Osprey - 7-1-2010 at 09:06 AM
Tumul
"I wish Levy was here now. Levy and the two old gals could solve all your problems. The trouble you're having with your workers' Social Security,
Medical Benefits would disappear in a hurry if they were here. They'd have the whole thing wrapped up in no time." Jimmy Smith smiled and sipped his
beer, elbows on the bar at Buzzard's Bay in Los Barriles, Mexico.
"If you got the time, I'll tell you the whole story." Bob nodded his consent, took a swig of beer.
"Levy Green walked out of a nursing home in Pasadena, California about the first month or two of 1992. He was 72 years of age, spry, as you might
imagine, and a little wacko. In the late 50's Levy sold his small motion picture studio in North Hollywood to the Mayer Brothers. They hired him and
he went on to help them make over a hundred movies before he retired. He had always liked it down here, came down to fish, swim, get away from the
rat race. He decided to make the place his new home. It seems every time he turned around he bumped into some kind of problem with the authorities.
He had more than his share of trouble with immigration and all the usual problems you face when you buy a little piece of land by the beach, build a
house."
"Sure the language is a problem for gringos but it was worse for Levy. He spoke more Yiddish than English so Spanish was near impossible for the
skinny old guy. He hired people here locally to translate but most of the time they couldn't understand him; led to some "who's on first" confabs
that were classic -- wish I had taped the ones I was in on. {Tell the schmendrick he's a putz, he's treating me like a goy. Tell him I'm thinking
about bringing down Goldfarb from Pasadena. You see Danny Goldfarb in court, you're in the gosh darnned Scopes trial.}"
Bob Darling ordered two more beers, went to the head. When he came back, with a mouthful of peanuts from the bar, barely made the question
intelligible.
"What happened to him? Get fedup, back to the States?"
"No, no, you couldn't run him off. He was a stubborn old bastard. Finally, he employed The Weapons. He had a sister in Palm Beach, Florida. He
called her, told her his problems. They wrote back and forth, made lots of calls over a short period of time. He needed help, she needed something
to do. They struck a deal. Edith Green and her friend Gertrude Sobel would join Levy in Baja California to see what they could do. Both were
widows, Edith had attained the age of 67 and Gertrude was a younger 64. They both had bachelor degrees from college, Gertrude had been a legal
secretary for seven years in Fort Lauderdale. Both had married well, traveled extensively when their respective husbands were still alive and a
little less in retirement."
Bob says. "Those two old Jewish broads could have helped me with these banditos at IMSS?"
Jimmy's turn. "I'll tell you how they worked, you decide. The first thing they tackled was the acronym business. You know, as well as anybody
around here, the problems you run into with which department is which. It's the same in the States. AFL-CIO for example. We've lived with the
immeasurable power, the historical significance of the major labor union in the country but we don't know the name of the thing. Most people on the
street are able to come up with American Federation of Labor, but, but the last part, only one in 8000 people know that stands for Congress of
Industrial Organizations."
"Levy and the ladies made a list of just the few government departments here on the peninsula they would have to deal with. Then they laboriously
began to translate the Spanish acronyms to English and then to Make Sense English. It was quite a list: AFORE, INFONOVIT, IMSS, CEFE, SEMARNAP,
PESCA, ISSTE, DIF, PAN, PRI, PDJ, PDE, FONATUR, PROFEPA, CORRETT, etc. They had a heck of time. Most Mexicans know the acronym but don't have a clue
as to what the letters actually stand for. When they finally had a handle on what and who they were dealing with, then they got to work. I got all
of this second hand but I sure wish I could have been in on some of it."
"At first they hired a perico to go with them, help them find the offices, translate. After awhile they learned how to get around by themselves,
they began to get over the language thing. They mostly took the bus to wherever the problem was, La Paz, San Jose, Santiago. They were used to
riding buses in South Florida, taking two or three trips a month to Miami and back, shopping, visiting old friends.”
"When the offending Mexican office opened, there, sitting on the stoop, two short, fat Jewish ladies with huge shopping bags, waiting, smiling --
land mines, incendiary devices, camouflaged, hiding in plain sight."
"It was a thing of beauty. They worked as a team. Gertrude would wait in line, ready to shove any interloper, rude line jumper back and away. Then,
finally, at the window, she would set down her bag, produce the requisite papers, make her request in polite English, broken Spanish and perfect
Yiddish. Edith, meanwhile, would stay seated, nosh, (the bags were full of goodies, sandwiches, cookies, cold ice tea) read, knit, without missing a
word, an inflection (in any language), a lifted eyebrow, the half-smirk of annoyance from the employee currently under attack. After Gertrude had
worn down the first counter person and a supervisor or two, usually she was asked to wait for the boss, who would be right out to settle this thing.
On the arrival of the boss, Edith would turn her chair to the wall, lug the huge bag past the long line of the sweaty disgruntled, coming to a
smiling stop pressed up against the counter and, of course, Gertrude. As the boss would begin to launch into his Spanish bureaucratic doublespeak,
Edith would take over, fresh and ready for battle. Her friend would retire to the same chair to sweat, smile and wait for the inevitable -- Edith
would come away with the corrected receipt, contract, permit, dated, signed and sealed; all penalties expunged, appropriate discounts considered.
There was nobody they wouldn't take on. They helped expedite things for some of Levy's friends and began to go to bat for the poor Mexicans around
here. Mexican's face the very same red tape, can ill afford to pay the sometimes huge fines that really amount to governmental extortion."
"I was having breakfast one morning when the gals were grilling the perico, a little bitty guy named Hector. They chose to call him Hershell.
Edith: {Hershell, you're a nice boy. You're furblungit. The land in question is not public land, it is Indian land. They got it in l918. We have
good papers, CORRETT'S got babkes. You'll talk to the nebish in San Jose, get the croquis, schlep them back here to us like a darling.}" Bob asked.
"What ever happened to them? To Levy?"
"It's kinda sad what happened. They were just finishing the tile on the second floor patio of his new house. Levy had a stroke. He lasted three
days in the hospital in La Paz. The ladies had him embalmed, put him in a casket, flew him back to a small private funeral in Hollywood and then
another in Miami. He was buried beside his mother in a plot in Miami. The ladies went back to Palm Beach."
"It took all their formidable skills to arrange the special flight from La Paz, get all the necessary papers together there. I went to La Paz to see
ole Levy off, say goodbye to the ladies. It was a small plane, like a charter thing. No first class. No stewardess, no in-flight lunch. No problem
for the ladies -- the big shopping bags fed them and the pilot."
[Edited on 7-1-2010 by Osprey]
motoged - 7-1-2010 at 02:12 PM
Beautifully written
Ken Bondy - 7-1-2010 at 07:32 PM
Superb Jorge!!! One of your best. You are a real gem. Saludos, ++Ken++
Pescador - 7-1-2010 at 08:28 PM
The real wisdom is how to deal with a petty beauracrat. They could have been wealthy cause we would all have hired them.
Required reading
bajadave1 - 7-2-2010 at 06:30 AM
This missive should be read by anyone moving or thinking of moving to Baja.
THX. Dave
BajaBlanca - 7-3-2010 at 11:41 AM
please have them reincarnated 
))) 
chippy - 7-3-2010 at 01:04 PM
That was great. Thanks.