflated over the years through our alcohol altered egos!! Someday we’ll have to find an agreeably unruly bar full of second hand smoke and beer stench, where people are allowed to speak their minds & a few dirty words as well, and with a…

“One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...”

… toss some suds and no shitters like it ain’t nobody’s business!!!

He seems somewhat of a freelancer, a Jack of All Trades who did this for that, that for this and the other for a while... and commonly becomes bored!  He retired from the ol’ Canoe Club a Warrant after a couple of decades, became a professional Ship’s Master Mariner, then retired from that gig and moved on… ending up somewhere in Mexico!! What the hell… Everyone ends up somewhere!!!

With the honesty of an overgrown Boy Scout and the slyness of a snake, he exclaims in so many words…

“Life is like a jar of jalapeños… what you do today may burn your ass tomorrow!”

Yeah, he’s salty to the gills… and he’s got charts of memories... lots of them!!!

“So why don’t you work for the Government no more?”

“It’s all a bunch’a alphabetical soup like the ATF… Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be the name of a convenience store… not a gauddamned government agency!”

Sometimes the subject of politics comes up…

"Any sufficiently advanced government bureaucracy is about as vague as a good looking ‘Benny Boy’ in a room full of Honey-Koes!”

Yeah, he’s smart, tough, sane, been around, corrupt, and personally repellent as a rabid raccoon!!!

Every time I think of Mexico anywhere outside of the Baja Peninsula I get this idea of some vieja dama peering at images of the Virgin of Guadalupe in her coffee! Asked what he takes in his…

“Caffeine and hate… and sometimes whiskey… yeah, skip the caffeine, just whiskey!”

I imagine him living in a casa next to the beach on a winding dirt road with more hole than road leading to it!

“Well you must think I live amongst the barefoot, loincloth wearing, living in stick hut kind of place that give Australian Aborigines the willies!”

“Well, I don’t think it sounds too bad as long as the women run around butt nekkit!”

“I sure as hell can say one thing… It gets hotter than a Whore House on Dollar day around here at times!”

He traded in the hustle and bustle of the psychoanalysis and scams of the pseudo doctors, the raging feminists, race racketeers, and damn fool wars for the more erotic Mamacitas south of the border with the tequila fests and Ciasta nests of good old Mexico!! He could be living it up in Fort Lauderdale driving a Corvette in male-menopause red with awesome gadgets… but that just ain’t him!!!

“The bad thing about retirement… I must get three hundred emails a day for Viagra, or some ancient Chinese secret to make mine taller, stronger, or faster than a speeding bullet… like I need that… what the hell! So why did you retire…?!?”

“You know, I got tired of all the gauddamned babysitting! Since when did I become an expert on therapy… Like I’m a gauddamned psychotherapist now?!? All that touchy feely bullshit was driving me insane!”

“Yeah, I hear you… most of the leadership these days don’t have the knowledge or experience to run a Shriner’s Convention!”

“Yeah, I refused to become one of them passive psychotic transvestites of today’s Canoe Cabaret!”

I could tell we were on the same page! You know… we put people in charge who have barely achieved vertebras… hence the term, ‘No Backbone!’

“Yep, When I retired from as a Ships Master I had come to the realization I was working for an institution where most of the leadership should have been institutionalized… and retired here in Mexico!”

“So when do you think you’ll ever move back stateside?”

“That'll happen any day now, I suppose! Most likely, about a day after lions, tigers & cougars start eating there vegetables!”

Yeah, he’s an unsung, rode-hard-and-put-away-wet champion of sea going crusty bastards... Stubborn as twenty mules wired in parallel!!

“I probably qualify for every mental disorder in the book!  Borderline Personality Disorder, Avoidance Disorder, Relationship Disorder, Social Anxiety disorder, and Just-About-Everything Under The Sun Disorder!! Besides, most Gringos come to Mexico to retire and die… well hell, that’s not the plan but that’s what happens!! It sure beats the hell out of wasting away in that rat race of an institution up north we call the US of A, living in wretched boredom waiting to die is no way to exist!!!”

Why the hell else would he live in Mexico?!? To get the hell away from all that Political Correctness we’re so gauddamned proud of up here!!!

Yeah, He’s not real tactful in what he says and probably won’t win any popularity contests anytime soon! But he’s as entertaining and thought provoking as I’ll ever get anywhere around here!! He’s the kind of shipmate that lets it all hang out rather you agree with him or not… and that my friends is the way it ought to be!!!