I hunted up another native market and had another good time. Two or three blocks of sidewalk have been partly boxed in with old corrugated metal roofing and partly left open to walk along. Hot tamales, fruits of all kinds, women cooking rather dirty looking meats and foods over rusted, greasy home made charcoal burners. I saw sheep heads with the wool on at one place and stood around to learn what disposition of them was being made, but no customers came along.
We had been warned to drink no water or milk and to eat nothing like lettuce or strawberries, in fact to eat nothing that does not have a peeling on it. Anything out of a corked bottle is all right.
INSIDER TOUR OF MEXICO CITY
To The Graphic,
Greencastle, Ind.
In Mexico City, we thought our string of rare good fortune had at last run out. But no. On Monday morning the manager of one of those heartwarming two corporations called to say he had just returned to town, and that a car and driver were at our disposal day and night for the one-week period of our stay.
That was the third time I had heard the combination "day and night" inserted in the conversation. It made me wonder whether some of my predecessors—old buzzards in their late 30s like me— had come down and vainly attempted to rejuvenate their youth with a pop gun burst of night life activity, or whether it was just a Latin American way of expressing an all out attitude toward guests. I found them a good deal that way as I went along.
DRIVER KNOWS HIS WAY AROUND
That afternoon our driver showed up—capless and uniformless—but whatever he may have lacked in uniform, he made up for in ability, knowledge and intelligence. He was a wonder. He seemed to know everybody and what their weaknesses were—custodians, policemen, lottery ticket vendors, car watchers and parking place attendants. Known and liked by everybody, he probably hadn't a single enemy in town.
For instance, the cap of my shoe and the rest of the shoe had parted company. Did he know where a shoe sewing machine could be found? That may sound trite to you as we were in a city of 3 million people, but in Mexico City machines are as rare as bad women in Greencastle. Everything is hand work. All he said was, "We go." We did, a mile or two. The price was 50 centavos—a trifle over five cents in our money.