My Town, 1970

The days of July were dogfish in the sun and the smell of brine. The crackle of minutes up the dust of the streets and under the shade of palm trees dozed dogs and fleas. The silence was broken only by the startling sound of the Whistle hoot Oliveros which heralded the end of the hours given to work, the army of people encouraged way home half days while the bar in the park Cuco tempted passers with vermouth and olives and tapas grilled cuttlefish.

Stalled in the days, history of accusing the sweltering heat and sticky up west. It was a city on the clueless, the workers, without hope or future, gesture parishioner, remained with his wandering thoughts, evaporated in the torpor of summer, with the wind in the bare legs of the bay, without ambition or pride or hunger spaced salt and crumbs of their existence.

The Alcazaba with its towers down the street from Queen Steps Royal Road. The neighborhoods of the Jewel, Fish, the Chanca, San Anton ... turned their leisure to the white sand bordering the beach.

At the edge of the pier every evening dozens of eyes scanned the horizon with the "meat? pinned to the hook and the view in the distance. Behind her cries, dust, young people playing football under the sheds of the port, until in the evening in the Modern Jacks or finished off the day with a Tarzan or Clint Eastwood.

But it was not me who shot the root carving his future in play, this infusion through my sap droplets where the leaves recorded drought and the sun, caught in the warm tone of the natives.

._________________. © Alonso de Molina