Resealing Stamped Concrete: Before & After

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"

Brant Lake, August 2015

Cartageña

Vaca sagrada! (Holy cow!)

Here are two photos of the 17th century Spanish mansion or palacio that we found in Cartegeña Colombia with the guidance of our tour guide Marelvy this Novembre 2015. This town is safe and very walkable. I read three reviews about Marelvy on Trip Advisor and knew that I wanted her to lead our private tour.

Why Colombia? One of the reasons was a book I read by a Brit who rode his two-seater bicycle from Alaska to Chile. His favorite country and people along that over two-year ride was Colombia. Not Columbia. That book was actually a gift to a bicycle nut amigo, but once I started to review it, I could not put it down. Don’t you love it when that happens?

The three-hour tour of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez's world lasted for six hours, including lunch. Marelvy will give tours of this magic fort-walled colonial former Spanish town (1533) if you are lucky enough to be invited to our Yoga retreat. Gold and emeralds and slaves passed through this ancient port. Marelvy walks with a sombrilla to keep the sun off. 

Marnie, Sandy, Marelvy

We might just leave the castillo walls one night to take in Club Havana. The shows last until early morning. Patrons order botellas and half botellas of rum or tequila for the table. I have NEVER seen that before. 

Think of his 1967 book "One Hundred Years of Solitude” (Gracias, Charles), “Love in the Time of Cholera,” (even our 49ers dealt with bad water cholera), “The General in His Labyrinth,” “Living To Tell The Tale,” and many more. One of my favorites is "Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes."

The gigantic ancient wooden door opens to the beautifully-tiled swimming pool (see above). There are eight rooms for guests, with a staff of six and a cook. One room is large enough to do yoga in. Air conditioned, of course. It is HOT in Cartageña de Indios in Febrero. "Mucho calor," as Maria Lopez used to say! 

Nearby, the former convent of Santa Clara is now a hotel. Gabo's book, “Of Love and Other Demons“ opens here, when the remains of red-haired teenager Maria de Todas los Angeles are unearthed. The beautiful Santa Clara Hotel bar is where we watched a samba show from directly in front of the crypt where the nuns are buried. You can also have a cooling bebida among the towering palm trees in the grande, open-to-the-sky, foyer. We got hooked on coconut milk and lime drinks. YCMTS up.

This place is like a movie set. A Marlon Brando movie, “Burn 1969" was filmed here as well as "The Mission" with Robert DeNiro," and Romancing the Stone." "You are thee Joan Wilder?" Most of “Romancing the Stone” was filmed in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Their second choice was Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

Our friend who we met on a Portugal river trip last year was raised in Colombia in a hotel at Simon Bolivar Park that her father owned. No he didn’t own the park. He owned the hotel. Most of the colonial houses are now restaurants or hotels. 

Very tall black women with attitudes (whose ancestors were slaves who escaped into the mountains) walk the calles with baskets of fruit on their heads. Two dollars a photo and DO NOT try to sneak one. There are many carriages for inexpensive tours of the town, which is enclosed by the largest stone and coral fort in this hemisphere. There is one calle that only sells homemade sweets, most of which we have never ever seen or tasted before.

We met Susi and Arturo in their home city of Medellin during our tour. I am writing a book about that part of the trip, including Bogota in the Andes. Their life stories are truly amazing and they are the most gracious hosts.

Cartageña is only three and one half hours via Jet Blue from New York City and a five minute, five dollar ride to the mansion.

Febrero 2017 Yoga retreat? MAYBE! Yoga 2016 Isla Mujeres, Mexico is full again.

          

- Marnie y Sandy y Roberto Tocino

Marelvy with sombrilla