Most of what one sees today around Ajijic did not exist in the ‘60s. None of the suburbs were there, and were in fact an uninterrupted series of large cornfields going right up the hills and starting from the last house in the village. Indeed, Ajijic only extended about three blocks each side east and west from the plaza. Somewhere behind the church was the bullring, made of saplings and crude wood planks, all roped together at the start of each season and then taken down at the end.
Ajijic existed as a small Indian village in a sea of corn with the lake full of fishing boats and the beach full of drying fish nets for miles in each direction. There appeared to be no cars (the few around were parked behind walls and seldom used), and most men rode burros or horses. Women walked. There was little trash, because plastic had not yet appeared here, and what little trash the corn did not hide was, in fact, paper, which quickly rotted. Much food, fruit and meat was not even wrapped. Tortillas would go right into a bolsa-ditto beans.
The village operated by the church calendar and church bells. Funerals, weddings, masses and whatever were announced by bells. Fiestas had to do with saints' days and people were piously religious. Superstition was widespread, and we constantly heard strange things from our maid about what one should or should not do. Women in their period should not handle meat. Corn must be grown in a certain way. Water was all important and used this way and that. There were certain edicts about young girls and rites of passage for boys. Our maid was often astonished that we did not know these edicts when everybody else did!
Gringos were hugely popular. The foreign colony had only just started as such, and there were probably three dozen people more or less in the foreign colony, all young except for a few old-timers like Neil James, John Peterson, Zara, Helen Kirkland, Jack Bateman, Suzy Emory, etc. Most were artists or writers, most under 30, most down here on a shoestring, and many of them smoking pot and very much looking like hippies if they were not. Because they all rented and hired maids and gardeners, and usually paid over the going rate, the locals just loved them. Used to the northern ideas of equality and work, gringos did not look down on anybody and indeed tended to be very kind and curious about their help, unlike some Mexicans of patrician attitudes.
But, indeed, Ajijic at first glance in those days gave no clue that there was a foreign colony here. We camped in our VW bus on the beach (it was completely open then and one just drove down to it) for a week before we discovered by accident that there were gringos here. In town to get food, we spotted Beverly Johnson's son Erik and Tammy or some other child playing on the street. Their blonde hair and blue eyes left no doubt whatever that gringos were here, and when we asked Erik where his mother was, he just gestured toward the house fronting the street. Talking with her a few minutes later, we learned about a small colony of foreigners in the village.
The locals had no idea of the industrialized North and asked endless questions. This was before the huge mass migrations of Mexicans north for jobs and eventually a "new life." A few men had been over the border, usually to Texas or California for farm work, but even those few had been in rural areas and had only very limited knowledge about the Northern Colossus. We tried to give them as true a picture as we could, but who can really describe the United States? We had some pictures of cars and our houses, but an industrialized society was pretty much Greek to them. One has to remember that at this time there was no TV, no radio, no newspapers, no magazines, and certainly no computers or cell phones. The curiosity of locals about America was endless.
Most houses in Ajijic had dirt floors. I used to glance in as I walked by doing my own little bit of research, and, of course, we visited the homes of our maids and gardeners and neighbors, and I can absolutely attest to this fact, although I have had many friends express skepticism on this point. The only houses I saw with tile floors were those rented by gringos, and many of those were old and in poor shape, being cracked or uneven. This did change rapidly in a few years when we noted with some pride how floors were being tiled as gringo dollars flowed into Ajijic, even as other villages around the lake remained stuck with hard-packed dirt floors.
Gringos had no trouble hiring help. Work in the fields growing crops, mainly corn, or out fishing all day hauling in nets and handling loads of fish, then drying nets, repairing boats, etc., was all hard. It was all in the sun, hot, sweaty work, extending all day for very little return. Work as a gardener or maid, on the other hand, was indoors or in the shade of trees, easy, unsupervised mainly, and for good wages. One only had to mention an opening to have an applicant show up the very next morning, if not even sooner. (We paid our first maid five dollars a week.)
As to the cost of living, many gringos here now might be surprised. One could rent a perfectly good, modern home with a good kitchen and bathroom, hot and cold running water, two-bedroom with large veranda and sitting room plus garden for 30 dollars a month. We rented several such places. Food was so cheap that I can only say it was almost free, as the Mexican government of that time subsidized something called the "Basic Food Basket," which covered nearly everything we ate, including some kinds of meat and even coffee and sugar, resulting in food being an almost negligible expense.
Heat in winter was by fireplace, which every house had one or more of, and one bought wood called linea by the burro load for a few pesos. It was cut somewhere up in the mountains and brought down, and as some of it was mesquite, it gave off a curious perfume-like smell that signaled winter or cold weather for me. Buying it from these old men was a ritual that required much haggling over price and amount and quality of the wood.
Entertainment was 100% local and you were on your own. For this reason, parties were "on" most of the time, and you had to play your part as we all depended on each other. When you gave a party, you had to invite the entire foreign colony, being careful to leave nobody out, who would be certain to be offended if you did, but the good side was that it cost next to nothing. One bought cheap local brandy or "alcol," served local dishes, hired a bartender and maybe a band, possibly a maid or two as well, and it all cost a ridiculously small sum. In addition, soon the first art gallery was opened by seven friends of ours in the old Tejaban building (just up from the plaza one block on Zaragoza), and with its frequent "openings," another great source of interest and amusement was started.
The road to Guadalajara, which went via Chapala, was miserable to wretched. If it had rained, it became impossible; the mud and potholes and rocks and washed-out parts made the rate of advance of a vehicle average out to a crawl most of the time. Nobody ever wanted to go to Guad. for this reason, and few went. We had to go once a month to pick up our wire transfer of money at the old Telegraphes building on Juarez, and we hated the trip, but we had to do it. The flipside of this was that Ajijic was blessedly isolated and city ways and city people and city problems were not ours to share.
Crime hardly existed beyond perhaps a few drunken fights at fiesta times, when the streets would often be decorated by passed-out local men who, having had a bit more than usual to drink, would bed down for the night on a sidewalk or street. Disputes seemed to get ironed out peacefully.
At one house we rented, the neighbor's pigs kept breaking through a flimsy fence to root in our garden, eventually almost destroying it. Jack Rutherford, a local artist who managed rentals for income, got mad at us for the damage. In spite of our explanations about the neighbor's pigs, he held us responsible. Entreaties to our neighbors producing no cooperation, we decided to ask Zara, who lived nearby and had been in Ajijic forever it seemed, and who ought to know, we felt sure, what we should do. Zara was an ex-ballerina who had danced in Russia and Europe and had gotten stranded in Mexico when the ballet company that had brought her here collapsed. Actually an American from Philadelphia, she had adopted Russian ways and lived in a tall, gray house with narrow, arched windows in a eucalyptus grove on Independencia. Her property, quite large, went to the beach.
Her history in Ajijic was quite fabulous in that she had owned the old gold mine up in the hills and the gold mill down on the beach, and was a local character whom everyone had heard about. She invited us in and we had hot, spicy tea in china cups and admired the large oil paintings of her in her jeweled tiara and her brother Holgar nearby. It was a European room with tall ceilings and pointed-arched tall windows and Persian carpets. Everything seemed quite old, including her, I'm afraid, with us in our 30s.
After hearing our problem, she quickly responded, "But you must steal a pig, of course!" We looked at her in surprise. I must admit I had never thought of that, nor had my wife, Corinne. After a silence, I said, "What would we do with it?" How would that help? I thought. "Look," she said, "these people are very basic. They have nothing to lose by letting these pigs root in your yard. It is a solution for them, not a problem. You must turn it into a problem for them. After you steal it, let it loose out of town. They certainly do not want to lose pigs."
We did as she said, but made the mistake of giving the piglet to a person who must have talked. Zara, of course, meant for us to turn the pig loose at night or unobserved. This resulted in a little talk with the mayor and a fine, but the desired result was obtained-No more pigs in the yard! And it confirmed that Zara knew how to handle a situation.
Indeed, animals were one of the few problems that did happen, mostly to do with noise. Ajijic at night was bedlam, from braying donkeys and barking dogs to roosters who crowed all night (did they think lights were dawn?) and owls and coyotes. Most of the noises were from kept animals, as nearly all households had them in those years, especially dogs, roosters, and donkeys. Sleeping could be a real problem if any of them were nearby.
Finally, looking back from my 73 years of life, I have to say that Ajijic in my youth was near perfection, a real-life garden of Eden for me and Corinne and our kids, who so fondly remember it-the perfect little native village on the perfect lake with the perfect climate. People may still find it so, but it must be observed to be a little different nevertheless.
(Editor's note: I only met Mr. Edwards once, and briefly. I asked if he might write some memories of his past here, and before he left Mexico, he kindly wrote by hand this account. I have done little editing as I like and respect the voice in the words.)
