Our Spanish Villa
©Ken Harris 2008
I was surprised when we moved to Spain because I thought they spoke Spanish there. You know. Spain? Spanish?
Not in Torremolinos. Torremolinos is in Andalucía (ahn.dah.loo.SEE.yah) where they speak Andalú (ahn.dah.LOO), a Spanish version of Hillbilly. To properly speak Andalú you must drop the first and last syllables of all the longer words and shout out the remainder. Adiós becomes “JO!!!” Part of the Andalú accent is volume, the louder the better. Earplugs help.
We were certainly in no way qualified to go out and rent our own house and so Honey Pettis enlisted the aid of her Spanish teacher, Carmen Wooten-Reyes. Carmen spoke English well, but rapidly and with a heavy Spanish accent. If she was emotional about something, I could hardly understand a word she said. Just what we needed. Someone we couldn’t understand in two languages.
The situation was not quite so dismal, though, because in short order we understood her well enough to go house hunting. We found a place north of town, Urbanización (oor.bah.nee.sah.see.ON) Colómbia (ko.LOM.bee.yah). The urbanización consisted of four homes, each one named for a city in Colombia. Our house was named Villa Medellín (VEE.yah may.day.YEEN). If our mail had been delivered to the house, that would have been the address. No street names or numbers.
I promise you, by the way, that I will only offend you with spelling for pronunciation the first time you encounter the word.
Our urbanización fronted the highway connecting Málaga and Cádiz (KAH.dees). Built by the Phoenicians to connect their two sea ports, it was the busiest road on the Iberian Peninsula in Phoenician times. In 1974, our time, it was still the busiest road on the Iberian Peninsula, and what with a nationwide epidemic of poor ignition and faulty mufflers, it was also the noisiest and smelliest.
When you see the Spanish word urbanización you think of the English word “urbanization.” Nothing of the sort. Our urbanización lay next to our noisy, smelly, loud highway to the south and vacant fields to the north, west and east. They were nice vacant fields, though, with wild asparagus in season and chamomile.
The houses themselves had rubble walls plastered over and built right on to the ground without benefit of even a mud sill. This method of construction had some curious consequences for us in winter. When the ground was wet, the walls acted as a wick with the result that the inside of the house was colder than a teacher’s wit.
Also in the winter it never got completely dry in the house. Clothes tended to mildew and we had to procure some hot rods for the closet, heating rods you could plug in to at least keep your closet dry. We had the same kind of rods on Guam, but the weather was much warmer.
We had heavy wooden shutters controlled by pulleys and cranks from indoors. It kept out intruders and also noise from the highway. Since in the two years we lived there we were never bothered by either, it must have done a good job. A tile roof completed our architectural ensemble.
We had one green feature to the house that we really liked, a passive solar water heating system. Coils of copper pipe lay in a shallow box, glassed on the side facing the sun most of the day, and with a black interior. The low end of the coil connected to the domestic water supply. The high end fed into a 60-gallon water tank on the roof that fed scalding water by gravity. And the whole thing operated without computers. Just the laws of science and nature. What a concept.
However, the water functioned through another force, this one national rather than natural. The mordida (mor.DEEdah). The “little bite.” And we weren’t fond of that at all. Mordida is a Spanish custom that predates the Romans. In America we call it bribery and we do it secretly. In Spain, and maybe the rest of the world for all I know, it is done without secrecy or compunction. Grease for the wheels of commerce.
Our urbanización owners, Mr. and Mrs. Boli, lived in Algiers. Once each month they would cross the puddle to Torremolinos to collect the rent and pay the mordida to the sanjero (sahn.HAIR.o), aka the water guy, to make sure we received the water that had already been paid for by conventional means. But just to make sure, we paid another small mordida to the man who lived with his family in the tool shed-sized building behind the four houses. (Come to think of it, they may have lived in the tool shed.) He was the Boli’s “full time” maintenance man. Although the Bolis didn’t pay him much, he didn’t do much either. If we really wanted something done, we had better come up with 100 pesetas (about $1.34).
You couldn’t run a household without mordida. I remember the garbage men coming by on Christmas day to collect their gift. There were two of them and I gave them 1000 pesetas (about $13.40) to split between them because I didn’t want them to suddenly start making deliveries.
I’ve been off topic here with my rant about mordidas, but I’ve always disliked them, primarily because no one ever saw fit to give me any.
To finish off our house description, we had three bed rooms, a maid’s room where I set up for writing, a living room and a kitchen with built in scrubbing board riffles so you can wash your socks with the dishes. Actually, the riffles were great for draining the dishes before you put them away. There was no garage, but we were thinking about trying life without a car since we were within walking distance of the school.
And so we began our lives as temporary ex-pats.
Showing posts with label Honey Pettis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Honey Pettis. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2009
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.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
First Night in Torremolinos
First Night in Torremolinos
©Ken Harris, 2008
Welcome to Spain. Bienvenidos a España. Give us $400, por favor. It was the overage from Los Angeles come to haunt us all the way across the Atlantic. Joanne got steamed all over again. She’s still steamed, come to think of it. But it’s early days yet. This happened in 1974 and it’s only 2008. Anyway, we showed the kindly TWA representative our receipts and he released us just in time to make our flight to Málaga.
All my benighted life I had been mispronouncing the name of this city, putting the accent on the second syllable rather than the first. Perhaps it’s because I had never seen it spelled properly before, with an accent over the first “a.” In the States we aren’t given to tildes, umlauts, or other accents. Anyway, I had misgivings. I wondered how many other words I was going to have to learn to pronounce over again.
Our future boss, Honey Pettis, met us at the Málaga airport, piled us into the Sunnyview School van and drove us to our new home, Torremolinos (tor.ray.mo.LEE.nos). Honey was French and her first name was Huguette, but she despaired of her American husband, or any other American for that matter, learning to pronounce her name properly, and she said she preferred “Honey.” Since she was running an American school and many of her parents were Americans, the nickname just made things easier all round.
Honey took us to an apartment on the first floor of a beachfront apartment building. We rested for a bit and then walked to the Pettis residence, also beach front, where we met the entire Pettis family, Chuck Sr., Mike, Chuck Jr., John and Sultan, the German Shepherd who liked to carry large rocks in his mouth.
On returning to our apartment we were briefly confounded by the buttons on the elevator. If we were on the first floor, why did we need an elevator? Because in Spain, and in all of Europe from what I understand, the first floor is on the second floor. The ground floor is the piso bajo (pee.so BÄH.ho) and is clearly marked on the elevator button with a PB. The floor above the piso bajo has to be the first floor, doesn’t it? You could start numbering with the second floor, but that wouldn’t be very logical now, would it?
We unpacked enough stuff to get to bed and I don’t think it took anyone longer than thirty seconds to get to sleep. It had been a long day. We slept soundly until around 2:00 in the morning when a drunk began serenading the neighborhood with music from Jesus Christ, Superstar. Well, not the duet and chorus numbers, but the solos. And the man had a magnificent voice. Badly as we needed our sleep, Joanne and I were glad that nobody interrupted him until he was through with his concert.
Old habits die hard, and Joanne and I were awake as the sun rose. Somehow coffee, bread and butter had materialized in our apartment and, as the sun came up behind our building, we sat on our balcony overlooking the Mediterranean taking our breakfast and thinking, “You know, this could work out.”
©Ken Harris, 2008
Welcome to Spain. Bienvenidos a España. Give us $400, por favor. It was the overage from Los Angeles come to haunt us all the way across the Atlantic. Joanne got steamed all over again. She’s still steamed, come to think of it. But it’s early days yet. This happened in 1974 and it’s only 2008. Anyway, we showed the kindly TWA representative our receipts and he released us just in time to make our flight to Málaga.
All my benighted life I had been mispronouncing the name of this city, putting the accent on the second syllable rather than the first. Perhaps it’s because I had never seen it spelled properly before, with an accent over the first “a.” In the States we aren’t given to tildes, umlauts, or other accents. Anyway, I had misgivings. I wondered how many other words I was going to have to learn to pronounce over again.
Our future boss, Honey Pettis, met us at the Málaga airport, piled us into the Sunnyview School van and drove us to our new home, Torremolinos (tor.ray.mo.LEE.nos). Honey was French and her first name was Huguette, but she despaired of her American husband, or any other American for that matter, learning to pronounce her name properly, and she said she preferred “Honey.” Since she was running an American school and many of her parents were Americans, the nickname just made things easier all round.
Honey took us to an apartment on the first floor of a beachfront apartment building. We rested for a bit and then walked to the Pettis residence, also beach front, where we met the entire Pettis family, Chuck Sr., Mike, Chuck Jr., John and Sultan, the German Shepherd who liked to carry large rocks in his mouth.
On returning to our apartment we were briefly confounded by the buttons on the elevator. If we were on the first floor, why did we need an elevator? Because in Spain, and in all of Europe from what I understand, the first floor is on the second floor. The ground floor is the piso bajo (pee.so BÄH.ho) and is clearly marked on the elevator button with a PB. The floor above the piso bajo has to be the first floor, doesn’t it? You could start numbering with the second floor, but that wouldn’t be very logical now, would it?
We unpacked enough stuff to get to bed and I don’t think it took anyone longer than thirty seconds to get to sleep. It had been a long day. We slept soundly until around 2:00 in the morning when a drunk began serenading the neighborhood with music from Jesus Christ, Superstar. Well, not the duet and chorus numbers, but the solos. And the man had a magnificent voice. Badly as we needed our sleep, Joanne and I were glad that nobody interrupted him until he was through with his concert.
Old habits die hard, and Joanne and I were awake as the sun rose. Somehow coffee, bread and butter had materialized in our apartment and, as the sun came up behind our building, we sat on our balcony overlooking the Mediterranean taking our breakfast and thinking, “You know, this could work out.”
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