Tenerife: My grandfather, Hercules, and I

Contents page 1 — My grandfather, Hercules, and I page 2 — still, the ancient island On a page

read My family comes from the North, it is mountainous, in the Winter, soft and green. In the summer the sun gilbt all juicy Elastic on the Slopes path, a few green Chumberas, prickly pear, blue agave Islands. The residual yellow-brown, reduced to the Essentials, fibers and Knots, Woody and Leathery, stubborn, and sharp-edged. Cliffs, cracks and cuts in between, in the Winter of gentle hills and valleys.

My grandfather loves technology and hates the pastor. After the civil war, he is building a crystal detector radio in a cigar box, and hears at night, secretly, the French channels from Morocco. My great-grandmother crosses as soon as he activates it, and mumbles, “Santa Maria, Madre de dios”. My grandfather drives a white Austin / Morris A60, “La Uva”, grape Wine, called, for he constantly repeated that the car was in a healthy grape as a Wine. My great-grandmother is Santa Candelaria under a glass bell in the middle of the dashboard screws and pray during the journey, constantly your rosary. As I am small, there is no inspection on the island, it’s going, what’s happening.

After the death of my great-grandparents, the Land was divided among the children, my grandfather inherited the house, a little basic. The first years does not change much, unlike in the South building to the North, no one, the plots are overgrown with wild blackberries, agave and Chumberas, in the spring of the wild fennel yellow blooms, the Beautiful teacher of light blue. My grandfather is not interested in farming, he runs a construction company in La Laguna. When I’m in the holiday on the island, he is already retired.

at that Time every Morning – be careful of the post-card driving motive – a shepherd leads his flock of goats through the small ravine behind our house. The goats have short, dull fur, and sunken in the flanks, the bells around the neck, the swing swing in time with her between the hind legs back and forth udders. All the neighbors have chickens. Concha, the milk woman, brings with it several times a week leche buena, unpasteurized cow’s milk, which must be cooked every day, a thick, yellowish layer of fat floats on top. Every year there is a new dog: Boca Negra, a plurality of Hercules, General, Dani, Sueño, Chiqui.

I am small, where the fields were, a wild scrap yard, car wrecks are the cross and cross, street dogs living here. Metal bucket, rods, cement mixer, always rusty, always dented. White, empty picked shell panicle-stems of the dried Plants. At every step, everywhere, the remains of dead animals, the rustling of lizards,. My sister and I have lined up, the amazing clean white skull. Doll parts and a horror film played. Tell each other in a dog-piss stinking car wreck out stories thought. Finally, we are allowed to sit in the front. A junkyard is in our suburb-Germany as reachable as the moon.

A couple of houses at the foot of the slope, a small Shop, and eventually a Bar. The junkyard loses his lower half, a football is there, and, later, a Church is built. Twelve years ago, the settlement is still nothing more than an irregular collection of houses, dice the fold between two Mountain, as if they were the slip hanging down, and strange on top of each other in the valley are remained.

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