(no subject)
Maybe this is a leading question, but if you had to make a guess, would you think these hats were owned by a Mexican vato or my 61-year-old father?
If you guessed my dad, you were correct!
Despite the fact that he doesn't speak Spanish, my dad recently developed an interest in narcocorrido music, which is a form of Mexican music that tells the stories of tragically flawed, heroic drug dealers. There's a bit of accordion in there too. Which I think may have been the initial appeal.
On many long road trips I can remember my dad scanning the FM band, looking for the familiar strains of an accordion and the "ai-yai-yai!" call of the singers. For some reason the accordion spoke to him. And I suspect it also helped keep him awake on long drives.
Years later he was employed at a job where most of his co-workers brought in stereos and blasted their music. They preferred the nu-rock stations, and at a very high volume, which irritated my dad. He asked them to turn it down a few times, but they didn't listen. So then he got an idea. He went online and ordered one of the most powerful boomboxes produced. When it arrived he put the batteries in, tuned it to the Spanish channel and watched the fall out. His co-workers no longer felt the need to visit his workstation and tell my dad about the television show they had watched the night before that my dad could care less about, and they began to limit their chats to work related topics.
This was all a welcome turn of events for my dad. He had stopped taking breaks with his co-workers, and had started sleeping in his car during his lunch hour. If anyone tapped on his car and motioned for him to roll the window down while he was prone in the backseat, he'd give a simple shake of the head and say, "I'm on my break, man," and close his eyes again.
The more he listened to the Spanish station, the more he noticed the differences in the music. In the early morning they favored the narcocorridos, which he theorized was for the fruit pickers, and as the day progressed, the music changed. He favored the corrido ballads, and began seeking out bands such as Los Tigres Del Norte, and Los Dos Plebes.
This newfound interest in corrido music influenced his sartorial choices, as evidenced by the photos at the top of this post, but it also affected his beer buying as well. Nearly every time I'd come to visit there would be a six pack of Pacifico chilling in the fridge. One night I suggested getting some limes to put in the beer, and my dad looked at me as if I had just proposed we go beat up a baby. "That's for gringos, man," he said and then shook his head in disdain.