Crash!

A 90 foot tree fell into my yard from the neighbors.

I called fence companies for repair of my crushed fence (which surrounds my swimming pool, which  is also 39 years old).

That got me to thinking about when I sold fence for Reliable Fence (1969 - 1975). If I didn’t land that interview, I probably would be working at 7 /11 today.

They paid $75 dollars a week with a 3% sales commission, and in a year you got a company car. They also paid full health benefits, and all you had to do was work 10-12 hours a day for six days.

They requested that I shave off my mustache and get rid of the hippie eyeglasses (and change back to  plastic ones). We wore sport coats and neck ties for the appointments. When we were busy, we had 12-15 appointments per day. I think we got a one-week paid vacation. On my first sale, I made $55 and I was on my way! Thank God for sales.

I called a local fence guy with the name of Wendell for a quote. His name reminded me of a really good installer that Reliable got from Walpole Woodworkers. I tried for a day to recall his name. The following day, without thinking about it, his name came to me: Winslow Keyes.

Then two more names that I haven’t said or thought of in 45 years came to me. Frank Catrone, who before he built fences, sold Cadillacs. Then Dale Esker came into my brain. A crackerjack installer from the Plympton area. And my family says that I am slipping!

As I look through my e-mail list, I find only one person who knows what the hell and who the hell I am talking about. Interesting.

The comedian Steven Wright said, “I like to reminisce with people I don’t know."

Tocino’s Index

Vacation dinners / 74    

Meals in / 4    

Museums / 5    

Jungle cats at Peace Gardens / 21    

Butterfly groups at Peace Gardens  / 22    

Friends visited / 43    

Landings and take offs / 22    

Number of American Indian groups encountered / 2 (Seminoles in Florida and a Washington State dance group that we saw at an opera house in San Jose, Costa Rica. It cost $12 each but we did it anyway.)   

Animals / 39+ (From armadillo’s to dolphins. They were grandkids of Flipper. YCMTSTUFF up. The dolphins not the armadillos.)  

Pantera crossings / 4  

Two-hour operation on my teeth by a Mexican dentist who didn’t speak English / 1  

Radio or TV time / zero  

Cell phone calls by me / zero    

Times I checked my e-mail / zero  

Times I wore my ball cap backwards / 0    

Live volcanos / 1    

Spring Breakers at Miami Beach / thousands    

Soaks in jacuzzis heated by a volcano / 6    

Modes of transportation / 11  

Average dinner with drinks in Mexico / $20    

Average dinner with drinks in Florida / $80-100  

Rooms in Mexico / $150 average  

Rooms in Florida / $425    

9 DAYS IN FLORIDA COST MORE THAN A MONTH IN MEXICO  

Hotels where we had to drive through a river to get to our room / 1 (The place was called Chachagua and is in a rainforest and it is actually in the book 1000 Places To Go Before You Die)

Major cities visited / 10 

Countries visited / 5

Wrong turns in Costa Rica / 7      

Hotel rooms / 14 in entire trip      

Houses rented  / 1      

Hair cuts with shave and beard trim / 2   ($35 in U.S. $7 in Mexico. With the $35 you don’t get a shave. When the Mexican barber heard my saga of going to Isla for 28 years and picking up litter along the malecon and bringing down $7,000 in hurricane funds he gave me the local price of $5.00)   
Margaritas, mescals, michiladas / lost count

Number of songs sung by a eleven year old senorita for one U.S. dollar / 1  

Towns visited  / 7    

Spring Training Red Sox games  / 1  ($27 a piece. We lost to the Pirates. They were not real pirates.)      

Times we danced the salsa / 1  (a whole afternoon on Isla at Fenix)

Dancing with motorcycle gangs and transvestites / 2   (Clarification: we were on the same dance floor in Key West)  

Botanical gardens visited / 2    

Famous author houses / 3  (Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway and  Gabriel Garcia Marquez. None of them were home at the time)      

Weirdest thing eaten in Mexico / weiner schnitzel, or the worm from mescal    

People at Marnie’s Isla retreat / 21   (Next year there will be two retreats. The big secret surprise on the golf cart tour this year was the Cuban restaurant El Veradaro on the Maxak Lagoon. They make the very best mojitos on Isla Mujeres. I think it was a big hit. We had two rounds.)    

Spanish flamenco shows outside an Argentinian restaurant, on a calle, for free, under a full moon, in a dusty Mexican village with three streets, better than any we saw in Spain / 1  (We left a grande propina.)

Off the top of my head . . .  that’s about it.            

- Roberto Francisco Tocino
"Stay well • Work hard • Vacation more"