Some more "funny? memories...

When we were at the sawmill that we had gone to Mexico for in the first place, we were living in a one room place until we could build ourselves a house. We had a Mexican woman, or, even maybe she was one of the Tahuamara Indians,who had finally settled down. She lived in a "crude" house behind us. Anyway, she was very clean and would get on her hands and knees to scrub the room so it was snowy white! She did all the washing, (down at the side of a creek and pounded it on the rocks!) and she ironed everything with some kind of iron and did a beautiful job. The people we met there were so kind and very friendly!!! When Bob got sick one time everyone would wait for a chicken to cackle to tell us she had laid an egg and they would run and get it for Bob!!! They dug in the frozen ground for potatoes, etc. Anyway one would have to have been there to really appreciate them.But to get back to my story. Cappy came in with some dried corn and I asked him what he was going to do with it and he told me he was going to make something, (it sounded like he said "tesweeno") He put the corn into a crock and put some other things in it and said it now had to ripen or something! He covered it with an enamelware tin plate and put it behing the little stove we had. In the middle of the night a week or so later, we heard a clatter and Cappy said, "The tesweeno is ready!" We were going to town the next day and the only way we could go without our car was on a small railroad that tooted about five miles away and if you wanted to ride on it, you had better be down by the tracks and with a red flag out!!! More about this railroad later. We got ready the next day and waited for the train and Cappy took some of his concoction with him! Everybody on the train beginning with the conductor had to sample it and of course they were pretty well drunk by the time we got to the town! The other day when we were looking up the Tarahumara Indians here was what they had as a "likker?" I laughed with Steve and told him the story! Cappy told me at one time that his Father had helped put that railroad in!!! It was a train that ran from the Texas border to the town of Chuatemoc. We made several trips on this train when we were in that area and it was challenging to say the least! Sometimes there would be that toot and then no train and we would run down to the station only to be told that the train had run off the tracks! So we would have to wait till it was back on track and sometimes it would be a day or two! One time we got on it and were about halfway to town when it ran off the tracks! We all had to get off and then were told that they didn't know when it would be ready but they would let us know in plenty of time. It seemed like people came out of the woodwork up to the train from the small group of houses that were along the track. They sold all kinds of different foods, "snacks", I guess. Anyway this time when it happened with us, Cappy went over to one of the houses and asked them to make us a meal. They went out and killed a chicken and then began fixing dinner for us! The train gave a toot and we had to run like anything to get back on it, leaving them a pretty nice dinner, I guess! We paid them for it any way and were mighty glad to get to town and to the Hotel where they had a restaurant! The meal probably would have been very good! The house was clean and the people were clean, etc. Cappy would have probably eaten it but me, well, I had never lived in Mexico before and I must admit I did have "qualms" about eating that food and furthermore feeding to my child of two. I soon got over my qualms and was able to find that sometimes the simplest of meals is the best and especially if there is a willingness to prepare it for you! Oh about the Tesweeno. The noise we heard was the tin plate hitting the ceiling!!!