Retire in Ensenad Mexico, Baja California

As a boy, my father and I would walk onto the Berkeley pier with our crab traps. Within two hours we caught all the dungeness crab we needed for a family feast. For fresh oysters we went to Tamales Bay in Marrin County. The Oakland Estuary provided all the clams we needed and the entire coastline was brimming with Abalone. We shot our venison in the Oakland hills and pheasant was down the street in the rice fields of bordering San Leandro.

All of that pristine beauty and bounty that was the Bay Area of the 1950's was gone by the end of the 1960's. Almost anyone of that era can speak of similar hometown deterioration resulting from growth.

It was a strong need to return to a less polluted and crowded world that brought me to live in Ensenada in the early 1980's. The environment here is also deteriorating from over exploitation and growth. The destruction of our environment is an inescapable worldwide reality. However, comparing Esnsenada's relative growth and "progress" to the Ensenada Bay Area, I rolled the clock back 20 years by moving here. I'm real glad I made the move.

In addition to the environmental causes for moving, there was another need for me to turn the clock back culturally as well as environmentally. A cultural, perhaps even spiritual, identification with Mexico. The first language I heard as an infant was Spanish. I would lay in the featherbed at my grandmother's house and before drifting off to sleep, I listened to the rhythms and melodies of the speech coming from the large kitchen where my mother, grandmother and aunts sat gossiping. I didn't care about, and paid no attention to, the content of their conversations. I only heard the soothing and beautiful rhapsody that is the Spanish tongue. Here in Ensenada, I overhear groups of women conversing and it is often like listening to a cosmic chant. It moves me like music and transports me back to the comfort and security of my childhood. I need to hear and speak Spanish. To abandon my beloved mother tongue, as I did during high school and University years, is to abandon my soul.

We are who we are and it is inescapable. Growing up in 65% Afro American Oakland, I was immersed, at an early age, in Black culture. I love the music and to this day the majority of my heroes are Jazz and Blues artists. I am a Black Music freak who has studied the music's history and maintain an expansive discography that transcends seven decades of the music. The slang, the attitude, the humor and the rhythm of black speech were an integral part of my youth. Frequently, during my lifetime, I wished I were black. I speak fluent eubonics and I dance as good as any as my black podners.

I am not black! Despite accusations to the contrary. My heritage, genes language, religion, food preferences and latin music, establish who I am . Another pinche Perez. Perez, Garcia and Martinez are as Spanish as Smith and Jones are Anglo and that is who I am. Another common, garden variety, Perez.

In Mexico, I feel at home. More at home than in my beloved Oakland. I am reminded daily of my cultural values. Here I work to live not live to work. I carry no credit cards, and after fourteen years of living here, I only recently opened a checking account. A checking account I use more like a savings account because I pay my bills in cash and in person. That is the way rent, telephone and utilities are paid in Mexico and those are the only bills I have. My way of living is on a cash basis, just like my folks, who never had a credit account or cheking account. These simplified ways of being are very Hispanic and the norm in Mexico rather than the exception when compared with the United States.

Here in Mexico, children are innocent. In the U.S. children seemingly become adults at age six. In Mexico, children know their grand parents and interact with them daily. In this country, three or four generations living together is a common familial unit. There are so many aspects of living in Mexico that take me back to simpler times in the Bay Area. To those that think this information age is the best of times, I don't agree. I am glad to have been born in 1940. I believe the quality of life has diminished with the deterioration of the environment and of the family.

There are also more practical reasons for living in Ensenada. Economics I have already discussed in other chapters and articles. In addition to economics, the proximity to the San Diego border (80 miles) makes it relatively easy to dart back across the border to enjoy the fruits of the goood ol US of A. What I mostly miss, living in Mexico, are live presentations of Jazz and Blues music. Fortunately, San Diego has grown up to be a good town for the MUSIC. I can satisfy my Jazz Jones by traveling two hours to San Diego.

Another JONES I can satisfy is my love for Asian and Italian cuisine. Here again, internationally cosmopolitan San Diego fills the bill with a variety of fine restaurants.