Tuesday, December 04, 2007

¡Alto! ¿ Jugos there?





Our isolated ranchito is well served by numerous motorized vendors that supply our needs. There's the gas trucks with their jingles and romantic musical pleas to housewives, the verduras truck, the artículos de limpieza truck (Fabuloso by the 2-liter Coke bottle, etc) and the "Beep-beep!" hot tortilla man, and now, we have the Naranjas Dulces driver.

"¡Aproveche! ¡Naranjas dulces, cinco kilos por quince pesos!", goes his recorded cry.

My wife warned my that if I succumbed to the blandishments, I would have to juice the oranges myself. Well, I'm retired. Now I'll have orange stains on my hands
in addition to the time already there.

Some vendors have a schedule. The suave blandishments of the Gas Del Lago truck come at 7:30-ish in the morning. The blaring klaxon of the tortilla truck awakens any lingering slugabeds.
I'm not clear if the Naranjas Dulces man has a fixed time. Being México, it's not a clockwork naranja.

The truck came up our street this afternoon while I was dozing. I sprang to my feet, threw on my pants, and slipped on my flip flops.
Usually, the Naranja Man turns around in front of our landlady's house. That, in combination with my inertia, and other inhibiting factors (miedo de exprimir, lack of sex apeel, whatever) have until now kept me from making a purchase.

This time, I made it. Out in the mellow Michoacán afternoon sun stood the truck, heaped with oranges. Our neighbor, the venerable Sr. Jesús O. was just finishing up his purchase. We shook hands, as is the custom on every meeting. He recommended those oranges to me. "Mucho jugo."
Sr. Jesús O. is a man of few words.

The teenage boy in charge of Atencíon a Clientes looked dubiously at my pale güero face and asked me how many I wanted.
"Cinco kilos, por favor." I said. He scooped them up from the waiting bin and deposited them in a large bolsa plástica. I gave him exact change. (Maybe he should have thrown in an extra medio kilo for me having exact change. ¿quien sabe?)

Cinco kilos is a whole lotta naranjas. Squeezing them ought to improve my arm strength as well as helping our Vitamina C intake. I figure on getting a liter or two from these juicy fruits.

1 comment:

David Haun said...

"a clockwork naranja"
I'm on the floor, screaming with laughter. Thanks for the fun! David Haun