Yucatan in the early 1970s
(another in Froggy's youthful memories series)
In 1973 I was with my family in Mérida, Yucatán. The city did not seem significantly less modern to me than the U.S.A. or London, but the countryside was quite a different matter. Mérida had the peninsula's modern international airport, back when Cozumel still had a gravel landing strip served by small prop planes, and Cancun was still a dream in developers' imaginations.
One day at a market with my older sister, we were talking to a country Maya woman who came in to the market. She asked if we two blonde haired people came from far away. Did we come by bus? No, Sister explained, we came by airplane. "Airplane," the woman repeated looking at us for a moment, then asking, "Is it true that the sky has no end?"
One weekend my Dad took the family to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. We drove west on a well paved two lane road, which most people drove down the center of, except when passing vehicles going the other way. Piste was the town nearest the ruins, and my Dad had been informed he could get the gas tank refilled there. He went up and back the length of the small town without seeing a gas station, so he asked someone. He was directed to a non-descript shop building, where he knocked on a door. The man who answered asked how many liters he wanted, then came out with a big metal milk can of gas, a smaller can used to scoop and measure, and a funnel.
So, yes, I am old enough to remember my dad getting gasoline for his automobile at the hardware store, before these newfangled gas pumps had popped up everywhere.
In 1973 I was with my family in Mérida, Yucatán. The city did not seem significantly less modern to me than the U.S.A. or London, but the countryside was quite a different matter. Mérida had the peninsula's modern international airport, back when Cozumel still had a gravel landing strip served by small prop planes, and Cancun was still a dream in developers' imaginations.
One day at a market with my older sister, we were talking to a country Maya woman who came in to the market. She asked if we two blonde haired people came from far away. Did we come by bus? No, Sister explained, we came by airplane. "Airplane," the woman repeated looking at us for a moment, then asking, "Is it true that the sky has no end?"
One weekend my Dad took the family to the famous ruins of Chichen Itza. We drove west on a well paved two lane road, which most people drove down the center of, except when passing vehicles going the other way. Piste was the town nearest the ruins, and my Dad had been informed he could get the gas tank refilled there. He went up and back the length of the small town without seeing a gas station, so he asked someone. He was directed to a non-descript shop building, where he knocked on a door. The man who answered asked how many liters he wanted, then came out with a big metal milk can of gas, a smaller can used to scoop and measure, and a funnel.
So, yes, I am old enough to remember my dad getting gasoline for his automobile at the hardware store, before these newfangled gas pumps had popped up everywhere.