Life has brought me back to some places more than once and to others only once. It seems a better and more effective way to write a memoir to go evenly from ur time in Cuernavaca and IDeal and tell how we followed the trip medical progress of my uncle Jed as we connected with the Justicia and Alabanza community and Dad began working with Will Rodriguez an evangelist in the Mega-city that was Mexico City in 1978. But I think of a time a little later when we would come back for the visit for Pope John Paul’s visit in 1979 when millions came to see the Pope at several venues. By then we would have Susanna Maria SUmmers born in Colombia on September 20, 1978. Sarah still had some memories of Cuchilla del Tesoro and we had come down in a vehicle and parked in front of what had been our apartment building in 1978. It was a somewhat refurbished and livable vehicle. It was simply a stop on the way to our longer and more eventful mission in San Pedro Atzcapotzaltongo (or Villa Nicolas Romero) near Mexico City. We were drawn back there and had many reunions with friends and prayer groups near the busy airport. I remember tacking a man coming out of the shadow of our van in panic after returning after midnight from a prayer group.He seemed to be very much caught in the act of doing something he was afraid to be held accountable for but he would not really fight me or confess before he left the area and I did not see him again.
I had grown and filled out a bit compared to when we arrived only with Sarah the first time. During the Pope’s visit I also hung out with three siblings. It was another lesson in life’s road. I had feelings for one sister and she did not much care for me but her sister did have feelings for me. I remember her fondly but I was aware at the time that there was something about the cruelty of the situation that had nothing to do with the fact that we were all too young to have much of the relationships we were dreaming about and trying to discuss. It was all pretty innocent but also pretty genuinely sad. I came to visit Mexico City a number of times. Once or twice a group of people came up to give me booklets in Spanish on social and religious theories. One of them explained a history of what would be known as the Theology of Liberation. ANother was about how Jesus had a separate tradition from the Christian Churches that also came from him – a line of sacred prostitutes and knights. All of it was hard to process and it was coming at a time when I was learning about Alcoholics Anonymous, the Freemasons, the Guerreros Cristeros who had fought against repression of the Church in Mexico in the 20’s and also revolutionaries of the likes of Pancho VIlla. With all these things and others I will return to in a later chapter on San Pedro I went alone to Cuchilla on a visit and stayed with the Rodriguez family in their home.on March 14, 1979. I slept in their home full of troubled dreams. While I slept the rest of the family left the building and sirens filled the streets and the ceiling and roof cracked above me and my bed moved twenty feet from inside a bedroom looking out at the morning sky. There had been a large earthquake and I had never woken up. But in the night I slept to the shock of everyone and emerged unscathed. I had dreams which have stayed with me all my life and are more prominent than any of my waking experiences in that place. For me, the Cuchilla will always be a place where earth split and the sky was laid bare to my waking eyes. But that was long enough after we first arrived there for it to really be a different story.
I was working on this chapter as April wrapped up and May drew near in 2024 in Abbeville, Louisiana. Whatever it was that occupied me in this period that ran from my wife’s 60th birthday on Saturday the 20th of April. It was a special party and like almost everything in this memoir, I am holding back something about it because it seems to make life even more ridiculous to expose the hurt and pain of life for so little consequence. I am unpaid for this and have so very few readers. It is important to me to note that on the 27th of April I worked as an election commissioner for the Precinct that I live in for an election in which our precinct only had two local tax renewals on our ballots. I also voted there. Clara supported me wonderfully, bringing me a Sonic diet cherry limeade. There was a very low turnout and I made sarcastic remarks about it. I also got paid $200 for my 13 hours on the clock. I was plenty tired afterwards. But the system is built for the heavy turnout elections and from a system point of view these small elections are easier and function as a valid election but also a rehearsal to keep all the systems in good shape, including the performance of commissioners like myself. It is both sad that less than ten percent of the voters in my precinct showed up to vote for something that matters AND ALSO it was a proof of the great expense that is laid out for Americans to express themselves politically. Because I knew that I was going to be writing about this period in my life I could not help could but compare all of this to life in the forming Colonia (not yet fully a colonia) San Lazaro where my father and sometimes I ministered when we lived in Colonia Cuchilla del Tesoro in Mexico CIty in 1978. Unlike the people of my precinct in 2024 who were not willing to vote on the infrastructure issues on their ballot, the people of San Lazaro came to the prayer meetings that we had and besides the prayers, Bible study and shared snacks they had a very big infrastructure issue. Waste water and sewage pooled in their neighborhood and the synch was sickening. Germs and disease were prevalent and there was contamination of the water they had access to for drinking and washing. But the people had petitioned for the public plumbing, grading and paving at the heart of their community to be done. That public infrastructure was the focus of the prayers and my father was happy to report it as God’s blessing when the city came and started working on their problems. I was happy to praise God because it seemed I might go to most of those prayer meetings and not get sick. However, from a point of view of how exactly God may have heard the prayers of his people in San Lazaro, there are some facts. It is not hard to believe that there were in fact people in the city who investigated the situation and found that a foreigner whose father was on the highest court of the US State of Louisiana and who was a lawyer educated in law schools in New Orleans, New York and London was visiting these people. It was not a matter of hatred for the people of San Lazaro that would have kept them in the desperate situation. They responded to the potential risks of the village being healed or being neglected. WHile the village thanked God for the change they also thanked the government, they continued to work hard and with less sickness and misery they improved their houses and developed small businesses more quickly and people paid their taxes. It was a good outcome. This would be a pattern of the SUmmers family ministry in the days before Family Missions Company. A number of time we were able to direct and redirect new attention to a variety of needs, problems and resources and things changed for the better. Often the vehicle was a prayer meeting. I had little doubt then and still believe now that God heard the prayers of the people gathered to pray. It was a very powerful moment in our lives and there would be others.
This chapter has seen some time pass in getting it out to the miniscule readership and slightly larger potential readership that could be said to await this chapter, Like most of the chapters of this memoir, this one starts with a look at the recent days and then ties back to a time and place in the past. The time and place in the past was the time when we first lived in the Colonia Cuchilla del Tesoro near the large international airport in Mexico City . I will discuss it a bit more in my usual rambling way. But it was in those days the city was also the Distrito Federal, like our District of Columbia plays a unique role in the United States, this federal district played a special role in the constitution of the United Mexican States. The city had its roots in the Aztec capitol city of Tenochtitlan. It was a city of causeways, a few highlands and many man-made floating islands. There was even a system for causing the natural salts to be pooled separately from the freshwater used for drinking and agriculture. A center of governance, military administration, religion and human sacrifice that supported large scale cannibalism. Then there was SPanish conquest and Catholic evangelization. It was on these foundations that the modern megacity of Mexico City had risen.
It was the largest city in the world and from its streets, I often watched the jets come and go from the airport. In other places in the city I looked at the little bit of snow caps on the mountains. Snow was among the things that did not occur any closer to the equator than this. We knew that we were South of Louisiana and deeper into the more tropical latitudes. But you could drive or ride a car for a few minutes for a really good view of the snow in the winter. You could also expect plenty of relatively cold winter days in Mexico CIty itself. It was yet another part of my education in my overall immersive understanding of geography.
With jets, snow caps and the interest I had in the stars, I found Mexico CIty a place to look up. I still look up. In recent days (April 24, 2024) I received an email in response to the message I had sent to the White House about space. I have attached the test of the message in the body of this chapter. I am a part of the lunatic fringe of people who are really very serious about colonizing the Moon and Mars. We do not all agree and yet we all agree in the space colonizing community that the stakes of getting it right are pretty high.
The real story of that part of my life is for a much later chapter. But I do remember that there was a great deal of talk about space among a few of the people I knew and almost no talk of space among most people I knew. But there was another factor, it was a matter of language. In the English spoken around me in my childhood, Heaven was where God reigned over the angels and where the souls of the Blessed went when they died. Sky was where the clouds formed and the stars and sun shone down upon the Earth. But, in Spanish “CIelo” covered the meaning of SKy and Heaven in the English of my childhood.
There are many things from my life that are not easy to recount. Some things are hard to fit into the records I am able to find. I am pretty sure of a storm, earthquake or public event of some magnitude and it is still not easy to figure out which one it was some times. Writing down one’s own history is much more challenging than some people might think. I was in a significant earthquake in Cuchilla del Tesoro. I was sleeping at the home of WIll Rodriguez the evangelist and my friend Benito who was his brother- in- law. WIll was a Rodriguez who had married another Rodriguez. That must have been on a visit to the Colonia not during the period described in this chapter. I have not been back in many, many years but I did visit it on a number of occasions.
| The White HouseDear Mr. Summers,Thank you for writing to me about the wonders of space. Our Nation’s space program has always blazed trails into the deep unknown—from landing the first humans on the Moon to launching the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs and developing the climate-monitoring Earth System Observatory. And we’re just getting started. Recently, NASA launched the world’s newest and most powerful deep-space telescope to peer back in time to the origin of the Universe. Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we can now see light from the oldest galaxies over 13 billion years ago, a testament to the power of American ingenuity and collaboration. We will continue to invest in science and technology in order to accomplish great things. Importantly, in collaboration with commercial and international partners, NASA will lead a triumphant return to the Moon with the Artemis program. This innovative and sustainable program will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, establish a long-term presence on the Moon, and learn about living and working farther away from Earth than ever before in preparation to send the first astronauts to Mars. Thank you again for sharing your enthusiasm for space and what lies beyond the cosmos. Together we will continue to show the world that our Nation can do big things, and that there is nothing beyond our capabilities. America is defined by possibilities, and the endless possibilities of space exploration are within our reach.Sincerely,Joe Biden |
Each phase in my life and each place I have lived has left a mark upon me. My awareness of the way that Colonia la Cuchilla del Tesoro impacted me has developed over time. I was feeling aware of the world in different ways when we got to Mexico City. My friends and I used to watch the jets come and go and sometimes we talked about where they were coming from and where they were going. I don’t remember meeting anyone in the neighborhood besides myself and my parents who had ever flown on a jet. Furthermore, there were very few people who worked at any of the many jobs a large airport creates. I never saw mechanics, custodians, pilots or vendors from the airport in the neighborhood. It was like a huge portal to the wide world bursting with resources, noise and complexity that was divided from another huge world bursting with resources, noise and complexity. The two worlds were divided by a fence and in most places by a trench that ran at the end of our block. The biggest difference was that I knew the people in the airport and the jets could mostly ignore the colonia but in the colonia we were frequently interrupted by the almost deafening roar of the jets. I have flown out of a lot of airports including several in Mexico during the 59 years of my life – but even now I don’t recall even having a layover in the big airport in Mexico City. I suppose it is meaningful to me that a few things have not changed from when I first looked through the fence at the airport.
It was hard to accept all that was different about lives on each side of the fence. But I thought about it quite a bit. WHat were those differences and why did they matter.
Monday, April 22, 2024: I had a meeting with an experienced and successful insurance agent. I enjoyed what he had to say. However, I was aware of the general decline of the petty professionals like independent insurance agents based in small town America, freelance writers and untenured teachers. I do the best I can and I legitimately like the company that I am working for now. I feel like the work I do is pretty important and I am hoping that with some effort and a little of what we call luck I might be able to do it for a living while I donate plasma and work as an election commissioner. I am probably not busy enough to make a living and that gives me time to tend plants, cut grass, do some more cooking and laundry etc. I am pretty sure that the down time not spent on the clock is something that appeals to me. I am not a person who falls into the middle of a lot of averages and hangs out in the middle of a lot of bell curves. But of course there are some exceptions. I have tried to answer the test called the Political Compass Test honestly over the years and I have moved sound a bit. However, although the exact position has varied I have always been placed much closer to the center than either the authoritarian or libertarian extremes. I have also always gotten a result nearer to the center than to the right or left extremes of the test. That used to surprise me more than it does nowadays.
Clara and I attended the rite of Confirmation within the Mass for my niece and her first cousin who were confirmed at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Lafayette, Louisiana on Sunday, April 21, 2024. We then went to a reception at my sister Mary Hindelang’s in-laws home where there was cake, a soft drinks bar, a spread of snacks and appetizers and decorations for the occasion. Earlier that day Clara and I had picked up the shrimp dinners she had ordered from the Knights of Columbus and we had eaten those dinners at home. We then stopped at Costco where we did a small amount of shopping. Once that was done we headed home. Later in the evening we had leftovers fro supper that remained from the party the night before.
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On Saturday April 20, 2024 we celebrated Clara’s birthday in our home. We had a cake and buffet (to which some guests contributed potluck dishes) , an open soft drink bar and an open bar of the other kind. Decorations announced the occasion and in some decorations there were stacks of photographs taken throughout Clara’s life that people could look through. We also had a gift table and after the cake was served to everyone, Clara opened gifts. We had sent our two dogs Abby and Bella to the dogsitter. Besides Clara and I we had her sister G—- and nephew Z_____ but hubby D_____ could not come. Among the first to arrive were Freddy and Sandy Dubois, the couple that led our marriage preparation classes. Clara’s godfather R______ and his wife C______ came from New Iberia as did her cousins P— and D—– P. & D. are the couple from whom she adopted our two dogs over two separate litters. We had her brother Father Edward. We also had my sister Sarah, her husband Kevin and their children I—b–, J— and E—but I—-a- could not come because he had another party he had to attend that evening. My sister Mary was there with her husband C—- and two of their five children N— and J—-. Our good friends in whose presence we started our adult relationship J–c– M— and her brother J—d- M— were there as well as J—c–’s son S—- J—-. In addition two mre of Jackie’s dear friends M— L—- T— R— and A– M— E— were there, along with this J–c– M— and Clara herself these two other ladies were the four woman majority of a tight group of female friends called the YO YOs.
The party was not overly complex but it was very nice, I think. I cooked a large beef brisket, a homemade chicken rice-a-roni style dish, chicken soup dumplings, several kinds of rice and gravy as well as setting out a bowl of fruit. Guests who chose to bring something combined to provide: a guacamole dip, rice dressing, potato salad, spaghetti and cheese as well as an additional cookie cake to compliment the birthday cake. Nobody seemed to be doing without.
When we first moved to Mexico City I had memories of having lived in two modern megacities, New York and London. They had left their impact on my life, character and perspectives. Each of these two cities was very different. In Soho in London there was a mix of graduate students, artists, small businesses and sex workers among the flats, and walkup townhouses that dominated the area. New York CIty had a block association that ran a small park and we all knew about it . Our building had a buzz-in foyer and a set of elevators that almost always worked. There were professionals in the lawyer and doctor class but the general demographic was much the same. Cuchilla del Tesoro had lots of private homes with small gardens in their atria. They were two or three stories in many cases and in a culture with limited financing they were mostly being built or added on to by the people living in them. But there were businesses and shops of many kinds. There were a few apartment complexes and one of them was the one we rented. It had clotheslines built into a structure on the roof and a washtub, concrete washboard which had running water and a good set of drains under the stairs. Like most buildings in the area and much of Mexico the wall of the building was right flush with the sidewalk. In our case there were no windows on the lower level facing the street. A utility room and a gate for the whole complex made a solid wall. Our apartment had windows that looked out onto the atrium’ s lower level, across an empty but painted wall and a staircase. There were no apartments on the other side of the courtyard, so it was not a true atrium but meant to feel like one. My memory is growing dim on odd things, I am really not sure if there were two or four apartments in our complex but I believe we had four. Two rented to families that lived there and two to business people who were almost never there. There was one other tiny studio on the same floor and it was rented to some business person who was almost never there. The upper floor was occupied by two apartments. There were two little girls, Blanca and Adriana who became good friends of Sarah’s. There was another studio rented to a business person almost always out of town.The apartment was very near the airport. Our block bordered on the outer fence of the airport but the fence extended around a lot of open space between our block and the buildings and runways. Nonetheless there were many times during the day when the planes taking off and landing created noise that was truly deafening in our home.
We faced a class in becoming habituated to the interruptions until we did not notice them. We occasionally made simple tapes to send home in those days or even to a very few potential benefactors. We were operating in a position where I was not in school and my parents were doing a variety of things. But the central assignment we had as a missionary unit was to work with WIll Rodriguez. He lived in the same fairly large house with his wife and some of her family including her brother, his brother- in- law who was not more than 20 years old at the time. He and I would become friends. I valued his help in teaching me to improve my Spanish and we sometimes met to try and discuss the Bible. My father was invited to go with WIll and he assisted with music, learned the basic memorized prayers and some of the most used Bible verses – not very well at all. But he did learn and with some translations from leaders in the Justicia y Alabanza community, Dad and Will got to know each other, in the flow of things WIll began to tell the story of Dad’s spiritual journey with Christ. That is called a “testimony”.
. It was with Will that Dad had begun the ministry to San Lazaro that was discussed in the first paragraphs of this chapter. I wished to be clear that this was my father’s ministry although we all did our part to support it. I did take up a small job teaching a shopkeeper English. He was able to tutor me a little form a math book in Spanish and paid me a differential of a bag of groceries and a few pesos. However, he only found this arrangement worthwhile for about twelve lessons. We met three times each week. I also took advantage of study and an occasional hourly job from the social services ministry in the local church parish. But there was nothing like full-time school, full-time ministry or full time work. My life was a hodgepodge of activity
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