If You Need Me, I’m at the Shop
By Paul Lyons
Watching people walk through the door,
Life comes to the man in the chair,
Only there to keep his buddy company.
Better here than at home.
The news of the day is all around,
Recorded first hand,
With every customer.
A game on the set.
Two to one.
Not much time left.
Living here in San Marcos, in so many ways, is like looking back into time to the way people once lived in the United States. Sure, there are still corner stores and little shops in many places in the United States, but the strip malls and huge department stores have taken over. Here, in this outpost, there are mainly little shops. In so many ways, it is that sort of world that US presidential candidates still somehow conjure up in campaigns and somehow convince the American people actually exists in their country, but in reality is but a fading illusion.
When we were trying to find a place to rent here, I soon realized that the best way to find any available apartments was by going into a corner store in a neighborhood where we wanted to live. All of the local news goes through these stores; the guy behind the counter knows more about the neighborhood than any journalist. Sure enough, on a day when things were looking a bit desperate, I went into a little store that sold sodas, toilet paper and chips. The elderly man behind the counter scratched his head for about a minute and suggested asking the people in the brown brick house down the street. The apartment behind their house, fully furnished, with high-speed Internet and cable, needed about two days of cleaning and had a four month old science experiment going on in the fridge, but was available. Eureka!
Before this, when we were in the school uniform shop getting our kids outfitted, there was a man sitting in a chair by the door. He seemed to occupy this chair often. He had difficulty walking and perhaps collected some sort of disability. He was a nice guy, loved to talk and gave us some housing options, which I later looked into to no avail. Being in this store was surely one of his rituals and was his way of keeping up with the world. He knew everything about the town. The storeowner did not seem to mind his company and perhaps enjoyed it, as it surely must get dull working a shop alone.
I have also noticed someone else hanging out at another shop. At our favorite bakery, in the morning, is a dapper gentleman with glasses as thick as coke bottles, easily over 80 years of age, sitting in a chair by the cash register. One would hardly notice him; he has yet to say a word to me when I greet him with my obligatory buenos dias. This guy definitely blends in with the surroundings and perhaps has been there every morning for so long he is like the paint on the walls. I have a notion that he is someone’s grandfather, missing a few screws and not entirely the man he once was, who needs some care between 9 AM and 11 AM four mornings a week. They change his diaper, dress him up and set him down in this chair. Not a bad place to see the world go by even if it is a bit blurry.
One late afternoon I went out to buy some beer. I had scoped out what I though was a good place to get beer in bottles; the beer selection in most places is pretty limited. The store I went into was a place that just sold beer, wine and spirits – a liquor store. There was a guy behind the counter and is often the case, another guy hanging out in a chair nearby. His selection of items was pretty good. Look at that whisky on the top shelf – good grief. He also seemed to actually have a selection of wine. We went through his selection, which consisted of a lot of Chilean wines, which to be honest, seem to be ones that no one in Chile wants to drink so they parse them off to the poor Guatemalans. The white wines here are pretty dismal after living in California and being spoiled by good chardonnay. I asked him if he had any California wines and he said he did, pointing to a bottle of Boone’s Farm. He took the bottle off the shelf and read the back. "See here, it says product of California." His buddy in the chair also conferred that yes, that bottle of bright red wine was California wine – made of the finest grapes to a level of perfection only known in California. I tried to explain to my new acquaintances that Boone’s Farm was a wine that was sold only in gas stations – somehow my explanation did not register. What I really meant to say, in my limited Spanish, was that the wine was like gasoline, drunk mainly by winos and high school students in initiation ceremonies, but did not want to insult the shop owner. He kept reading the back of the label and kept a straight face admiring the persuasive marking copy on the back of the bottle.
So I got my Cerveza Gallo in bottles and headed home in the afternoon rain. Whether my comments on wine was of value I do not know, but it may have been the news of the day – I hear that they sell fine red wine in gasoline stations in California.
ADDENDUM:
When I first wrote this essay, I was of the impression that small town Guatemala was similar to the United States in the 1960s, but I now know that I was mistaken. In many ways it is like an earlier era – perhaps the 1940s. The reason being is that recently I received in the mail from my mother "Travels With Charley" by John Steinbeck. It is a travel log of a trip he did in a sort of camper vehicle through the United States in 1960. Like his "Log From the Sea of Cortez," "Travels With Charley" is a great read and escapist literature in a healthy sort of way. Seeing as there are no, zero, zippo bookstores in this city of 60,000, a good book in the mail is a real treat.
Our treasured and nostalgic picture of the village general store, the cracker-barrel store where an informed yeomanry gathered to express opinions and formulate the national character, is rapidly disappearing… The hamlet store, whether grocery, general hardware, clothing, cannot compete with the supermarket and chain organization.
-John Steinbeck
Travels with Charley
Lately I also have been a bit disturbed by the phrase "developing countries." It, by the use of the word "develop" connotates that conditions are getting better. Guatemala is a "developing country" by many peoples definition. I would wager that the major advances in rural Guatemala were marginal electricity and water service. This happened in the early 1980s I believe and is a very big deal. At times there are roads being built, which is significant, but there has always been road construction. Today the only real development that is remarkable is the advent of the cellphone, which is ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive. One could also throw in the Internet café, which is a thing that has popped up everywhere in "developing countries" in the last 5 years. Generally speaking though, a cellphone and an Internet café that an illiterate rural person would lives in a hut with a dirt floor has no use for, seems to me like marginal development. Guatemala is not a developing country. Technology and opportunism, primarily from the North, simply trickles over the border.
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