Baja Home in the Hands of God, Gomez

For the first time in two years we are going down to our house in Baja to spend a week.

When I return to this space after a week’s absence, I hope to be able to tell you that the house is in order, and that Romulo Gomez is still on the scene, in good health, and still serving as the right hand of God.

On the several occasions when Gomez has come to Los Angeles in the past two years he has telephoned me, and I have tried to extract from him whatever news he has from La Bocana--the name of our little colony at the mouth of the Santo Tomas River.

If the news is bad, it is very difficult to get it out of him. It is not that Gomez is dishonest. It’s simply that he doesn’t like bad news, and tends to put everything in a good light. In a sense, he is a master of doublespeak.

He told me, for example, that he had replaced our bathroom cabinet top with one of white tile. It had been made of pebbles set in a kind of resin, and while it had been pretty, I always thought it was too dark. What Gomez didn’t tell me was that he had had to replace the top because someone had set fire to the cabinet and melted the old one down.

Also, Gomez told me that he had employed men to clean up around the outside of the house. I supposed he meant they had pulled the weeds. But just the other day one of our neighbors, having just returned from Bocana, told me that someone had taken out my wife’s magnificent flowering bougainvillea. It had covered half the side of the house that first presents itself to us when we arrive.

I was reminded of the time Gomez told us he had hired a man to remove the eight weeds that were growing on a bank behind the back of the house. He said the man had just gone “Snick . . . snick” and the weeds disappeared. Of course the “weeds” were the oleanders my wife had gone to such pains to take down to the house and plant, and had nurtured so patiently.

When we last talked, Gomez told me he had done a lot of work on the house, so naturally my wife and I are rather anxious to see what depredations he has accomplished.

Gomez also told me he was building another house not far from ours--between our house and the old Luczynski house, which is about 300 yards from ours. But he didn’t say exactly where. The other day I talked to the woman who, with her husband, had bought the Luczynski place. She said Gomez was building the new house in the middle of the road.

“Again?” I said. We had picked a location for our house and told Gomez to go ahead and build. But when we went back a month later we found that he was building our house in the middle of the road. “Gomez,” I said, “why are you building the house in the middle of the road?”

“Because,” he said, “the road has the best view.”

I don’t know what his reason is this time. Whatever it is, it will not be the reason he gives us.

There were only two houses in Bocana when we decided to build. The new house will increase our colony to 11. But there is a lot of space and we won’t be crowded. In fact, on lonely nights down there it is comforting to look out a window and see a light glowing in a window not too far away. Also, in a pinch, you can always borrow a cup of champagne.

We are going into a lot of uncertainties. We hope there will be butane in the tank. We hope our gas refrigerator is working. We hope there is water in the pipes. We hope there are no mice in residence. We hope there will be no rattlesnake coiled under the water heater on the back porch.

We hope the tide pools will not have been pillaged; that the pelicans will still be patrolling the bay and the porpoises will be at play.

Outside of that, we leave everything to God and Mr. Gomez.