Looking back through letters, I think living in Patzcuaro in 1942-43 was the happiest time in Rosa's life. She was 25, completely in love, thrilled to get out of New York City, and was immersed in photography, art, and the kind of "figure it out" homemaking she always liked best. Knowing Murray would be drafted soon gave the pleasure an extra edge.
Dearest Mother,
Have just finished repairing my shower curtain. I don't mean to pass myself off as a pioneer for the accomplishment, but it isn't a bad curtain for 35 cents -- 20 cents for 4 meters of pale yellow stuff that looks slightly like linen, 10 cents for four pairs of large, rustproof earrings to hand it from, and 3 cents for a nice hand-whittled pole. Plus 2 cents worth of buckshot which, sewn into the hem, makes it hang beautifully.
The moonlight is always very bright here in the clear mountain air, with the reflection from the lake, but tonight it is especially effective from our windows. Yesterday Don Juan finished painting all the trees with white lime and tonight the whole orchard is shining silver, stretching in long rows like a ballet chorus. The trees are very small and will not bear very much, but one tiny peach tree is bursting into pink blossom, apparently unaware that this is January and there is frost nearly every night.
Bluey grows more like a dog and more lovable every day. Walking to the hotel for mail today, with Haj at his heels and Bluey rolling along at hers, Murray got ten offers for him which is about the daily average. When I saw he is growing to look like a dog it may be indulgence, because no small dog was ever so fat before. We were quite relieved when he first barked because it might well have been an oink instead of a woof.
... You would be amazed to see how many things your money bought in Patzcuaro. And I know it could have bought some pretty important things in Tacoma too, like a new rug. I'm awfully glad you made yourself a Christmas present of the Minton ware. Really satisfyingly beautiful things are never an extravagance. You are certain to get their value in pleasure from just looking at them. I confess tho, Mother, that I can't think of a group of seventeen people I'd like to eat dinner with all at the same time. Murray wouldn't let me buy a pottery set for eight because he said there weren't that many people he'd invite to dinner. Howard set the limit at four for Judy, but then he is really anti-social. Of course that was in New York, where hospitality is comparatively undiscovered. I wish you had my pretty coffee set to use with your China. My plates are very attractive, with incredibly childlike drawings of horses, cows, canoes, houses, etc. in the center, but they are half an inch thick and rather out of tune with the dainty, graceful sterling. It has to be graceful; I designed it myself.
Among the other good things 1943 has brought to the Morgans are the end of Murray's book, which has already been sent to Howard, and encouraging war news on our own small, but very satisfactory radio. We brought the radio back from Mexico City as a Christmas present to each other when we found we couldn't afford an enlarger. While most of our programs come on the shortwave band we get amazing reception at night on standard broadcasts. Tonight we heard the Fred Allen program exactly as you probably heard him. The president's speech was a clear here as it was in Washington D.C.
The familiar programs like Jack Benny and Information Please, and on New Year's Day, the Rose Bowl game, bring Patzcuaro much closer to Tacoma. The wonderful concert programs on every evening around midnight have filled the only real lack in Patzcuaro life.
Murray has just wounded my feelings by suggesting that the chocolate fudge I made today would be good with ice cream under it, the fudge being an unusually fine syrup. I think the altitude is to blame. I would be very happy to get the ice cream, but the nearest is in Morelia, the capital of this state. ...
Not only ice cream but cream is unavailable except on rare occasions in this country. Coffee is served black like most European coffee or with hot milk as it is in England. I have learned to like the hot milk combination. Anyway we have the coffee and it is cheap, abundant, and very good. Last week when the house was filled with the fragrance of fresh coffee roasting over the charcoal fire in the kitchen I thought of the one cup a day limit at home and felt very selfish but it is impossible to send a grain of it across the border.
We, Amelia mostly, made tamales too last week, a much more complicated process than you imagine. Since our corn hasn't even been planted yet we had to buy the grain, a thing that wouldn't happen to most of our neighbors. The first step is a lye bath for the corn, very short so that it doesn’t turn into hominy but is slightly softened.
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| Wood gathering in Erongricuaro -- credit: Rosa Morgan |
The next day the corn spends sunning on a large pottery tray in the back yard. On the third day it is milled in a little hand mill which also handles the coffee and is an extravagance justified by the back-aches which accompany grinding in the stone metate. The materials which went into the sauce, however, were ground in a large, three footed, hollowed stone with a smaller stone, called a molcajete. Tomatoes, onions, garlic, a "mild" dried red pepper, cloves, something like sage and bayleaf, and a dozen other spices, all of which Amelia purchased in little twists of brown paper, went into the most fragrant and piquant, and also the hottest sauce you ever tasted. Also into the sauce went two pounds of well-cooked pork loin. The secret of good tamales, Amelia said, is beating. And for an hour and a half she stood beating, hard, the shortening into the corn meal. Amelia is not big but I think she could cure Glenn of his handshaking tricks. To finish the tamales, meat and sauce go into the cornmeal, which is spread in well-washed white corn husks and each neat package is fitted into our biggest olla (pottery jug) and the collection is steamed rather than boiled for about an hour. It must have been discouraging for Amelia to see the results of a day's work disappear in a few minutes.
Mother, will you look up the recipe for butterscotch, banana cream pie in the cook book from Hoquiam and send it to me, along with one for biscuits and any others you can think of? As I mentioned before, there are no prepared or semi-prepared foods, especially desserts like jello, chocolate pudding, and Hostess cakes or ice cream, so I need a cook book like I never did before. I have one printed in Spanish but, as if that didn't complicate it enough, the measurements are in grams and kilos instead of cups and teaspoons and I have no scales. Besides, the results of most of the recipes would be as unfamiliar as the ingredients are, and I would never know whether I had a success.
So far I have no oven, except for a small cast-iron Dutch oven which hasn't been too successful, but I hope to bring one back from Guadalajara where we are going tomorrow.
We had a turkey here on New Year's Day, or rather served at the stroke of midnight, with Bill and Carmella as guests but it was baked in a bread baker's oven, a friend of Amelia's. It was a good turkey but not quite a U.S. one. The stuffing, Mexican style, had carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and chopped zucchini squash in it, but it was flavored with sage, among other things, and it had pineapple slices centered with cherries around it. Absent were sweet potatoes, cranberries, pies, mince or pumpkin, and other turkey trimmings.
We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at the Fords' house. Jacqueline is a genius, and besides that, she has eight people working in the kitchen. I've never tasted a better mince pie. And I've never seen such a pretty tree as their long needled pine tree with colored bows tied all over it. The walls were decorated in surrealistic confections in colored paper which are more appropriate for a festive, celebrating air than any holiday trimmings I've seen. All of these things including the fact that Gordon gave us one of his pictures, made especially for us, didn't make the day seem like Christmas, but as Murray said, it was like a very nice Thanksgiving.
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| The carving came back, along with Bill and his 4-F. I have it now |
We said goodbye to Bill [Fett] and saw him off on the train to Laredo and his army induction four days ago. He was miserable about leaving Patzcuaro and we were sorry to see him go, only partly because he took with him a beautiful wood carving which he had loaned to us and we had grown to feel possessive about. Standing above our fireplace it gave a special character to the whole room which is gone now. We still have a head carved by Bill and two of his pictures and we will see a lot of his wife, Carmella.
...
The General's promised horse has not arrived yet, but I expect it any day. It has to come by train, I think, from Mexico, abut 200 miles. When it does arrive I will need something to wear on it. Slacks are not worn here, where the women wear their skirts to their ankles, and I have none. (Slacks, not ankles) If you could roll up my old green breeches and send them to me, care of the hotel, I don't think the duty will be too much. They were only $2.00 new and they are well worn now. ... Boots will probably be cheaper here than the mailing cost and duty.
Is Bob home now? I would like to hear from him and from Glenn. According to a report in Time, most of the fighting against the Japs in the jungles of New Guinea, a mosquito and fever filled, truly unpleasant place, is being done by former members of the Washington and Oregon National Guard. I'm glad my brothers weren't plump enough to be eligible for that particular part of the war.
It's very late now, nearly 3:00 and here in the country we go to bed early usually. Tomorrow we will leave for Guadalajara. We've planned the trip since Christmas, or rather since the scholarship check arrived, but had to postpone it daily waiting for one tire to be repaired in Morelia. Patience tops all virtues in this wonderful country.
Love,
Rosa and Murray
P.S. Give my love to Dad Morgan. Constance Ann sends out most of the correspondence from that end now. She said in her last letter than you were looking beautiful.
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