A Mexican Adventure...and a Comedy of Errors

It was while walking Ollie, our Schnauzer, in the neighborhood that I saw the sign. "For Sale" written by hand and taped to the back window of a 2009 Jeep Wrangler. We had been looking for a new (or newer) vehicle for our home in Barra de Navidad, Mexico. The old Cherokee was slowly disintegrating in the coastal air, and it was becoming much less reliable. We needed a replacement. I had researched purchasing in Mexico but struggled with the costs. We also considered importing a vehicle from the US, and perhaps this is what we were looking for. Within a few days, we met with Mimi, our neighbor and owner of the Jeep, and deal was sealed. We could even park it in her extra garage while we figured out how to import it. 

We also have an attorney in Mexico who has helped us on various other issues, and he was able to facilitate the process. Othon found us an agent to help with the import, and after a few months it was all coming together. In December of 2023, we would drive to Nogales, Mexico and pick up our new plates at the DHL office. So, on Christmas Day we left Surprise and spent the night in Tubac, just north of the border. The next morning, we would cross at Nogales and we would be off. 

Yeah...right!

Whenever dealing with entities in Mexico, one must always be prepared for a change of plans. Of course, the license plates did NOT arrive at DHL as planned. They would not be there for several more days. Panic! What to do? Perhaps we can get temporary plates at the Tourist Visa and Auto Importation Station at KM 21? It sounded plausible…if we didn’t have our Permanente Residencia (the equivalent of a US Green Card in Mexico). Apparently Mexican residents cannot drive foreign plated vehicles in Mexico. We had no choice but to turn around and return to the US.

What complicated everything was the tight schedule with visitors coming to Barra. We still needed to be there by the end of the week. While waiting to cross into the US, Karen was on the phone and able to secure a couple of seats on a flight tomorrow morning. We parked the Jeep at the airport long-term parking and caught our flight.

Numerous phone calls to our attorney and the importer ensued, mostly starting with hablas englis (and sometimes without luck). During our final week in Barra in January, DHL arrived at our condo, with our plates and all the applicable stickers. We breathed a huge sigh of relief.

April rolled around, and we thought another attempt to drive the Jeep to Barra was in order. Reservations were made (at hotels that accepted pets, of which there were many). This time we left early in the morning and crossed the border around noon. Just south of Nogales we stopped at the auto import station and changed the plates on the vehicle. By late afternoon we were in Hermosilla for our first night in Mexico. The early part of the day the roads were surprisingly good, but as we got closer to Hermosillo, the potholes multiplied, and I was thankful for the new, all-terrain tires. It reminded me of an early video game where one dodged oncoming missiles.

Next stop was the little town of Topolobampo (yeah, it’s a mouthful). It is the eastern terminus of the ferry across the Sea of Cortez from La Paz, on the Baja peninsula. As we drove in we were struck by the colorful houses perched on the hillside above the bay. Truly charming. The hotel was on the water’s edge and offered a lovely respite from the day’s drive.

A perfect pic of Karen and Ollie as we came into Topolobampo.

The third day we left for Mazatlán. As we drove I noticed numerous gas stations along the way, so I didn’t fret about getting fuel. Strangely, the frequency of stations seemed to diminish as we came closer to Mazatlán and the gauge’s needle dipped ominously. Would we make it? Karen became so concerned that she insisted we get off the highway and find a farmer who perhaps had a tank from which we could buy fuel. I thought it best to stay on the highway, because if we did run out, at least someone could stop and help. We pulled off, drove a few kilometers without luck. I did not want to be stuck here. Back to the highway. I think the last few kilometers were downhill, and we made it to Mazatlán on fumes, stopping at the first gas station we found.  That night was spent at a seaside hotel with a nice casual dinner near the pool, and we watched the sun set over the sea. Over a Margarita I also promised Karen I would not let the gas tank go below the halfway point.

Next stop was Sayulita, a cute little town just north of Puerto Vallarta. Each day we drove between 6 and 8 hours, and the stretch between Mazatlán and Sayulita was perhaps the most beautiful. The roads in some portions were 4 lanes, divided and in some cases brand new with stunning views of the mountains and the ocean. It was obvious that Mexico is investing in infrastructure. As we drove further south, the ecosystem became lusher and more verdant. This is one of the reasons I love Mexico. Dinner that evening was at a sidewalk restaurant that arguably had the best Italian dinner…in Mexico, of all places.

On the fifth day, we arose and drove through Puerto Vallarta. This last segment is a familiar one for both of us, as we have flown into PV and either driven or rode a bus to Barra. This was also a shorter day, as Barra is only 4 hours south of PV. We arrived in the early afternoon.

It was a journey of almost 1,500 miles. Before leaving many asked us “aren’t you afraid?” For some, Mexico conjures up visions of cartel shootouts and bandits on the road. Our response is typically “Have you driven through south Phoenix lately”? As advised, we stayed on the toll roads and only drove during the day. Yes, we were stopped several times at checkpoints set up by the military and our vehicle searched twice. We also avoided certain towns known to be hotspots, such as Culiacan. The tollways made it quite easy. For me it was a lovely glimpse into typical Mexican life, where trucks ply the roads and people engaged in commerce, just like in the US.

The Jeep finally resting at the condos in Barra

As for the Jeep, all went very well and safely ensconced in Barra. We decided to name our Jeep Mimi, after her previous owner. Yes, I asked her, and she was delighted. You see, Mimi is the original Jeep girl. She showed us a photo of her perched on the hood of a WW2 Willys, when she first learned to drive. It could’ve been a poster.

 

 Ode to Gini

As most of you know I have family scattered throughout the northern hemisphere of this globe. Most of you also know of the historical aspects of this family (and hopefully soon you will know more). Those of you who follow me on Facebook or my blog have seen the articles and photographs of my parents and other members of note.

Today, however, I want to introduce one member of my family who most of you don’t know. Her name is, or was, Regina. Everyone called her Gini for short (and the “G” is a cross between a hard and soft pronunciation best done from the back of the throat. It’s a Dutch thing). I first learned of Gini when I asked my father who was that young woman in the photograph on my parents’ dresser. You must understand that to a young boy, as I was then, I didn’t spend much time in their bedroom. It was a place that had an air of sanctity about it.

I’m not sure how old I was when I learned that my father had been married before…before he was married to my mother and became my father. I was old enough to have some curiosity about this young girl. I became curious about my father’s previous life, and the mystery in my mind grew.

Gini beside our Grandfather Elibartus. (I don't know who the two on the left are,)

I was a teenager when Gini first came to the US. We drove to Seattle to meet her plane and then returned with her back to Portland. Of course, my father was giddy with excitement, and perhaps I was a little jealous. Having been what I thought his eldest, meeting a usurper of that role, innocent though it be, wasn’t easy for a teenager. I didn’t get to know Gini, partly because of my conflicted feelings and perhaps partly her own, as I was to learn in time.

Years later my father passed away and in the course of giving that news, my mother cultivated a relationship with Gini. Gini’s mother was still alive, and I believe it may have been the first time those two spoke to each other. A year later her mother also passed away.

With my father's passing, my mother wanted to make one more journey to Holland. Her remaining siblings were getting older, and she wanted to take me to my roots. The trip included spending most of our time with my cousins in northern Holland. The trip was planned out with various family reunions and visits to places of her youth. It was a fateful step off a curb as she was startled by a passing cyclist which caused her to fall and break her leg. This changed everything.

We had planned to visit Amsterdam in the following days but her confinement to a wheelchair made that unlikely. The visit would’ve included time with Gini. A phone call to her to say we wouldn’t be coming made Gini say that instead, she would come to us. She rode the train from her town to Groningen.

Gini, Mom and I in Groningen, in 2001

In the meantime I was trying to salvage what I could out of the trip and was planning to visit Amsterdam by myself. Mother was uncomfortable with that idea (and perhaps a wee jealous as well) but my cousins thought it was a great idea. They would take care of Mom while I was gone for a few days. Besides, Gini could accompany me to make sure I changed trains at the appropriate station. Despite being almost 50 at the time, I think my mother still looked at me as a child. I also think she was not comfortable with me being with Gini…alone and without her directing the conversation.

I thought the train ride from Groningen to Amsterdam would be fairly routine and we would make small talk to pass the time. I invited her to meet in Amsterdam and sightseeing together, but she politely declined. And I was somewhat relieved.

I don’t know how the conversation about our father started, but I suppose it was inevitable. It was what we had in common, and as I learned had kept us apart. Here we were, half-siblings struggling to communicate (with her little English and my meager Dutch) and coming to grips with our respective pasts. I learned of her resentment towards her father’s “other family”, of all the birthdays he spent with us…and not her. True, he called often and wrote many letters to her, but he wasn’t there. I realized she missed him terribly, especially now that he passed just a year or so before. Perhaps now she could also share that grief with someone who also knew her father. Interestingly, I remember looking in her eyes, and seeing my father. They both had brown eyes.

The train ride took several hours and tears flowed. It was one of the most difficult conversations of my life. Then Gini surprised me. She said, “We were the innocent ones”, acknowledging that we (her, I and my brother Mike), had nothing to do with her parents' divorce and his subsequent marriage to my mother. I felt the years of resentment melt away. She again surprised me, saying she would love to spend the day in Amsterdam with me. I got off the train at Amersfoort and she went on to Utrecht and her home in Breukelen.

We connected the next day and spent it sightseeing, including a visit to our father’s home on the Prinsengracht (canal). It was truly a wonderful time. The next day I took a bus to her home and she showed me Breukelen and the surrounding area. We promised to write, and we did. I followed my father’s tradition of sending postcards of places I visited in the US and Mexico. Gini loved travel and I found a postcard she sent to my father from Egypt. We wrote to each other several times. Occasionally I would call, usually on her birthday. I last visited Amsterdam in 2014 when I introduced Gini to my wife Karen. We toured the canals by boat and had a lovely time.

Gini in 2009, in front of our father's house in Amsterdam

Then one year I didn’t receive a letter. I wrote to her, but no reply. Time passed but I couldn’t shake the worry inside me. I googled her name but to no avail. Then, earlier in 2021 I tried again and found what I hoped wouldn’t be, but it was an obituary. Regina Angelica Helena Kluvers passed on April 2, 2019, at age 76. She is buried next to her mother in a cemetery near Breukelen.

Children of the same father yet separated by divorce, a condition all too common these days. Interestingly I always looked upon my childhood with its seeming perfection, completely unaware of another aspect of family that wasn’t as “ideal”. As I grew older, I looked at life through different eyes and learned more of my family’s past – both the heroic and the banal. In the end, Gini and I reconciled ourselves and each other to “it is what it is”, and life went on.

Karen, Gini and I in Amsterdam in 2014

 April 28, 2024

 Revelations in a Box

Where are those damned vaccine records, I thought as I rummaged through boxes of old files? It was more a matter of curiosity than anything else, as my recent records were available online. The ones I wanted were from when I was a child. I exhausted the usual places but to no avail. Opening another cabinet I spotted the metal lockbox...perhaps the records were there? 

It was the metal box where my father kept all his documents, which I inherited when Mom passed away in 2014. It is about 14 inches long by 10 inches wide and 7 inches deep with a lock on the lid that opens on the long side. Based on how heavy it is, I assumed the box is made of steel, probably double-layered.  The stress of her death, mixed with the subsequent responsibilities of settling the estate, clearing her house, and then selling it, I hadn’t taken the time to fully explore its contents. When it left Mom’s house, it went to a closet in Olympia, ultimately ending up in our house in Surprise, Arizona. Each time I moved it I knew I needed to look through it and take inventory of the contents. Several cursory looks yielded the usual stuff that I already knew, and it made sense that the early vaccine records could be in there. I lifted the box from the cabinet and set it on the floor.       

I kept the key to the strongbox in my desk drawer, along with several others (including a few that I had no idea where they went, but they were in my mother’s desk and I couldn’t part with them), with a tag labeled as “metal safety box” in my father’s neat printing. I smiled as I thought of his meticulous recordkeeping as I held the key, and then I opened the box.    

There was the stuff I already knew was there, and I lifted the documents out and laid them on the carpet. Opening each envelope, I confirmed what I knew was already there, and pretty soon I was ambling down memory lane. Each item held a memory, and a piece of my father, so it didn’t take long for me to become a tad emotional. I realized I missed him.       

There were expired passports and old photographs of the times he was with Royal Dutch Shell, as well as his divorce decree, which occupied a lot of time as I read through it. It was in Spanish, with a certified translation into English attached to it. There were what looked like postage stamps affixed to the documents, as well as embossed stamps attesting to their authenticity. Perhaps this needs to be in the book I’m writing? Maybe book two?         

As I continued to rummage through the contents of the box, a small envelope caught my eye. The paper was brittle and old, so I carefully opened the flap. Luckily it was not sealed. Inside were papers folded in quarters, and I delicately unfolded them. The paper was thin and yellowed. The words were in Dutch, and I saw Dad’s name mentioned. It was the date that especially caught my attention. 24 January 1945, in the upper right corner. Though my knowledge of Dutch is rudimentary, there were many words I would need to look up. It was an official document that bore the signatures of six people. The title at the top was Landelijk Herstel N.B.O., which I translated to read National Recovery Office, which was in Eindhoven.

Thanks to Google Translate (which I acknowledge is not perfect, as my cousins in Holland will say when I tried to speak their language), I learned the document formally attested to his Resistance activities during World War II. I had always known this, so seeing it in print was no surprise, yet it somehow felt validating to see it in print. The pride I felt for my father filled me with renewed joy.       

    Scholman's Letter - Page 1

However, it was the second piece of paper that surprised me. This was a letter, on someone’s official letterhead and written with an old typewriter. Though the ink had begun to fade, I could still feel some of the indentations from the type as if it had just hit the flimsy paper. It was from H. A. M. Scholman, Officer of Health in the town of Oirschot, Netherlands, dated 26 January 1945. The letter also bore a certificate and stamp attesting to the authenticity of Mr. Scholman’s signature, probably akin to our notary public. In this letter Mr. Scholman describes the resistance activities of one Elibartus Kluvers…my father. Apparently, Mr. Scholman and my father worked together in the Resistance during the war, and several of the examples cited contained the word “we”, implying their joint actions.           

Examples of their work included cutting German communication lines, smuggling weapons, hiding fugitives from the Nazis, and various sabotage efforts. Among the examples of the actions by my father, Mr. Scholman recalls one Flying Sergeant R. F. Conroy, a Canadian pilot who was shot down in the area and helped by my father and Mr. Scholman. Conroy was sheltered by both and then taken to the border with Belgium.           

I was stunned! In my hand, I held tangible proof of my father’s resistance activities. Growing up with the stories told by Dad, I sometimes wondered if some hyperbole or exaggeration crept into those accounts, though I had to admit Dad was never given to such exaggerations. Perhaps his downplaying of the stories made them seem less exciting to me. Yet here I could see someone else’s version of that time and it painted a different picture of my father.           

The Conroy episode grabbed my attention, and I wanted to know more about him. I googled Flying Sergeant R. F. Conroy. What are the chances, I thought. To my surprise, I got a hit immediately. I found the records of the Bison Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force, based at a location in England, of which he was a member. There were other links that I dutifully followed until I hit the mother lode. It led me to the British Archives, which required me to register, and found it was free. Perhaps my muse was leading me here.           

 Flying Sergeant R. F. Conroy's Report (Page 1 only)

Once I registered for the Archives, I was led to a document, labeled “Most Secret”, a three-page typed account of FS Conroy’s bombing mission from England to Dusseldorf. The account was an incredible narrative of his ordeal, starting when he took off from RAF East Moor at 11:00 PM on the 11th of June 1943, then shot down in Holland where he parachuted into a field. He goes on to describe his hiding in fields and ditches, then being helped by the Dutch Resistance, though not naming any names. The account describes staying in a Dutch man’s home before being driven to the Belgian border, and ultimately his journey through France and then into Spain, eventually finding his way back to England.   

My eyes teared up as I read Conroy’s account. Between his and the letter by Scholman, my father’s wartime experiences went from abstract and distant memories to irrefutable truth. That person helping Conroy was none other than my father. Waves of emotion washed over me as I pondered this information. One was regret, wishing I had been more persistent in hearing those stories of my father. I wished I could ask him again to tell me, and then tell me more. Another was the unbelievable pride in the man who had bestowed his DNA on me. There was also a hint of sorrow, as I missed him terribly.           

To say this provided incredible fodder for the story I began more than twenty years ago would be an understatement. Another emotion that would rise in me was profound gratitude. I was thankful for his bravery in fighting against tyranny. Many like him made the world safer for me, and many like me. I was also grateful for his saving those documents, perhaps to be found at just the right time.