Granada
Many of the parents and children of Sunnyview School, and the instructional staff as well, took their 1974 Christmas holiday to ski in the mountain resorts south of Granada. At that time we had only been in Torremolinos for a few months and really didn’t know anybody. So, why not go to Granada with the rest of the lemmings?
We packed up all our cares and clothes in our car, El Flojo, and headed north and east of Málaga, over the mountains To Granada. We made it in one piece without a breakdown, contrary to our expectations, and checked in to a no-star hotel in an older part of town recommended to us by our neighbor, David McConnell.
We had one room to be shared by all four of us, 7th-grade Eric, 9th-grade Pat, and we two parents who were beginning to have second thoughts. The room was clean enough, but dark, illuminated by lamps with 39-watt bulbs. Clearly, we were not meant to spend a lot of time in our rooms reading.
We left our hotel to procure a late lunch and soon came upon a tapa bar open to the street and an adjoining alley. We bellied up to the bar, for we found no little cast iron chairs and tables. Pretentious it was not. It was a stand up-eat up-drink up-pay up-go away bar.
We ordered chicken wings in a rich tomato sauce. By exercising great care we consumed the meat and left the bones sitting on the plate and did not decorate our clothes or persons with the sauce. Very much. We pushed the plate to the bartender’s side of the bar. He disgustedly picked up the plate and turned it upside down on our side of the bar, dumping bones and sauce on the floor. Soon a couple of dogs who had been lurking in the alley sidled up to crunch and lick the site clean.
And I thought I knew all about garbage disposal units.
The Toast
It was after dark, but early evening on my first night in Granada. David McConnell and I were drinking mediocre red wine in one of Granada’s no-name bars and listening to an elderly man play the hell out of his flamenco guitar. Cigarette smoke and the smell of wine provided a proper ambiance for the musician’s brilliance. I played a little guitar myself in those days and his technique dazzled me. His fingers were all over that neck like pigment on a Jackson Pollack canvas. The thing is, I didn’t recognize anything his fingers were doing. I couldn’t even figure out what key he was in. So I asked him. He didn’t know either. He had no clue. He just knew how to play his instrument like a champ.
It was at just this magic moment that one of the bar’s patrons approached us. Convivial. Jovial. Happy. Drunker than a whole herd of skunks. He wanted to tell us how much he liked the English. McConnell was from North Ireland and I from the States. Between my slow and his slurred Spanish, we had us quite a conversation.
At last he wanted to propose a toast to our eternal friendship. I agreed because he was drinking his own wine and I didn’t think it would cost me anything. We grabbed our wines and linked right arms at the elbow. But I was several inches taller than he and when we drank, finally, after a long and flowery toast, my new friend missed his mouth completely and poured his red wine all over his white shirt front. The mishap didn’t seem to bother him much. He brushed off the excess wine with his hand as best he could and returned to the bar for a refill. He then suggested we all meet together on the following night at the same time and bar so we could drink more toasts. I said it sounded like a fine idea.
As we left McConnell asked me why I had agreed to such an obviously dumb plan. I told him I wanted to know where our friend was going to be at that time tomorrow night so I could be somewhere else.
More next week.
Showing posts with label David McConnell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David McConnell. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
A Boy (Spanish) and a Girl (Canadian)
We met our boss, David McConnell, in downtown Torremolinos for wine one night. When we arrived we found him ensconced at a table with a nubile Canadian girl celebrating her 18th birthday. Our friend Ina Robinson once said that all women either had bosoms or bazooms. This bazoomy girl from Canada wasn’t sure what was going to happen on her 18th birthday, but she was sure it was going to be wonderful.
Our own children were not much younger than this girl and Joanne was heard to call McConnell “cradle robber” under her breath. He retorted, “Easy, ‘Mom.’” And to be perfectly honest, we didn’t know what plans McConnell may have had for the evening, but they were complicated by the presence of a third party, a young Spanish male dressed most stylishly. He wore his shirt open to the navel. A gold colored medallion dangled from his neck by a gold colored chain. We knew he was no spy because there was no room in his pants for even a microdot let alone a secret message or stolen state paper.
Joanne took exception to the boy’s style, or lack thereof. If you’re going to be a sophisticated seducer, you should have more than two squiggly little chest hairs. She decided that if he was going to run with the big dogs then he should learn to drink like them as well.
She bought him a wine. And another. And another. We spelled each other so we didn’t have to match him drink for drink. He soon began to make trips to the men’s room, from which he returned with water dripping from his face, hoping a cold splash would reduce dizziness. It doesn’t. I speak from experience here. He frantically suggested we adjourn to a discoteca magnifica where we could dance. We wouldn’t hear of it. By Jove, this wine is splendid. Let’s have some more, shall we?
The young Spaniard was game but eventually lurched home. He probably had a head as big as a soccer field the next morning, but maybe he learned something. I hope he learned that if intended to run with the big dogs he should button up his shirt. Or at least paste on some phony chest hairs.
We went home shortly after the Spaniard’s departure. Never did find out what happened with McConnell and the girl. None of our business.
Our own children were not much younger than this girl and Joanne was heard to call McConnell “cradle robber” under her breath. He retorted, “Easy, ‘Mom.’” And to be perfectly honest, we didn’t know what plans McConnell may have had for the evening, but they were complicated by the presence of a third party, a young Spanish male dressed most stylishly. He wore his shirt open to the navel. A gold colored medallion dangled from his neck by a gold colored chain. We knew he was no spy because there was no room in his pants for even a microdot let alone a secret message or stolen state paper.
Joanne took exception to the boy’s style, or lack thereof. If you’re going to be a sophisticated seducer, you should have more than two squiggly little chest hairs. She decided that if he was going to run with the big dogs then he should learn to drink like them as well.
She bought him a wine. And another. And another. We spelled each other so we didn’t have to match him drink for drink. He soon began to make trips to the men’s room, from which he returned with water dripping from his face, hoping a cold splash would reduce dizziness. It doesn’t. I speak from experience here. He frantically suggested we adjourn to a discoteca magnifica where we could dance. We wouldn’t hear of it. By Jove, this wine is splendid. Let’s have some more, shall we?
The young Spaniard was game but eventually lurched home. He probably had a head as big as a soccer field the next morning, but maybe he learned something. I hope he learned that if intended to run with the big dogs he should button up his shirt. Or at least paste on some phony chest hairs.
We went home shortly after the Spaniard’s departure. Never did find out what happened with McConnell and the girl. None of our business.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Sunnyview School
Sunnyview School
© Ken Harris 2009
In September, 1974, Sunnyview School had around 115 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. For the elementary grades we followed Calvert School’s curriculum. Calvert School, an accredited day school in Baltimore, Maryland, also furnished materials for home study students, and this decades before the concept became fashionable. High school was done by correspondence through the University of Nebraska. In this way a certain continuity of curriculum was established since the instructional staff itself hailed from Finland, Spain, Scotland, England, France, Canada, Northern Ireland and the U.S. Some of us had teacher training while others had only their availability to recommend them.
The main two-story building at Sunnyview School housed classrooms for first- through eighth-grades. The school office sat on the ground floor where director Honey Pettis and two clerks kept things going. Two principals also kept offices in the building, elementary school principal Jane Barbadillo and high school principal David McConnell. However since Barbadillo and McConnell both had full-time teaching duties, those offices were seldom occupied. Otherwise the building had classrooms for first-through eighth-graders.
Kindergarteners had their own small magic kingdom to the south, separated from the main building by a field of monkey bars, rings and slides. West of the main building lay the swimming pool and the high school class rooms.
The buildings themselves were made of el cheapo hollow clay bricks, made so light you could carry eight at a time. You could probably drop one on your foot with no more than an “oh, damn.” Nothing like the humungous bricks we’re used to in the States. And it wasn’t just the school buying the cheapest commodity they could. This was how bricks were made in Spain. Once in place, workmen covered the bricks with a rough, stucco.
The same el cheapo bricks that formed the buildings also formed the walls surrounding the school, but without the stucco. The bricks were set with wide air spaces between each one. In such a way about fifty percent of the wall was pure hole in the wall so that air could freely flow through without blowing over the barricade. It was just the sort of barrier an enthusiastic kid could ram his motorcycle right through. In fact, that is what one student did the year before we arrived. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, since that would have been unmanly, with the result that he significantly lowered his own I.Q. He didn’t help the wall any, either.
We had no central air or heating. Joanne and I never found the heat oppressive, but, man, it got cold. You always hear about Sunny Spain. Nobody talks much about Warm Spain, especially in winter. We would have all frozen if it hadn’t been for Maguire. Maguire was the school cat, black except for a few white markings. He was in charge of maintaining a mouse-free environment in the kitchen and pantry. In winter he doubled in brass as a hand warmer. Kids smuggled him into class rooms and passed him from lap to lap during the long, boring lectures of which teachers are so fond. Whenever a kid looked directly into a teacher’s eyes, expression bland and inscrutable, you knew he or she had Maguire in hand.
It was totally illegal for us to work at Sunnyview School. We didn’t have green cards. None of us on the educational staff did. I don’t think the Spanish government even had any green cardstock on which they could print any. But we had our cover stories. If the authorities were to raid the school one day, we were to sit in the back of the room and claim that we were only parents, there to observe, while the real teacher had just stepped out. Since we had two children at the school, our cover story might have worked. But how impressed were the authorities going to be if they found six rooms, six observant parents and zero teachers?
The situation was silly. But I trace it to the fact that the Spanish government didn’t like foreigners with their foreign ideas and values. They didn’t trust their influence. We were there during the last year Franco was alive and the first year of Juan Carlos’ rule. But if the government didn’t really like foreigners, it really liked foreign money. Lots of it.. So long as we brought in yankee dollars, pounds, deutschmarks, Swiss francs, we weren’t in much danger of deportation. All the same time, they made it almost impossible to live in the country legally. You were always breaking some law, even if it was having three friends over for brewskis. They were setting it up so that it would be easy to get rid of you if they wanted to.
So even though we sensed that the government didn’t really care, Honey Pettis wanted us to go through the pretext of applying for work permits. This led us to one of Spain’s most noble type of citizens, the gestor (hess.TOR, not jester). Although it seems like a joke, the gestor is a fixer. He fixes things between people and their government. Even when they’re not broken, he fixes them.
We went to the gestor and presented him with our teaching credentials. He was very impressed with Joanne’s. He admired the quality of the paper, the impressive seal and signatures. After much praise, he put both certificates in a folder and kept them. I thought Joanne was going to swallow her tongue.
We never got green cards, and maybe that’s why I can sympathize a bit with the plight of the illegal alien here in Arizona, working without a green card and hoping he can lie or run fast if he gets caught. Oddly enough, the gestor got us Spanish social security, which qualified us for government funded medical treatment in Spain. Since the United Kingdom had a reciprocal agreement with Spain, we were also entitled to government health care when vacationing in England as well. We got our credentials back from the gestor when we were about to leave Spain, almost two years later.
In Spain it’s not so much what you achieve as the motions you go through.
© Ken Harris 2009
In September, 1974, Sunnyview School had around 115 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. For the elementary grades we followed Calvert School’s curriculum. Calvert School, an accredited day school in Baltimore, Maryland, also furnished materials for home study students, and this decades before the concept became fashionable. High school was done by correspondence through the University of Nebraska. In this way a certain continuity of curriculum was established since the instructional staff itself hailed from Finland, Spain, Scotland, England, France, Canada, Northern Ireland and the U.S. Some of us had teacher training while others had only their availability to recommend them.
The main two-story building at Sunnyview School housed classrooms for first- through eighth-grades. The school office sat on the ground floor where director Honey Pettis and two clerks kept things going. Two principals also kept offices in the building, elementary school principal Jane Barbadillo and high school principal David McConnell. However since Barbadillo and McConnell both had full-time teaching duties, those offices were seldom occupied. Otherwise the building had classrooms for first-through eighth-graders.
Kindergarteners had their own small magic kingdom to the south, separated from the main building by a field of monkey bars, rings and slides. West of the main building lay the swimming pool and the high school class rooms.
The buildings themselves were made of el cheapo hollow clay bricks, made so light you could carry eight at a time. You could probably drop one on your foot with no more than an “oh, damn.” Nothing like the humungous bricks we’re used to in the States. And it wasn’t just the school buying the cheapest commodity they could. This was how bricks were made in Spain. Once in place, workmen covered the bricks with a rough, stucco.
The same el cheapo bricks that formed the buildings also formed the walls surrounding the school, but without the stucco. The bricks were set with wide air spaces between each one. In such a way about fifty percent of the wall was pure hole in the wall so that air could freely flow through without blowing over the barricade. It was just the sort of barrier an enthusiastic kid could ram his motorcycle right through. In fact, that is what one student did the year before we arrived. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, since that would have been unmanly, with the result that he significantly lowered his own I.Q. He didn’t help the wall any, either.
We had no central air or heating. Joanne and I never found the heat oppressive, but, man, it got cold. You always hear about Sunny Spain. Nobody talks much about Warm Spain, especially in winter. We would have all frozen if it hadn’t been for Maguire. Maguire was the school cat, black except for a few white markings. He was in charge of maintaining a mouse-free environment in the kitchen and pantry. In winter he doubled in brass as a hand warmer. Kids smuggled him into class rooms and passed him from lap to lap during the long, boring lectures of which teachers are so fond. Whenever a kid looked directly into a teacher’s eyes, expression bland and inscrutable, you knew he or she had Maguire in hand.
It was totally illegal for us to work at Sunnyview School. We didn’t have green cards. None of us on the educational staff did. I don’t think the Spanish government even had any green cardstock on which they could print any. But we had our cover stories. If the authorities were to raid the school one day, we were to sit in the back of the room and claim that we were only parents, there to observe, while the real teacher had just stepped out. Since we had two children at the school, our cover story might have worked. But how impressed were the authorities going to be if they found six rooms, six observant parents and zero teachers?
The situation was silly. But I trace it to the fact that the Spanish government didn’t like foreigners with their foreign ideas and values. They didn’t trust their influence. We were there during the last year Franco was alive and the first year of Juan Carlos’ rule. But if the government didn’t really like foreigners, it really liked foreign money. Lots of it.. So long as we brought in yankee dollars, pounds, deutschmarks, Swiss francs, we weren’t in much danger of deportation. All the same time, they made it almost impossible to live in the country legally. You were always breaking some law, even if it was having three friends over for brewskis. They were setting it up so that it would be easy to get rid of you if they wanted to.
So even though we sensed that the government didn’t really care, Honey Pettis wanted us to go through the pretext of applying for work permits. This led us to one of Spain’s most noble type of citizens, the gestor (hess.TOR, not jester). Although it seems like a joke, the gestor is a fixer. He fixes things between people and their government. Even when they’re not broken, he fixes them.
We went to the gestor and presented him with our teaching credentials. He was very impressed with Joanne’s. He admired the quality of the paper, the impressive seal and signatures. After much praise, he put both certificates in a folder and kept them. I thought Joanne was going to swallow her tongue.
We never got green cards, and maybe that’s why I can sympathize a bit with the plight of the illegal alien here in Arizona, working without a green card and hoping he can lie or run fast if he gets caught. Oddly enough, the gestor got us Spanish social security, which qualified us for government funded medical treatment in Spain. Since the United Kingdom had a reciprocal agreement with Spain, we were also entitled to government health care when vacationing in England as well. We got our credentials back from the gestor when we were about to leave Spain, almost two years later.
In Spain it’s not so much what you achieve as the motions you go through.
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