The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-17

from
Indiana
APRIL II, 1886
ERNIE PYLE

EDITORS NOTE-Thls rowing reporter
for The Times goes where he plesses,
when he pieases, in search of odd stories
about this and that.
MEXICO CITY, April 17.-Mex-
AVA leo is full of Mexicans who
had to run home when the depres-
sion In the United States caught
them. There hasn't been much Of
a depression in Mexico, they say.
Most any place you go that's at
all on the beaten path. you'll find
these prodigsl sons, home from the
big bad world.
They speak English. Pretty good
English, most of them. They seek
you out. and talk about the States.
There must be thousands of them.
Take Andres Bedolla, in Mexico
City. He isn't quite like the rest.
for he is younger, and was born in
Kansas.
But the depression caught his ia
ther, who worked on the Missouri
Pacific, so back came the whole
family. They went to the little
home town, which Andres never had
seen.
EATHER Bedolla told Andres It
was a very small and print
tive town, and that he wouldn't
understand it, and that he didn't
have to come. But Andres teach
ers told him he'd be a fool not to
go.
So he came, and for six months
he almost went crazy. Andres says
ne was on the verge of losing his
mind. So finally he came to
Mexico City, and because ne could
speak good English he had no
trouble getting work He has been
here five years now, and he likes 1t
line. He is an official city guide,
and drives visitors over town.
He has fine ideas for his future.
He's going to set up an "informa-
ton stand" just outside the city
limits to the north. Tourists will
stop there, and he'll have a staff of
boys to drive them over the city.
Already one such stand has gone
up, but as Andres says, "the fellow
didn't have any more sense than to
put it on the left hand side of the
road" Andres will have more sense.
He thinks he'll never 60 back to
the States. He thinks he can make
a good-sized little fortune in the
next ten years.
TINE bald-headed fat fellow who
l. explains Rivera's frescoes in the
Cortez Palace in Cuernavaca; he
talks about 14th-st and 6th-av in
New York.
The fine old man with false teeth
and a flat straw hat met one night
in Mexico City: he talks about his
81 years in Los Angeles.
And take Ralph" That's his
American nickname. forget his
real name. He works in Cuerna-
avaca now. He lived in Chicago
and Buffalo for Is years. He was a
salesman. The depression sent him
back in 29.
tits better here" he says. "In the
states it's rush all the time. You
get up early and rush through
breakfast, and run to catch street
car, and only take an hour for lunch
and hurry all day, and you're al
ways working against the other fell
low instead of with him, and what
is called good business is just plain
crookedness, and you never have
time to enjoy yourself.
Down here 1 live better than I
did in the States, and I don't have
to work hard and I have all the
time in the world"
TT IS true, as he says, that the de-
l. sire for money is not in the
Mexican people. In lnolVluudIS, VI
course, but not in the people as a
whole.
Outside of Mag the carper-
ter, whom met up the
road, all these prodigals pro-
fess to be happier back here. I
doubt it. They have got used to
other ways, and they've acquired
the taste for money, and maybe
even a taste for speed. But even
more important, think, is the at
titude of their neighbors.
A fellow who has always lived IN
one hut isn't wasting much enthusi-
asm, I imagine, on the fellow who
went away and learned to live an
other life and be somebody else, and
then in the end had to come back
to Poor Street." which the others
had never left.