Dios bendiga a todos ustedes, hijos de puta!
My first stop in my Leo van route is now 46th and Laflin where I wait for BK, a tough little Irish/Polish kid from a few miles west of St. Gabe's in Canaryville. I had drained my morning's Dunkin Donuts coffee twenty minutes earlier at Leo, before I hiked the # 7 grey Ford van west on 79th Street and north on Loomis to 47th Street. Loomis is the cat's nuts for driving and should be on every south side drivers short list for alternate route, when the Ryan is glutted. I wanted to coffee up and reluctantly chose the Mickey D's. McDonald's is to Dunkin Donut coffee as Span is to jamón de bellota of Barcelona.
At the McDonald's located at 47th Laflin the crowd is treated to music by man in his thirties who stands almost as tall as his guitar.
He is a Mexican gent who the City workers, cops, Leo Van drivers and the lay-abouts all with campesino tunes - the Irish would call these Culchie tunes and Americans hillybilly music. This morning the hardest working man in Mexican folk music broke into a tune done by the Gipsy Kings: Campesino:
No te vayas tu de miNo te vayas por favorNo te vayas tu de miEl mundo seria en florUn mundo mejor
CampesinoCampesinoCampesino sono yo
CampesinoCampesinoCampesino sono yo
Que campesino que campesinoQue campesino que sono yoQue campesino que campesinoQue campesino que sono yo
No te vayas por favorNo te vayas tu de miNo te vayas por favorUn mundo sera mejorUn mundo en flor
translates to -
Do not go 'bout me
Do not go, please
Do not go 'bout me
The world would be in bloom
A Better World
peasant
peasant
Farmer sono I
peasant
peasant
Farmer sono I
That peasant farmer
That peasant sono I
That peasant farmer
That peasant sono I
Do not go, please
Do not go 'bout me
Do not go, please
A better world will
A world in bloom
Tell me about it. Now this is way to wake-up the human juices and get the old nose out of one's belly button.
This little guy is fully No Se, Ingles and carries a battered guitar with cut-gut strings which he thumbs out the bass notes with a thick plastic thumb plectrum and works blistered and gnarled fingers with the delicacy of a Segovia and gives full-throated appreciation of tune an lyrics.
After I got my coffee, I listened to the song and offered my Spanglished appreciation, "Maravilloso! Que dulce el canto, Senor!" I duked him three bucks and my manly grip in Adios, Bub!
What was marvelous, in all of this was the man's pride and dignity. He stood all of four feet and change and locked smiling eyes on all of us.
¡Qué hombre!
