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The horse drawn buggy, filled with fresh watermelons, caused suspicion. You just don't see that very often these days in downtown Buenos Aires, do you? A sturdy brown horse with a tired languid look, the sagging wooden walls of the buggy, luckily having survived World War II, and the happy-go-lucky driver unaware of the lurking danger..
Who was the sage who sighed languidly and said: "what is difficult about life is the slowness with which we realize the train has already left for the next station."
Well, get back to the horse and buggy, suddenly he was surrounded by serious-faced pistol-toting police on a side street in San Telmo, this city's colonial district, and a few passerby gathered around and scratched their brains, as I did, trying to imagine what horrible deed the baby-faced driver might have committed.
Could the crime have been the horse's droppings on the street? At least they are more pure than the scoffing cloud of carbon dioxide expulsed by the cars and buses.
The stomp-stomp of the animal's hoofs certainly make a more pleasant sound that the screech of cars, buses and taxis.
Don't tell me! You think those juicy looking watermelons neatly stashed in the buggy had been injected with drugs to beguile innocent bystanders into the habit of consuming crack? Or might the sweet red flesh of the melons house terrorist bombs?
Wait a minute! Maybe it was the sweat of the poor animal, which no doubt had not been dabbed with spray on perfume to disguise its unmitigated body odor. After all, and to be honest, not many buggy drivers dab their horses with Axel.
Still worse, might there not have been some horrible conspiracy in the process? With just a little imagination, you might conjure up the most horrible attack by society's perturbed outcasts.
Meanwhile time goes on. Street people still pick through garbage bags at night, rummage for leftovers, gather paper or bottles to sell for "peanuts," gulp down awful tetrapack wine or gingerly approach prosperous tourists to beg for a coin. "A penny for my poor sick grandmother!" The scavengers are in fact, are the leftovers of an economic system unable or unwilling to receive them. What? It's the law of supply and demand? Sorry, I guess I should re-read chapter two in "Economic Growth and the Laws of Supply and Demand."
Anyway, life goes on as if it knew nothing of the textbooks. A record number of Argentines end their lives unexpectedly smashing their cars into other vehicles or bouncing to their death on narrow, bumpy and badly paved highways... Lovers, who thought their love would last a century, grasp their hearts in dismay and beat their brains out trying to find the cause for what probably has none. And over here and over there former oil tycoons lick their chops at the prospect of producing ethanol...churning corn and soybeans into fuel for those slick modern cars in New York and Los Angeles and London and...It's the economy, stupid. Progress. What's wrong with turning food stuff into fuel? Too bad about those who can't pay for the grain to make old fashioned hot nutritious cereal for their hungry mouths.
Still, in the midst of this world of unending blows and counter blows, terror and counter-terror, children's gay laughter rings out as fresh and uninhibited as the chirp of bird at sunset...even from within the wretched walls of slums.
Oh. Frankly, we don't know what happened to the buggy driver at the police station. But with great sadness we conclude that never again will he venture to sell his juicy watermelons in downtown Buenos Aires. Progress has a price. You either pay it or take your goods elsewhere.
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Hoppie
One day, while leaning on a hoe on a southern California ranch, the sweat flowing from my brow, I envisaged myself in another culture, speaking another language, dealing with people with other habits and customs. Exactly that happened. On graduating in journalism from the University of California at Berkely I worked as a journalist for several newspapers, then took off for Latin America and became a free lance writer. Putting words together in such a way as to move, or to challenge or to provoke is one of the most fascinating gifts life offers us. Oh, I ended up in Argentina, where I have been living for the past 30 years!
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