Daylight Moonwalk

There is the Puerto Vallarta Art Walk and then there is the Puerto Vallarta Moon Walk.

It adds up you know. First, there is that big, non-ending, perma-grin. Even if he was watching a freight train coming right at him and his fate was sealed that grin would not diminish.

Add to it a wobbly, old motor scooter. Maybe the scooter itself is not wobbly, more the way it is driven… slowly, more attention on the doorways, stoops and open windows than on the road.

For safety, to go with the scooter is the red, half helmet, seemingly always ready to fall but for the under chin strap.

It’s not the cooler strapped to the back of the scooter; the long stemmed, circular, rearview mirrors, the loose helmet nor even the Cheshire grin that does it.

It’s the voice. The voice of the court jester after the king has irreversibly cleaved from him the family jewels, the voice of the Thai lady boy. The high pitched, unmistakable voice of the scooter mounted, local tamale vendor making his appointed rounds, peddling his wares on the streets of Old Downtown Vallarta.

For a long time, a number of years, the thin man always put a smile on my face when I saw or heard him passing. It wasn’t until one late afternoon a few months ago that I witnessed the clincher.

I was outside on the street talking with a neighbor when this familiar tamale vendor was slowly wobbling down the street, crying out to potential customers. My neighbor and I both smiled.

Me: That guy sure is a trip isn’t he?

Neighbor: I’ll say. Have you ever seen him do the moonwalk?

Me: What do you mean?

Neighbor: You know, like Michael Jackson.

The neighbor whistled and Scooter Man did a floppy U-turn and came back. My neighbor ordered us some tamales. As Scooter Boy was packing up ready to remount, Arturo asked him if he could do the moon walk for us. He looked up from adjusting the strap on the cooler, his grin impossibly wide. He backed away from the scooter and right there in the middle of the quiet residential street he did a very impressive Michael Jackson moonwalk, grinning and basking in the glory of it all.

Sometimes its little things like this that just make your day.

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Copyright © 2008 All rights reserved.
Jimi Grant – Nopali Printworks
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico