Our first lodging was in a boarding house on Calle Teotihuacan between Amsterdam and Insurgentes. It must have been recommended to father by the Rafaels. The house was a small, neat affair in the Bauhaus vernacular that invaded Mexico in the 30’s and 40’s. There were some mansions in the old Porfirian style on the northern edges of la colonia Condesa but, having been developed after the Revolution, most of district was just “plain and boxy”.
Our boarding house stood behind a postage stamp garden separated from the street by a wrought iron fence or reja. The door to the house opened into a railway corridor, at the far end of which stood the kitchen and to the right of which was a rectangular room I was not allowed to enter. Passed that came a rectangular dining room -- dark, dank and sunless its only light entering through a rectangular window that opened onto a concrete, high-walled, square courtyard, in which I once tried to fly a red kite with no success.
To the left of the front door was a staircase to the rooms upstairs. Our room was above the one I was not allowed into. It was softly bright and powder blue. Two twin beds rested against the far wall. Each had a little night stand, with a white or cut glass lamp covered with a plastic-encased pink or blue lampshade. A mirrored vanity stood against the near wall, and facing the street was a large window shielded by venetian blinds and hung with white linen curtains through which filtered an even, almost florescent light. The room had a very clean, near odorless smell the strongest scent of which was the plastic on the shades.
Each night-stand had a spherical glass decanter of water with a clear drinking glass covering the spout. I had never seen such a thing, but was to see it ever after. In Mexico, every bed had its night stand and every night stand its water decanter and glass.
At night, I’d lie in bed watching the play of shadow and light reflect off the wall and ceiling. We were close enough to Avenida Insurgentes that the sounds of city traffic could be heard through the blinds, muffled just enough to be a kind of urban lullaby. The refrain I liked best was the occasional but regular “ding ding ... ding ding..." of the the trolley as its steel on steel wheels passed by making an even, smooth friction sound zzzsshzzzsshzzzsshzzzsshzzzshzzzsshzzzsshzzzsshzzzshhh
In the day, I’d watch the new green and cream “PCC” cars whir by, the ball-like grip on the tip of their poles sliding down the silvery steel cable that hung from T-shaped scaffolds spaced down the center of the avenue. It was consoling to know that Mexico City had trains but nothing was like the Second Avenue “El” -- not even the Eiffel Tower whose massive counter-weighted elevators had fascinated me a year or so before. No, the “El” was sans pareil and I missed New York because I missed the El,
... and the anticipatory thrill of walking up the wrought iron staircases of the metal-gothic stations with their iron lattice-work, goose-necked lanterns, gables, and acorn shaped domes encasing wood waiting rooms and ticket counters, heavily lacquered, re-lacquered and-lacquered over again with decades of varnish and the sweat of a innumerable hands, that pushed through the creaky, heavy beamed wooden turn-styles, past which was the station platform of dry wood slats, thirsting for oil, sanded daily by the soles of thousands of feet and from which -- looking left or right, downtown or uptown -- you saw an undulating river of rails, ties, cables, semaphores, and railings stretching as far as the eye could see, to the vanishing point from whence in the distance came a huge black metal centipede, heaving back and forth as if the whole thing were going to topple, slowly and soundlessly crawling forward, then stopping, before crawling again and making its way to where you stood, suddenly clattering into the station with a tremendous rattling of all the planks and windows, making the steel creak and groan in its rivets, before gliding to a stop with an almost imperceptible jerk and opening its doors with an exhaling pshhhhhhwwwwwwooooosh as if exhausted from the effort.
The Second Avenue Elevated, still had the old cars, the ones with rounded windows and entry foyers made in the days when even commute trains were conceived of as parlors on wheels -- not mere shuttle boxes. Of course, I always wanted to be at the front of the front parlor, staring out the window as the centipede rocked back and forth and undulated forward over the rails.
Shortly before we left for Mexico, Mayor Wagner proudly announced that the El was going to be torn down. I was aghast. But why? Why do such a thing? I wanted to know if there was some letter my parents could write for me to stop this outrage. The adults explained that this was really for the better. The El made the streets dark and dirty; and how would I like it if my living room or bedroom window opened right on to the tracks exposing you to the noise of passing trains day and night?
That hardly seemed like such a bad thing to my mind, but with a certain amount of effort I could conceive that maybe some people might not like it. Still, tearing down “The El” was not a solution; why not move the people away?
So now, as the shadows played off the ceiling and as the ding-ding... ding-ding joined its refrain to the traffic’s night song, I thought of the El and felt not too far from home.
But I was and, needless to say, in these first days, there was plenty of sight-seeing, and I was always -- not too enthusiastically -- being dragged along. So it was that shortly after settling in on Teotihuacan Street, I got hauled off to the vast Zócalo, the very centre of the Mexican Cosmos, in saecula saeculorum.
No doubt father proudly presented and mother was duly impressed by the massive Spanish baroque cathedral, built atop the legendary lost pyramid, and fronted and flanked by the endless morisco facades in red tezontle stone of the National Palace, the Ayuntamiento, and other government buildings.
But what caught my eye, and excited me no end, was the sight of Los Amarillos -- Mexico City’s real trolleys, famous even before Frida Kahlo. These yellow tranvías held their own against any El. Made of metal and wood, you could hear their clatter, rattle and claptrap, as they came around the curve to where you were standing. They would come to such an abrupt halt that it seemed they would fall apart in a heap right in front of you. A mechanical step would would unfold down with a sharp “clat / clat” in which you could hear the metal and the rivets “socketing” in their joints. The steps would creak and give as you stepped up into the wooden car with its rattling window panes, loose metal poles and painted wood seats and dusty wooden slatted floors. With a ding ding, the conductor would swing a heavy metal lever in its joint and the trolley would abruptly start up again, careening down the tracks making sudden spine wrenching, hip dislocating right-faces and left-faces as it turned corners like some toy soldier. What exquisite turns! What magnificent machines! The center of the Mexican Cosmos had won my heart.
Within the year they too were gone forever.
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