{"id":572,"date":"2010-08-28T23:10:48","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T23:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=572"},"modified":"2012-01-28T23:11:30","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T23:11:30","slug":"a-phone-call-from-jaime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/a-phone-call-from-jaime\/","title":{"rendered":"A Phone Call From Jaime"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ja\u00ecme called my cell phone on the eve of my birthday to wish me feliz cumplea\u00f1os<\/em>. At least I think that is why he called. As usual, he was speaking Spanish so rapidly that I only caught every fourth word. We got cut off after only a minute or so. My phone said \u201cunknown number\u201d so I couldn\u2019t return the call. He never called back. Most likely he lost reception in the tiny village of Paso del Correo \u2014 which means post office \u2014 deep in the interior of the Mexican state of Veracruz, where he owns a small farm below the pyramids of El Tajin \u2014 a pre-Columbian archaeological site more than 2,000 years old. Someday I wish to visit Ja\u00ecme and see the site. Someday I will.<\/p>\n

I was greatly relieved to hear from Ja\u00ecme, however briefly, since it is the first word I have gotten in 15 months that he made it home safely from East Texas, driving the 1997 Ford Ranger he bought the last year he lived in the United States. Until that purchase, I would pick him up at the rundown trailer park where he lived with three other men without air-conditioning, each paying $50 a week for the privilege.<\/p>\n

My Spanglish \u2014 the Tex-Mex Spanish I learned largely while working with him \u2014 has gotten rusty since Ja\u00ecme returned to his home in Mexico after more than a decade of working in East Texas and sending money back home to support his wife and two children.\u00a0 For more than nine years, Ja\u00ecme worked for me on weekends \u2014 painting, doing yard work, building fences, hanging Christmas lights, whatever needed done. We spent hundreds of hours together over those years, discussing politics, sports, music and immigration reform. He called me his patr\u00f2n.<\/em> I called him my compadre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme is now 50, a round little fellow with a full head of black hair and a matching moustache. He is always smiling, no matter how unpleasant the job. He possessed a Rain Man ability to remember dates that always floored me.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeester Gary, the shuttle blew up four years ago today,\u201d he would say, recalling that horrific morning when pieces of Columbia rained down on Nacogdoches and East Texas, where we both lived at the time \u2014 where I ran the newspaper. Or even more mundane items, such as \u201cTwo years ago, we painted that rent house of yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme only has an eighth-grade education but is as an addicted news junkie as I have known. He only learned enough English to get by, so most of his news came from the Spanish-language television networks and newspapers. We talked politics all the time. Ja\u00ecme will talk the bark off a tree, whether one understands what he is saying or not. As I once wrote, Ja\u00ecme apparently believes that if he speaks Spanish long enough the person to whom he is talking will learn it by osmosis. I actually did learn quite a bit of Spanish hanging around with him for nearly a decade. My most-common expression with Ja\u00ecme: Habla despacio, por favor<\/em>, which means, speak slowly, please.<\/p>\n

My favorite and oft-told story stems from several years ago, when I introduced him to two junior-high Japanese exchange students. Of course, Ja\u00ecme began speaking rapidly to them in Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cJa\u00ecme,\u201d I protested. \u201cThese girls are from Japan. They don\u2019t know Spanish.\u201d He replied rather haughtily, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t speak Japanese,\u201d and continued his machine-gun patter en Espa\u00f1ol<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme was much in demand as a handyman in East Texas. He was an excellent painter, decent carpenter and plumber, and knew how to string barbed wire. Most importantly, he is the hardest, most honest worker I know, someone you could leave alone for eight hours and know that he if finished his appointed tasks he would find something else to do. That work ethic is a rarity these days, sad to say.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme proudly showed me photos of his home over the years. With the money he made working in East Texas, seven days a week for a circle of people doing whatever needed to be done, it was transformed over the years from a squat cinderblock structure to a story-and-a-half adobe-surfaced house, with a gleaming cedar door, ceramic-tiled floors and marble counters in the bathroom. And air-conditioning.<\/p>\n

I hope Ja\u00ecme and his family are doing well and that he calls back soon. I didn\u2019t get to ask about them, in that brief minute we connected. As usual, I could barely get a word in edgewise with my compadre.<\/em><\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t even know I live in Kansas now. I was trying to explain that to him when the phone went dead. I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll have a lot to say about that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Print this entryJa\u00ecme called my cell phone on the eve of my birthday to wish me feliz cumplea\u00f1os. At least I think that is why he called. As usual, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[39,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-39","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}