travel

You Can't Always Get What You Want

You can’t always get what you want! Rolling Stone Magazine’s 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time listed the Rolling Stones’ tune “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at number 100. It would have been higher on my list. I loved the blending of the London Bach Choir Ford F350 under hoodwith a rock band – I have always liked that harmonious amalgamate.

Right here you might be saying, yeah, OK what does this have to do with Mexico? This is not as far disconnected as some of my fellow wordsmith Steve Cotton’s metaphors (I love that guy’s writing).

You definitely cannot always get what you want in Mexico. We folks from the United States have been spoiled beyond our wildest cravings by the accessibility of all things.

Try as we might we were NOT able to find a mechanic and then a part we needed for our BIG WHITE Ford F350 – it is diesel and full of pipes, hoses, wires and greasy mechanical things that still bear the tags, “Made in Mexico”. But, the beast is a stranger in Mexico regardless of what those “Made in Mexico” tags might lead you to believe. We had no less than seven hombres and innumerable auto establishments involved with trying to get that behemoth blanco truck moving. “You can’t always get what you want.”

During our recent trip to the United States I mailed off the part I suspected (from the very beginning; I might pat myself on the back about that if it wasn’t useless) from Las Vegas, Nevada to somewhere in Florida. In what seemed just moments (a few days actually) Victor called to report my part was in fact defective; and for 325.00 he would send me a replacement. You can imagine that at that point, some 4 months since the truck went idle, that $325 US bucks was a small price to pay should that really resolve the problem – I mean I had more Mexican’s under the hood of that truck than you can get in a Volkswagen. I had them send the part to New Mexico knowing we would arrive there about the time the part would get to the western side of America. There were some hoops to jump through to finally get that part in our hands but it happened and off it went to Mexico in the Jetta with hundreds of pounds of other stuff and our collective 250 pounds of bodies.

Since our return I have been repairing a few things that decided to revolt in our absence. I installed a new power supply we bought at Fry’s in our desktop. That worked and so did all the minor repairs I had done. You see I decided not to rush up to the street and install the replacement primary computer module in the Big White Truck. I wanted to be prepared mentally for whatever might happen after the install.

More lyrics from that great Stones tune, “We gonna vent our frustration - If we don’t we’ll blow a fifty amp fuse.” I had already replaced 60 amps worth of fuses that had a meltdown in our absence. So after five days since our return I embarked on the Big White Truck project. Vicente came over and stuck his head under the hood. Now I had a witness and perhaps someone that might help old Ford emblemassuage any disappointment. At #110 on the Rolling Stone list is Otis Redding’s, “I’ve Been Loving You Oh Too Long”. “Don’t make me stop loving you now… (Another GREAT tune). I wanted the love affair with that Big White Truck to continue; it has been more than ten years. Within 20 minutes I was ready to turn it over. It roared into action as if it had been rode hard and stabled wet the day before. Hallelujah! As the Chorus ends: “You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometime, yeah, You just might find you get what you need!” I didn’t get what I wanted, but I did get what I needed and life is just a little better today.

¡Manténgase Sintonizado! (i.e. Stay Tuned)

John Calypso lives in Veracruz, Mexico. Back in the 60s, he was a very hip guy living in Hollywood and rubbing shoulders with Beatles and Monkees. Read lots more in his blog, Viva Veracruz.

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