Puerto Vallarta, 1954 -- "quite a way off pavement"

Gringos at the lobster feed. Rosa Morgan photo

 

 

In early 1954 we moved to Puerto Vallarta. My parents had loved living in Mexico in the early 1940s and were eager to return. It was cheap to live, especially with a bit of money coming in from Skid Road, and Murray had tired of teaching writing at CPS as the stimulating variety of older GI Bill students gave way to the Eisenhower generation with their "split level dreams." Also, Murray and his friend Jim Faber had stirred up local resentment with their coverage of Tacoma vice hearings and suspicion among those McCarthy Era vigilantes who knew that Jim had briefly been a communist and Murray had worked for the 1948 Henry Wallace campaign. Jim and Ann Faber moved into the house at Trout Lake to live cheap there, and we headed south with Rosa's photo equipment and Murray's manuscript-in-progress about Grand Coulee Dam.

Kindergarten: I missed the white dress memo.

 

Puerto Vallarta was just transitioning from villagehood in the early '50s, with a population of about 2,000. Its transformation to an international resort town began in earnest after 1962 when Elizabeth Taylor joined her lover Richard Burton there while he filmed "Night of the Iguana" along with Sue Lyon, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner. Both Taylor and Burton left their spouses elsewhere, Mexican newspapers decried their immorality, gossip magazines were in heaven, and Puerto Vallarta got famous. (Director John Huston later built a house there.)

I heard much later that we were one of seven gringo households in town, presumably including the Turkish towel lady in the letter below, during our year there. I remember none of them. I went to kindergarten with the local kids, learned to swim in the ocean and ride a
horse, and had a wonderful time.

 

Shelley Pearne was Murray's half-brother. He was 16 years older and they disagreed on pretty much everything political and cultural, so Murray's letter focuses on hotels and transportation.

 

May 7, 1954

Dear Shelley and Kay...

The beginnings of my horse obsession

The last two days have been gray days and with the clouds rolling in off the ocean and the water going gray under the clouds we have been thinking a lot of Tacoma and of you. Then last night as Rosa put on Lane's blue nylon pajamas and reminded her not to wet them she reminded me that I had not answered your letter (the idea didn't seem to occur to her that she might) and so here I am in front of the typewriter, warming up for my morning stint of professionalism.

Puerto Vallarta is a pleasant place and we have enjoyed the last four months here very much. It is quite a way off pavement. There is a road here but it is passable only in the dry season and then only to drivers of considerable skill or/and sturdy cars. There are 153 river crossings and no bridges; the road goes along cliff edges where they have to blindfold the burros; the ruts are three feet deep.

Most people come in by plane. Two years ago they had three planes on the run, DC-3s, but after the third one crashed two weeks ago the company is now down to borrowing spares from other companies. The flight is interesting. You leave Guadalajara before dawn, fly west over the plateau, labor up over the mountains and then land at a little dirt strip at Talpa. There we loaded a cargo of pinwheels for a local church. Other flights pick up burros, old movies playing the jungle circuit, liquor, machetes and various fruits. Leaving Talpa, the plane gets 200 feet in the air, banks so sharply to the left that you can look straight down, goes around a cliff and coasts down to another airport at Mascota. A few minutes later those whose hearts survived that five-minute stretch of the flight are on their way to Vallarta.

There are two "luxury" hotels in Vallarta and several Mexican hotels. The fanciest of the luxury hotels is the Paraiso. It is four stories tall. When it was being built and was three stories tall the builder decided that was tall enough and started to put a roof on the place. He should have settled for two, since one wall was built on top of an old adobe house. About the time the roof was finished there was a big puff of dust and the adobe disintegrated and he had to start over. This time he made it stronger and decided to go up to four stories. It has stood there ever since, three years now, and the fourth floor is never occupied except on the Easter holidays, with the exception of an American lady from Salem, who moved in ten months ago and won't come downstairs for any reason. She won't wear clothes either. She has a big Turkish towel held in place with safety pins and no one has seen her in anything but that. From time to time she comes to the balcony looking down into the patio and yells for gin. ...

The Rosita is three stories and it is still being built. It has been in the process of being built for ten years now. The part that was built first now needs to be rebuilt; for that matter so does the part that was built last. The balcony droops alarmingly and of course the toilets don't work and although the new wing doesn't have any in yet on the water side it is being used. The management of the Rosita would rent standing room (at full price, which is low enough -- 64 cents a day) rather than let anyone go to the Paraiso. As the manager of the Rosita put it one day, "This is to the death."

Hotel Paraiso--"the one with a roof"

The Paraiso is about the only thing the manager of the Rosita feels strongly about, other than cards. He is very hot on Canasta. In fact on the day they started to build the new wing he got to playing Canasta and he did not even notice  through a whole afternoon that the workers were tearing the roof off the wrong end of the building. They tore the roof off the room a friend of mine was staying in: Mike Cunningham, of Tacoma. When Mike came back he found that they had not only needlessly taken the roof from his room but they had not even closed his suitcases, which were full of plaster and cement. Mike moved out to the Paraiso ... threatening to meet every plane and tell the Americans what a terrible place the Rosita was. He did, too. After he had met two planes a lawyer called on him and said that if he continued to run down the Rosita he would be sued for slander and his tourist permit would be lifted. But Mike said happily, "I don't say anything against the Rosita. I just tell the turistas that the Paraiso is the hotel with a roof."