A gringo gets a rooling
lesson, Mexican style

TEACAPAN, Sinaloa, Mexico — Pouring a concrete roof
in this town teaches a gringo more about Mexican habits

than he may want to know.

A roof pour is a communal ef-
fort, much like an old style barn
raising in Canada. As with Cana-
dian barn raisings, it is in part
grinding hard labor and in part an
excuse for a party.

So many people are involved, so
much joyous confusion reigns, so
much joking and jostling, that one
strange to the prucess can scarcely
imagine that any good can come
of it,but it does. You get a good
roof.

For reasons that nobody here
can quite bring to mind, houses in
this part of Mexico are vastly
overbuilt. The walls are thick
enough to withstand cannon-fire.
Clothes cupboard walls, that is.
The walls of the house itself are
even thicker and stronger.

Similarly, a roof isn’t made to
merely exclude rain from the liv-
ing room. The roof must be
strong enough to withstand the
impact of a falling satellite.

The process of roof building
begins with patching together a
pile of short chunks of wood ap-
proximately two by four inches
and never more than three feet
long.

This creates a form for pouring
which is just as flimsy as the
eventual finished product will be
strong. The whole apparatus
quivers like a house of cards; one
expects it to tumble if an iguana
makes an incautious step while
crossing it.

In the land of the gringos, such
a piatform would be made with a
few sheets of heavy plywood,
braced by 10 or {2 upright poles.
Here, 30 or 40 uprights are needed
and one can scarcely make his
way through the forest of sup-
ports beneath the quaking, shiver-
ing collection of little short
planks.

You may say that plywood
would be better and cheaper ir: the
Jong run and that piecing together

Paul
St. Pierre

a cement form like parquet floor-
ing is not efficient.

If you say that, good. You have
learned the first and most impor-
tant lesson. You have learned that
efficiency is not a highly regarded
quality in rural Mexico. Here,
people like beer, fishing, the
Virgin of Guadalupe, dancing and
12-hour work days. Efficiency has
no place in any of these pursuits,
not even the 12-hour day.

Over the intricate maze of two
by fours, which in this town are
rented by the tocal priest as a
method of raising funds for the
poor box, there is laid a network
of iron reds called rebar.

The basic fibre of the Mexican
nation is rebar. You don’t see it.
It is covered by the cement and,
later, by the plasterers or the tilers
but the rebar is in there, the
unyielding, unconquerable steci.
Mexican wives are also full of
rebar.

On the day of the pour a dozen
or more young men will arrive
carrying rectangular five-gallon
cans called fud cans.

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

They will mix the cement on the
street, without benefit of a cement
mixer or even a mixing bowl. A
plank, which is just as rickety as
the roof forms, will be set at an
inclined plane on the side of the
new building and the young men
will scamper up the bending plank
with the fud can full of wet ce-
ment on one shoulder.

Now and then one loses his
balance, jumps off the gangplank
and Jets the fud can of cement
splatter on the ground so that it
does not remove one of his feet or
half of a leg. This is an occasion
for immense hilarity.

it is understandable perhaps
that the modern cement truck has
not made its way from Mexico’s
cities to the countryside. These are
country people and, like country
people everywhere, conservatives,
traditionalists. But why not even a
wheelbarrow?

The wheelbarrow is not
unknown. A local gringo brought
one here. When he had a roof to
pour, the crew filled the
wheelbarrow, wheeled the mix to
the gangplank, dumped it on the
ground again and shovelled it into
fud cans. Asked what he thought
of the process, the gringo replied
that he had lived in Mexico fora
long, long time.

What a northerner learns, al-
though slowly, is that the lamen-
table inefficiency has a leavening
of pure joy. The crew treat the
process as a social event. The
patron is expected to provide beer.
Only one beer per man, but if he
has any class, in quart bottles.

Thus the roof is laid, on
timbers supplied by the church
and looking as though they had
been scavenged from Golgotha.
There is endless joking and often
long bursts of baritone song,
golden as the sun, warm as
mother’s breast, comforting as the
Benediction at close of day when
the roof of one more house has
been made secure for a few gen-
erations of man.
TS

WEST VANCOUVER Fire Department recruits Dave
Ruckle (left) and Don Brown repel down a tower at
the department’s training grounds. Ten firefighters
completed the training and ave ready for duty.

Friday, January 4, 1991 —- North Shore News - 9

3.

NEWS photo Mike Wakofteld

Purse snatching suspects arrested

TWO MEN, appearing in West
Vancouver Provincial Court
Monday, are expected to be
charged with robbery related of-
fences after two elderly women
had their purses stolen over the
weekend.

A West Vancouver Police
Department spokesman said two
men were arrested Sunday at
about 4 p.m. after an elderly
woman had her purse stolen from
the area of Marine Drive aad 15th
Street.

Two men in a red vehicle with

Alberta licence plates were seen
leaving the area. The vehicle was
spotted by police a short time
tater and a chase ensued.

The suspect vehicle crashed on
Marine Drive near the Park Royal
shopping centre and the suspects
took off on foot.

One man was arrested in the
Super Valu store at Park Royal
south while the second suspect
was spotted by police on a bus
heading for Vancouver. The bus
was stopped and the suspect was
arrested.

With GST in your marketplace,
it is important to compare prices.

Some prices include GST. But
often, it is added later.

9am-9pm.

Before you buy, look for signs...
or ask. Where GST applies,
know whether it will be added at
the cash register or if GST is
built into the price tag.

GST added, or GST included.
It’s important for you to know
the difference.

If you have other questions about
the GST and prices, the answer is to
call us toll-free Monday to Friday

The GST Consumer Information Office.

1-800-668-2122

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