UnSung Heroes

COLUMNIST Unsung Heroes

By Tom Nussbaum

He works 65 hours a week

at the restaurant. It seems like he’s always there. Always. But Café Negro is a family-owned restaurant and Tomas is the manager. And restaurant managers put in long hours.

Tomas Rowen Nicola Delangre Rojas didn’t always spend his days at the San Antonio landmark. He was too young when his mother founded the eatery 16 years ago. But a few years later, as a young teenager, he began participating in the family business, first as a busboy, then as a waiter, and eventually as manager.

The road to management, however, had a few bumps and sharp turns. Tomas took a detour. He dropped out of school at 14, which caused great tension between his mother and himself, and found himself making other poor choices in life and in friendships. By 16, no longer living with family, he invited several older acquaintances to move in with him to split costs. They proved to be more problematic than helpful. By 19, Tomas had recognized the errors he had made and redirected his life.

The fourth of six children, Tomas, with his easy smile (generally hidden now by COVID-masks), charm, and positivity, had always demonstrated a natural intelligence. It would come as no surprise, then, when he learned English by listening to restaurant customers, television, and video games. No classes or teachers were needed. He speaks without an accent, even mastering idioms and common colloquial phrases.

While two siblings live in the United States, Tomas has never been to the US. In fact, his travels are limited. The Chapala-born Tomas thinks the farthest he’s traveled has been to Puerto Vallarta. He, however, remembers as a young child dreaming of world travel. Today his goal is to visit Alaska. The cold and layers of clothing, he says, don’t scare him. But he admits he’s never experienced real cold and may be in for a surprise.

A doodler and drawer in his moments of free time, Tomas is intrigued by fantasy films like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Game of Thrones. He also has an interest in computer programming, but the restaurant and life have left him little time to pursue it.

A generally happy, positive person, Tomas finds his least favorite aspect of restaurant work is dish washing. But on the other hand, he is fascinated by the variety of people he has met through his work. “Whether they were extremely successful before they came here, or struggled through life, facing challenges and rough circumstances,” he observes, “they all have interesting stories and, for the most part, are decent people.”

He pauses. “For the most part,” he repeats. “Even the customers who throw food at me.” He is serious. Customers have pelted Tomas with food, usually for questionable reasons. He’s been hit, for example, with chunks of a disliked fruit from a fruit cup. Tomas shrugs his shoulders. “You wonder,” he adds with a laugh, “why they think that is OK. Were they teenage trouble-makers like me, only they never grew up?”

On the other hand, some customers have even given Tomas the shirt off their back. Literally. Many of the tee-shirts and baseball caps he wears sport the names and logos of professional teams from his customers’ U.S. and Canadian hometowns. “They just give them to me, knowing I like them, and wanting to share their team pride with me,” he says.

Tomas has a girlfriend, Lupita. They’ve been together six years and live near the restaurant. Neither a wedding nor children are on the horizon, he points out rather quickly. That might be because Tomas knows making a marriage work and raising kids requires a lot more than 65 hours per week.

Tomas Rowen Nicola Delangre Rojas

Tom Nussbaum

By Lillian Norma

My boyfriend cast me a sideways glance as he asked, “You’re not using the guide book again, are you?”

“Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t

I?”

“Because, by now, you should realize the book is wrong.”

“Wrong? How could the book be wrong?”

“The maps are printed backwards. It’s like looking at a negative.”

“Well, they don’t look like negatives to me,” I snapped.

“Then kindly explain to me why we get lost every day. Every day.”

“Look,” he implored, “take your eyes off the damn book for a minute and look out the window. The river is on my side of the road. In the book, it’s on your side of the road. The book is wrong.”

White knuckles gripped the steering wheel as he reiterated, almost shouting now, “The. Book. Is. Wrong.”

Shaking his head and heaving a deep sigh, he muttered under his breath, “How many times do I have to say it?”

“No,” I insisted, my voice rising to match his, ”you’re looking at it all wrong. It’s a published book. A published book. Don’t you think the editor would have noticed if the maps were backwards before it was sent for printing?! Jeez.”

Tired of arguing, I slammed the much dogged-eared book shut, rolled up the window and reclined my seat in split second speed. One last jab, though, before I closed my eyes. “Oh, shut up, okay? Just shut up.”

Stony silence enveloped us like an early morning fog bank as I squirmed to find a comfortable position. My mind flashed back to how the day had begun in Springfield and I wondered how we had come to this stalemate.

The cerulean sky showed no remnants of last night’s thunderstorm and by mid-morning the temperature had climbed to the mid 80s. We had decided not to use the A/C but to roll down the windows instead. Like a couple of giggly teenagers, we stuck our hands out and rode the air waves. Formally called Main Street of America, and no longer useful for the big rigs on a rigid deadline, most of the time ours was the only vehicle in sight for miles. Just the way we liked it. But now here we were at each other’s throats arguing over a damn guidebook. I couldn’t discern which was worse, the anger simmering inside my head or the heat inside the car!

Luckily, our first stop of the day, The Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, was only a few miles up the road. The clicking indicator signal jolted me out of my reverie. I reached for the book on the dashboard but he grabbed it first and exited the car.

“Maybe, after a coffee and a treat,” he said through a forced smile, “I can point out all the discrepancies between the book and reality.”

My sour mood matched the searing heat rising from the walkway leading up to the restaurant. I shook my head in consternation. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Once inside, the proprietor welcomed us with an outstretched hand, “Come in out of the heat,” he greeted us. Finally, a friendly voice, I thought.

As we reached the counter, he noticed the book. He reached out, took it out of my boyfriend’s hand, and with a flick of his wrist, threw it along the counter like a frisbee.

“I bet that book has caused many a marital argument. The maps are printed backwards.” Lillian

Norma

By Mark Sconce

While dining in Paris last year, I had the great good fortune to run into Sr. Tope, originally of Chapala, Mexico.

He was sitting alone in Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant famous for its pig knuckles. Elegantly dressed, mustachioed and reading a past issue of El Ojo del Lago, he welcomed my arrival at a table adjacent his. Although a very wealthy gentleman, he seemed down to earth, rather shy and noticeably rotund. When he found out I was living in Ajijic, he lit up and asked about his former pueblo. I assured him that everything was fine Lakeside.

Javier Tope Moreno made his fortune when he was able to show that his invention, the eponymous speed bump we all love to hate, was much more effective and less expensive than semáforos, or policemen packing radar guns. The Sleeping Policemen, Sr. Tope affectionately called them. The Federal government saw a cost-saving device and signed a contract allowing my dinner partner eight pesos for the standard tope and ten pesos each for the insidious little ones that can launch your vehicle airborne. As they became more and more ubiquitous throughout Mexico, Sr. Tope became wealthier and wealthier. He was now a permanent resident of Paris, France.

I asked Sr. Tope if he missed Chapala, lakeside pueblo of his youth. “Oh, yes,” he assured me. “Look what I’m reading. I’m very happy that the folks at El Ojo del Lago decided to print a Spanish edition.”

As we were savoring a smooth Bordeaux, the famous pig knuckles arrived, and we set to work with the little forks they provide for digging into the tender joints. After our exquisite meal, I thought to ask if there was any particular event that shaped his life back in Mexico, something that perhaps accounted for his success and happiness. “Ah sí,” he replied and launched into a remarkable tale.

When Javier Tope Moreno was a young, ambitious man, he decided to leave his pueblo and journey to a town with a better economy and better prospects. His parents gave him their blessing, and he set out on a long trek. Midday, he came to rest near a little farm community that featured a cemetery along the main road. Young Tope soon found himself walking among the headstones interested to read the inscribed names and dates. He soon realized that he was in a children’s cemetery where none of the children exceeded ten years of age. For example, Juan Carlos Zamora lived eight years, six months, two weeks and three days. Alejandro Pacopancho, lived five years, eight months and three weeks. What terrible thing happened here, he thought? What evil befell this community so that its citizens felt obliged to build a children’s cemetery?

Suddenly, an elderly native appeared and, reading the young man’s mind, assured him that there was no curse to worry about. “Sereno Moreno. Here we have an old custom. When a youth attains his 15th birthday, his parents gift him a notebook, which he carries from that day to his death. Whenever he experiences some intense joy, some exhilarating moment, some blessed event, he writes it down on the left side of the notebook. On the right side he notes how long the intense enjoyment lasted. His first kiss, for example, his wedding day, the birth of his first child, the marriages of his friends… Then, when the person dies, we take his notebook and add up all the times of his intense enjoyment and inscribe them on his tombstone. We think that this is a unique and better way to tell the true time of life.”

“That experience influenced the rest of my life,” said Sr. Tope and ordered another chocolate éclair.

“Intense enjoyment has been my goal ever since. Don’t you have a similar saying, something about taking your breath away?”

“Yes, I think we do: ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breaths away.’”

When I told Herlinda Diaz, my Spanish teacher back in Ajijic, about my meeting with Sr. Tope, she laughed and said that that was a famous, old story written by Jorge Bucay, an Argentine writer in the last century. To my chagrin, I suddenly realized that Tope had once again stopped me in my tracks.

Mark Sconce