We sure like to make it look like we are. This weekend as we were driving out of the flea market we couldn’t help but notice how Mexican everything looked. Yeah, we were in the Lone Star State, dentro de los Estados Unidos of course, but for a second, if you just didn’t think about it too hard, you could actually swear you were in Little Mexico… walking the marqueta, haggling for the best prices, sampling pieces of fruit straight from the knife they were cut with, strolling through life for a couple of minutes without the minutest worry about time.
It had been raining a little bit during the day. That didn’t stop anyone from coming out en familia pa pasar el rato.
Over, around, and even through the charcos of water on the floor, pedestrians strolled by on either side of vehicles passing by, including ours, and every once in a while making a hurriedly little dash in front of our car to make it to the other side of the very narrow dirt and rock road. Some of them chewing on pepita seeds, others gazing around at everything around them, parents yelling at their children ¡apurate!, young parejas holding hands and grinning from ear to ear, old parejas looking just as sweet, not holding hands, and a host of other raza smiling and carrying on about their dómingo de descanso.
By this time, almost dark, most vendors were already closing or had already locked up their belongings in either tarp or canvas wraps, rolled around individual booths and locked at one end with key or combination locks. Only the fruit and vegetable vendors remained open, slowly boxing up their unsold produce, hoping that something in their selection would catch the eye or antojo of those bidding the pulga un ‘hasta next weekend’. At that precise moment this sentence was uttered: “no estamos en México, pero we sure like to act like we are!”
We all laughed in agreement and went about our own dómingo.
