All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [82]
Mom started planning our trip.
The art scene is what made San Miguel de Allende a magnet for the Jan MacKenzies of the world. An American-accredited fine arts school, the Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes, opened in 1938, and by 1948, several former World War II soldiers on the G.I. Bill discovered that they could attend school and live very well in San Miguel on their modest grants. That year, Life magazine ran a three-page spread on the place: “GI Paradise: Veterans Go to Mexico to Study Art, Live Cheaply and Have a Good Time,” reporting that apartments were $10 a month, full-time maids another $8, and rum 65 cents a quart. The resulting influx of would-be painters, sculptors, jewelry makers, and rummies spurred the opening of another accredited art school, the Instituto Allende, in 1950. By the 1960s, San Miguel de Allende was a counterculture destination for U.S. truth seekers and acidheads, including Ken Kesey; they came down off their high in 1968 when the notorious beatnik Neal Cassady, woozy on barbiturates after a wedding in San Miguel, wandered back along the train tracks to Celaya, apparently to count them, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans on a cold and rainy night, and was found in a coma the next day, dying in a nearby hospital just short of his forty-second birthday. Still, many of the artists and expats stayed on, forever painting the pink facade of the Gothic La Parroquia church in the main square, seeking spiritual enlightenment, and creating a community that welcomed other like-minded bohemians. They opened galleries and coffee shops, an English library, and, inevitably, real estate offices. By the 1970s, it had calmed down enough to become a popular place for artsy and progressive parents to bring their kids for a summer to safely introduce them to another culture.
And so we set off for Mexico by bus from El Paso. This was our second time in that country: we’d gone to Baja a few years before, but all I remember, besides the vast novelty of the ocean, was how mortified my nearly teenaged sisters were when I rolled down the window and yelled “¿CÓMO ESTÁ USTED?” as loudly as I could to the first Mexican I saw, who politely waved back.
The bus was cramped and dusty, but I was too interested in how everything changed, once in Mexico, to care. The guy at the border checks your passports, waves you through, and, just like that, people speak a different language, dress in clothes that don’t match, and sell seeds you crack and scatter the shells of on the floor of the bus. You had to pay to use the bathroom at the stops, and it was someone’s job to sit there, collect the pesos, and hand you three squares of something that was closer to wrapping paper than tissue. The arid landscape was the same as in Texas, as were the cowboy hats and pickup trucks, but other than that, everything in Mexico was instantly different.
When we reached Mexico City we had wilted, and it may be that some of us were whining. We waited and waited for another bus that didn’t come as scheduled, and when it finally arrived, the bus to San Miguel de Allende made the one from El Paso seem outrageously luxurious. It had school bus–style bench seats, springs sproinging out of thin green vinyl, people sitting precariously on laps and standing in the aisles, and crates of live chickens aboard. With no shocks, the bus jolted us out of sleepiness with every winding, lurching turn. Outside Mexico City we saw miles of slums, poverty that television only hinted at on the news—a long way from Littleton.
Then the desert landscape was the same for hours, slowly rising, and we were almost managing sleep when we rounded a corner and came upon a Mexican Oz: