In 1985 I moved to a fishing village on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula. I lived in an abandoned house and slept in a hammock. My first night I got a crash course in mosquitoes. However, the second night, a mosquito net lovingly in place, I swayed in the hammock, felt the trade winds touch my skin, and learned how magical sleeping with the sound of the surf sliding up the sand can be. Although I was camping in the shell of a house, I was happy.

Sometimes I had to drive to Cancun to get a tomato, or to trade a VCR player for dental work. The one tin roof market in town got beef once a week. Everyone in town knew to be at the market that day for beef. A butcher, wearing shorts and sandals, winking at house wives, stood at a table in the center of the market, and sliced off cuts of meat.

When I first arrived in the one-street village, I thought the locals were all crazy. Id be walking around the square on a hot evening, and pause to chat with a taxi driver. In mid-sentence the town lights blinked a few times and dimmed. Without another word the man frantically ran along across the street to a restaurant and slammed the door as he entered.

I had begun to think the odd behavior a local affliction, before someone told me that the town power supply was not dependable and often the electrical current dropped to 40 of the norm. The locals had learned the hard way that the reduced current would fry refrigerator motors. Their mad dash away from me was an effort to save their refrigerator.

I have also included a few stories set in Europe. Nor could I resist writing a story about the time I was told to leave Israel. If youve never been told to get out of a country, well, you just havent Lived. In the same chapter is a description, a memoir, of a shoe-string trip I took through Egypt, Sudan, and Kenya. The trip ended when I was jailed in Mombassa, Kenya.

I hope you enjoy the stories. KRH

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My Cleanest Dirty Shorts

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