The Warmth Of Mexico - Part I - Sanborns

What follows is a gush and rush of nostalgia for a Mexico of my past. It happened when I found this book at Sanborns in Mérida Yucatán. Since promises to be very long this will be Part I Sanborns.

My Rosemary and I went for a week’s stay in the very warm (in as many ways as you want to look at it) Mérida, Yucatán. We were tired of the bleak gray skies and ceaseless chipi-chipi (a Mexican word for a constant drizzle. The word has a better onomatopoeic sound to it than the handsome Argentine word garúa.).

Rosemary and I were married in the lovely old Mexico City neighbourhood of Coyoacán (it had that name when Cortéz appeared in Tenochtitlan). We lived long enough in the city and traveled into the interior to appreciate heat, mountains and the smell of newly moistened earth. We loved the bright colours of people’s clothes, houses and cars made more so by the harsh (nicely harsh) Mexican sun.

We appreciate and love Vancouver and Canada but we still miss what really are some of our roots.

They can be found in spades in Yucatán, a lovely old city whose inhabitants have a more happy-go-lucky attitude which I believe comes from Caribbean influence and the additional fact that Mayans worshoped Kukulkan who was a most peaceful god.

On a day before we were to return I went to Sanborns.

I first ran into this Mexican institution which is sort of a combination of London Drugs, the White Spot restaurant and seriously sells good silver, Mexican handcrafts and is a good source of superb books in both English and Spanish.

Rebecca Stewart in her Cancún Sanborns sailor dress.

My first glimpse of Sanborns happened in 1955 when my mother took me to their first store called La Casa de los Azulejos. It is a very old store, a former 18^th century palace, whose exterior blue tiles came from Puebla. The palace remained in private hands until near the end of the 19th century. It changed hands several times before being bought by the American brothers Walter and Frank Sanborns, who expanded their soda fountain/drugstore business into one of the best-recognized restaurant chains in Mexico. The house today serves as their flagship restaurant.

Every time I have returned to that Sanborns on Calle Madero I think of how in 1914 Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata stopped for hot chocolate, coffee and bread accompanied by their officers. They were on the way to the presidential palace at the Zócalo. Both Zapata and Villa tried the presidential chair for size but left Mexico City right after.

Lauren Stwart

Sometime in 1957 my grandmother Lolita who worked at the Philippine Embassy took Consul Jonnhy (that’s how he spelled his name) Hormillosa to La Casa de los Azulejos. Days later he asked Lolita, “Lolita can you take me back to that Edziptian Restowrant?” That epithet had to do with how Hormillosa saw the starched triangular collar of the waitresses. In the photo that Rosemary took of me in Mérida the uniform is unchanged.

At Sanborns Mérida - photograph Rosemary Waterhouse-Hayward

In the 60s when I had little money I would go to the Sanborns magazine stand too look at the photo magazines before I decided to buy one. It was in Sanborns were I discovered the Squash which is a drink that is made from soda water, grenadine, bits of pineapple and strawberry and with lemon slices. They still have them and you can see a Squash on the right of the photograph.

Also in the early 60s my first cousin Dolores Humphrey had a boy friend (none of us liked him) called Rodolfo Brito who would come to visit her while Dolores was staying with us at Avenida Tamaulipas, about a block from Yucatán where Edward Weston and Tina Modotti had lived in the 20s. One day he took Dolores to the Sanborns at the Hotel María Isabel that had recently been built for the visit of John Kennedy. It seems that some man stared at Dolores at the María Isabel bar. Brito took Dolores home. He returned and shot the man (we never found out if he died or not). Brito then came over and gave the shell casing to Dolores and said, “I shot him because he looked at you.”

Another time I received a phone call from a man who said he was from the tax department. There was a problem with my taxes that he could solve if I could show up at the very same Sanborns but I was to carry a black briefcase. I never went.

Sanborns was a refuge late at night. It was a safe place for coffee. It was well lit. Mexicans sometimes deprecate the so-called Mexican food they serve. In fact many an American has been introduced to Mexican food there safely. For those who may be nursing a bad early (or late) morning hangover the Sanborns “chilaquiles” are a must.

And I cannot finish without mentioning how I discovered a lovely sailor dress when I went to Cancún on a travel magazine assingnment some 12 years ago. I found the sailor dress at Sanborns. Both my granddaughters have worn it. If they have children who will be next?