No mas

Lou Diamond Phillips played the late Mexican-American rocker Ritchie Valens admirably.

By John Murphy

Being the type of insomniac who awakens in the middle of the night and then often doesn’t go back to sleep has its disadvantages.  

This is especially true when a neighbor is hosting a free concert for the neighborhood from inside his giant pick-up truck or from the back of a Winnebago parked in a backyard.

The former happens occasionally at the house across the street. The place is owned by an old man who has maybe a grandson who owns this humongous pick-up truck. Occasionally the grandson will drive home from godknowswhere at 3 a.m. and listen to deafening music inside the cab of his truck. The tunes reverberate around the corner where we live. He actually has decent musical taste — Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers, ZZ Top. Good stuff, it’s just the timing is off.   

Last night the offender was the hombre in the Winnebago. He is a relative of a neighbor who lives behind us. There is an empty lot between the properties and this is where he hangs out in his huge vehicle, drinking cervezas and playing loud Mexican music.

Did you see the 1987 movie “La Bamba” about the late Mexican-American rock ‘n’ roll star Ritchie Valens? It’s a gem and received dandy reviews from Siskel and Ebert, I understand. At one point in the movie Ritchie’s reprobate brother Bob takes him to Tijuana to a whore house where loud Mexican music plays all night. This is what our backyard sounds like right now.

Well, I’m not totally unsympathetic. Back in the 1980s when I lived in Watsonville such music was common. I had a Slavonian friend, Mark Ruso, who stood 6-foot-3 and weighed about 250 pounds. We’d ride beach cruisers from my house on Bridge Street down to the little Mexican bars on the south end of Main Street. Lively Mexican music poured out of the speakers of those cantinas and the field workers celebrating payday had a grand time. They’d drink Budweisers and tequila and occasionally buy a shot for the big gringo visitors (us). It was all good.

But these impromptu concertos in the middle of the night here in Highland? No es Bueno. It’s 1 a.m. now and I have to be at work in seven hours helping ready a public school for distance learning. So I need less musica and mas silencio. Por favor! Gracias, mi amigos.