For two days, hot water has not been working.
The landlord has been attentive, sent someone by who thought it might be something it wasn’t, then sends his maintenance man to troubleshoot.
Hugo comes prepared with a tape measure, apartment keys, an electrical voltage tester, screwdrivers, and instructions that if he can’t get it fixed it will require an electrician or plumber and no hot water for several more days.
Hugo, a short man, stands on a chair and tests power to the electrical box into which the electric hot water heater is plugged. It is getting juice to the box, but no juice through the switch to the hot water heater. He shows me the switch after he pulls it out of the electrical box.
“No bueno,” he says.
“Puede repairo?” I ask.
Hugo says he will be back in 15 minutes, takes the dead switch and leaves to a neighborhood ferreteria, comes back in thirty minutes and completes his job.
A green light comes on at the bottom of the hot water heater when he is done and indicates all systems are functioning properly.
I check the hot water fifteen minutes after he leaves to make sure I have hot water, and I do.
In this world, it is Hugo’s who keep wheels turning.
Cold showers, any time of the day, aren’t hot.
Blues chords aren’t complex, the rhythms and melodies aren’t sophisticated, the harmony is a step down from folk music but several steps below jazz.
Stevie Ray Vaughn isn’t the only white blues man to make it big and suffer an untimely end. He has been gone a while but the songs this group are playing, on Sarandi Street, are straight from his Real Book.
This street band features a bass guitar and a lead guitarist who handles vocals. Percussion is supplied by a kid sitting on a drum box. They have microphones positioned so I hear them from blocks away.
The bass guitar player asks where I am from during a break, and, when I answer, in English, he points me to the lead singer who speaks the best English.
Uruguayans are friendly and helpful people and unfailingly good with gringos trying to speak their language. It is sweet the way they always talk about their bad English, but never mention my abysmal Spanish.
The guys jam, hit notes, stick with the beat – one, two, three, four, one, two,three, four beats to a bar.
I sit on a wide stone window ledge in front of a men’s clothing store and listen to an entire set and make sure I leave them money in an open guitar case.
Texas blues sound good anywhere.
In old Montevideo. I call the band ” Men in Black. ”
Stevie would be pleased.
Walking towards Constitution Plaza from Independence Plaza, there are bronze Generals on horseback every block, as well as little plaza’s and parks.
There is something sad about memorializing heroes in bronze and then placing them outside where pigeons squat on their pointed military hats and defecate on their medals. It is an unfitting end for men who have contributed so much to their country.
There are plenty of fountains on this boulevard too, mostly in the center of plazas with water pouring from jars held by Roman Goddesses or shooting from the pursed lips of cherubs. These fountains sometimes have no water, waiting for maintenance men to hook up lines, clean the pond, paint the walls of the pool. Occasionally, in front of well financed government buildings, you find ponds with water lilies and colorful fish.
In Constitution Park the fountain is generic and empty of water and I am startled because it appears one of the statues from this fountain has been moved by delinquents in front of my McDonalds.
There is a small jar filled with money at the statues feet.
Stepping back and watching, I watch the statue lips move and I see her breathe.
The makeup on her face is thick and her hair is perfect. She remains still and doesn’t make eye contact until I drop a bill into her jar. Then she bows and smiles, reaches into a pocket and hands me my personal fortune written in Spanish, which I have since lost, but am sure it wished me a long and prosperous life with a wife that loves me and seven or eight children who get good grades in school and go to bed on time.
I wave at her, she smiles at me, her palms opening and closing as she clicks two wood castanets. She finishes with a bow, to me, and returns to her statue position.
It is easy to get mentally lazy.
She has made this day spicy, and, for that, she is a real Goddess.
This live concert is next to the Mercado, about lunchtime. There are posters advertising it on phone poles but their music grabs me by the ear through my open studio window and drags me to come watch and listen.
This band calls themselves ,” Murga Don Timoteo”, a local group sponsored by a local paint company.
They perform with style, sporting costumes that look more African and Brazilian than Uruguayan, and, despite their visual cornucopia, they sing with precision, clipping notes that need to be clipped and holding notes that need holding with dynamics and vibrato.
Good singing is good to find and this free concert is good luck for a music lover like myself.
If this chorus line wasn’t dressed up like Las Vegas dancers, would their music sound as good as it does?
The answer, of course, is ,Yes.
Big cities should be a worker’s paradise with good wages because there is too much construction and maintenance needed to match equally with people who will work a long hard day for little pay and no recognition.
Walking near Constitution Plaza, on Sarandi street, Gustavo, a fellow painter, is working in a doorway. He has applied paint remover and is scraping softened varnish off a door jamb with a scraper that won’t damage the wood.
Gustavo’s next step will be to take sandpaper and smooth the wood surfaces. Then, after cleaning, he will apply a thinned down undercoat of polyurethane, lightly sand and wipe everything down with a tack cloth, and finish the project with two full strength coats of exterior polyurethane with a flourish of his three inch sash brush.
Painting is not without honor but, at the end of the day, it was, for me, always a relief to clean my brushes, fold drop cloths, seal up paint cans and load the van.
New doesn’t last long in a city of several million and paint makes glamour girls out of a lot of plain Jane buildings, offices, kitchens,bathrooms and bedrooms.
Working men keep this world operating.
It takes an even bigger crew of painters to keep the stars sparkling.
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