Carratraca

We made an overnight weekend trip to Carratraca with the American Club in the spring of 1975. Who or what is a Carratraca? For that matter, what was the American Club?

Carratraca is a village of fewer than 1000 permanent residents and the site of a sulfur springs. For millennia people have believed that sitting neck deep in stinky water is healthful and restorative. For extra money, I understood, someone would pack your entire body with mud. It would probably make you feel healthy and restored just to get that nasty stuff off your body. Apparently people have wallowed in Carratracas’ sulfur baths since the Romans.

The American Club was founded by Americans who moved to Spain and decided that the thing they most wanted to do was to associate with other Americans. We had joined the American Club because someone invited us to, attended a meeting because we had nothing else to do that evening, and joined the group because we couldn’t think of a graceful way out of it.

And that is how we found ourselves on a bus loaded with American tourists headed into the hills, bound for the sulfur springs. We weren’t all old. Our daughter, Patricia, a high school sophomore, went with us. Another young woman, a college undergraduate, gave her someone to bond with. There was at least one young man who probably hadn’t seen 21 summers yet. As I write this I’m looking at a group photo and I must admit they look much younger to me now than they did 32 years ago.

Carratraca itself looked like a typical Spanish village with it whitewashed buildings, rough streets and dark interiors. We had arrived at our hotel at lunch time, pre-siesta time, The village seemed to have gone into a nothing-much-happening-right-now-folks mode.

Our room was on the first floor, which is really the second floor in genuinely civilized countries, at the back side of the hotel. But when we reached our room and looked out the window, we saw not a drop not a ten-foot drop but another street. Our hotel was dug into a steep hillside, hence our hotel front facing a road and the back facing another road one story up. People familiar with San Francisco architecture will have no trouble with this concept.

Disco was the big thing in those days. There was even a song about a disco duck. Our hotel clerk informed our daughter and her friend that yes, indeed, Carratraca boasted a very fine discoteca, one in which they took great pride. The two girls set off to find this emporium of music but Pat returned an hour later to report that though they had looked high and low and in between, they could discover no discothèque.

Apparently the girls had not gone on their quest unaccompanied, but were joined by the young male I mentioned earlier. That evening before dinner he bought me a glass of wine, which I thought very amiable of him. Then he asked, “Do you mind if I marry your daughter?”

I thought the matter over for a few seconds, swished the wine around in my mouth savoring its taste, then replied, “That depends on your health, your morals, and whether you can fix Volkswagens.” I don’t think he really wanted to marry my daughter. I think he wanted to see if I’d spit up my wine. In any event, he didn’t look like a Volkswagen mechanic.

We learned at dinner that Carratraca’s famous discothèque was located inside our very own hotel. This suited me since I didn’t want my nubile daughter cruising the streets of Carratraca, a village inhabited by a hell hound bent on (he said) matrimony. (Hell hounds might have changed since my day – but they couldn’t have changed that much.)

Some of the older members of the American Club said that they would go to the discothèque just to “keep an eye on the youngsters.” Who, I wondered, was going to keep an eye on them?

Joanne and I went to bed and Pat went out to disco. At the witching hour, I believe 9:00 but it may have been 10:00, the band struck up and the party was ON! Joanne and I were out of bed like someone had hotwired it, for the famous discothèque was located in the room directly under ours. Our room had become an echo chamber. I said to Joanne, “I can’t handle this. I’m going down there. It can’t be any worse.”

But it was worse. It was far, far worse. For one thing, the band was far, far louder. Few people danced. Instead they shouted at each other and still couldn’t hear, drank cheap wine and pretended they were having fun. So I returned to our room, buried my head under my pillow regretted not having drunk more at dinner.

But eventually, mercifully, the “music” ended, Pat returned, and I settled in for some well deserved sleep. But not to be, for some lusty lad had parked his motorcycle on the street directly outside our window some time during the day. He had danced his little toes raw and now it was time to crank up his Bultaco motocicleta.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned Bultaco only had two cylinders and it didn’t always use both of them. Vroom vroom cough vroom fart spit vroom splutter. But after five minutes of vrooming the machine ran to our young dude’s satisfaction and he drove off. Thank God it was downhill or he’d probably still be there.

At last. After two in the morning, but it was as quiet in Carratraca as it had been when we arrived at noon the day before. To sleep, perchance to dream. Who cares if I dream. To sleep. Bring it on.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009