Memo

Will Berkeley
Sep 8, 2018 · 10 min read

I’ve written articles about Polo, the person, polo the sport and my horse, Charrúa. Now comes Memo. Memo is short for Guillermo. It means Will, short for William, but not really. It’s the word memo in Spanish and English which is short for memorandum: a note or message made for future use. I was Memo in South America. What kicked off this whole series of articles was I thought to myself what would younger self do? I wanted to go on staycation with Booster. Younger self would not hesitate. Do it. You are not getting this time back. Look at me. I am gone. Memo is mere note for future use these days. Younger self decided to ride the best polo horses in the world. He began the journey on nags in Norwell. Got a job working for a company that leased polo ponies to fat guys in Florida. Flew to Argentina for a Sancho Panza tilt at The Cathedral of Polo. In one interview: I was out in the pampas. Riding the Giants. It was a lot of luck but plenty of pluck too. It was a unique request. I wanted to ride the best polo ponies in the world. It’s a different request than I want to play polo. I learned Argentinean Spanish in the process which is a unique dialect of Spanish. It is characterized by irregular verb forms and Italian pronunciations. Spanish words mean completely different things. The Spanish slang has a lot of word inversions such as hotel is telo. And there is an Italian slang dialect running through it, Lunfardo, an early 19th and 20th Century dialect that was created in an Italian slum in Buenos Aires. It is an incredibly fun language for a person that delights in experimental fiction like me. I was, not only studying South America Surreal Fiction, I somehow lived it. Eric delivered up the wilderness of South America. Polo brought the telenovela. My horse, Charrúa, was The Spirit of Uruguay. I played pickup polo in the pampas on ponies that road in the Argentine Open. I also sneaked out at night for a ride, or two, on them on Indio Night. I had trained to get up to this level. I landed in Argentina with strong Spanish skills from a year in total in Paraguay and Mexico. I had been an employee and understudy of plenty of Spanish speaking pro players in the United States when I worked for a company that leased polo ponies. We had some good horses too. I got a job on Santiago’s ranch in the pampas that paid a pittance but allowed me to ride 10 goal polo ponies. Because I had a riding resume. Riding included driving a Volkswagon Golf around Buenos Aires for Santiago on errands. Picking up some German guy at the airport and taking him to the ranch to buy horses. C-notes were flipped my way for good work such as selling a string of polo ponies to said German. I moonlighted at a Buenos Aires barn so I could ride when I was in town. It was lame. Outside of the cool factor of riding in the city. Or riding with Polo which I thought was funny. She pouted the whole time. She just wanted to be pretty next to the horse. The Belgrano Polo Team tried to recruit me. I had no use for them. I was dealing with the Palermo ponies out in the pampas. Ponies that had, or would ride, in the Argentine Open. Some would be regulars over their careers. These were polo ponies with actual careers. Santiago was a strange bird. He was going to seed as a polo player. Turning into the classic fat guy Patron. Asleep in the passenger seat as I drove what he called Memo’s Vagón to the pampas. He had a hard time staying awake. Yet he continued to manufacture 10 goal ponies. Or at least strive to that end. I got to witness the change from Player to Patron. He was eating his way to official Patron. Fat guy with coin. His family had been in polo in Argentina since the inception when British settlers in the pampas first started playing. His great-grandfather played in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924. He had 10 goal ponies in his blood. He was going to keep playing from the bleachers. He had no wife or child. His girlfriend was this almost professional arrangement. They lived separate lives. She was trotted out. Maybe once a quarter. To take me and Polo to dinner. Santiago wanted an even number at his well appointed table on occasion. His ponies were his children. Thank God, I said right to his face. Women are forever interfering with my riding. Santiago and I were simpaticos. He loved hearing about my problemas domesticas with Polo. He delighted in watching his malo hijo climb aboard a green horse. I perfected getting off. AKA getting tossed. Without getting hurt. I was quick to point out. Sometimes I quite literally stepped off into a run. Pushed the bucking horse away from me. Break time. I didn’t just get to ride the Palermo ponies. I had to ride the ones in training too. Polo at the highest levels was like any sport at the highest level. You have to have money or skills. I could ride and sell horses. Take clients out to dinner in Buenos Aires with my glamorous ex-girlfriend. Polo was, at the most basic level, a college student. We got along way better as friends. She would take me up on my offer of dinner on Santiago in any fine dining establishment of her choosing in all of BA. Your estupido caballo is buying. Technically, it’s six of his friends. Although this guy may be good for eight horses. Some wide dudes like eight to a string. Santiago was retreating into a haze of booze and cigars in his building. He didn’t just own the apartment. He owned the supermercado under it. Easier to get to the trough. He put himself out to pasture in that pampas size apartment. Santiago only went to the real pampas for very special visitors. Typically, old friends. Players from overseas. You couldn’t get him off his duff in his pampas size apartment for the sale of a string. That was Memo’s trabajo. Mi hijo malo, Santiago would snort. Riding my most expensive horses bareback in the dark with no tack. The vaqueros squealed on my Indio Night Rides. Santiago let me keep doing it. I had a perfect safety record. I devoured a library full of books in the pampas because the boredom out there was so extraordinary when I wasn’t riding. A sea of grass. The pampas are a great place to visit. But I wouldn’t want to live there. The Indio Night Rides made perfect sense to Memo at least. There is nothing else to do! I complained to a Dean at the University of Belgrano that my classes were a joke. I couldn’t stay in the pampas full-time. It was really dull out there off the horses. The vaqueros kept their families elsewhere. Past the ranch limits was cattle country. Fincas with a zillion heads of cattle. El Paso: the pampas edition. The Dean offered to put me in Senior level classes. Not for foreigners. That’s what he said to me. I pointed out that I was a foreigner. Twice over. North American and Irish Citizen. He listed off my credentials as porteño. Polo uppercase, the girlfriend and polo, lowercase, the mistress. I had my own little reputation on campus. I corrected him. Polo, lower and uppercase were behind my caballo, Charrúa. That was my true amor. I spoke fluent castellano rioplatense which was the local term for Rioplatense Spanish, the Spanish of Argentina. I read more voraciously than any of the students at Belgrano because of the sea of grass. I was an Ivy League student at home. I want hard classes. Ya, Memo. He said which means already, note. I can’t put you any higher because we don’t have it. Can I take graduate level classes somewhere else and transfer credit. No. The funny thing is Brown University would not accept grades from Belgrano. My semester was pass/fail through the University of North Carolina. Passing was, ultimately, predicated on an interview with the Head of the Spanish Department at Brown. I planned on bringing vino to that charla. The point is: young self had game. But it was a kind of game that would not translate well into the workforce. It was rule breaker game. The last time that Memo existed was in Immigration in New Jersey, June 1995. Three years after I left Argentina: he still existed. But this is his curtain call. I blew out of the United States to go on walkabout in Europe in early December, 1994. I wanted to see Santa in Munich. I punched out of the United States on my Irish passport. I traveled, in order, through: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and planted my flag in the Lot in France sometime in March. I wrote a screenplay with a co-writer, in a farmhouse, in Limogne-en-Quercy, Arrondissement of Cahors. This is where Memo made his last stand. A farmhouse in the Lot surrounded by hectares of farm land. Farmers dropped off legs of lamb and homemade liquor to the guests of French film director, Louis Malle. Louis charged no rent to guests and farmers alike. It was the pampas French edition. But worse. No horses. No polo, upper and lower case. No heat. Very little hot water. The plumbing hated us. The backyard was the gents. The pool was a pond. There was little distinction between inside and out. There was plenty to eat and cook for the intrepid. Plenty of canned goods, dry goods, chickens, ducks and game. Eventually the early Spring gardens came to life. Memo prepared whatever the gato dragged in. He just poured himself a glass of inky wine from the five liter jug from the bearded lady wine merchant, lit a black tobacco corn cigarette and began. That farmhouse is where my lifelong passion for cooking started. I would be sitting there with a bunch of rabbits. Reading a cookbook in French for clues. Pigeons were produced. Sardines showed up. I wanted steak but back strap and a bottle of French moonshine was what I got. At least there are hundreds of aged Cuban cigars in this dump. Dozens of cases of Havana Club Rum. Otherwise: I would lose my mind. Producing and eating this much French cooking. I want to pluck me and put me in the oven with rosemary and garlic. At some point it was deemed game over. The screenplay was long since done. I had to go back to the United States to get a job. My bank account was bottoming back in the United States. I was dipping into it via wire transfer. I could see the bottom of the well clearly by June. Time to boogie. Louis Malle wanted his house back too. I flew to Paris from Toulouse. That was a relatively smooth operation. I then attempted to board Air France on my open ticket for the United States. I had booked a seat. However Memo was light on paperwork for Passport Control. My American passport was expired. It was stamped seven ways to Sunday with South America. My Irish passport was in good working order as evidenced by my six month sojourn in Europe. However it had no stamps to show for it. It did a little light duty in South America on some dodgy boarder crosses. Neither passport, sadly, has this trip in it. There is also another math problem for the careful observer. South America just doesn’t add up. There are entries and exits that aren’t accounted for. Those are carefully scrutinized because of the lack of current European entries. We can agree on my arrival in Barcelona. That was six months ago and in a different country so it is not helpful. My claim of Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and back to France is questioned because I flew only once in six months. When I arrived. My whereabouts, the rest of the time, are a regular mystery. To say the French authorities are pissed at me is a major understatement. An American attache is awoken in Paris. He goes ballistic. His wrath is unmatched by what awaits me in New Jersey. They’ve fully ascertained by the time that I land on American soil that I am not a spy. I am mere private citizen Navy Seal that bows to no government or rebels as evidenced by my crossing habits in South America. I just skip the checkpoint when I can do it. Why not cross into Bolivia with less fanfare? Or Brazil? Paraguay? I just use my Ministry of Health Badge. Argentina to Uruguay? I just flash my Argentinean Driver’s License. Nobody even bothers when they hear me fighting with Polo in pitch perfect castellano rioplatense. We’ve crossed so many times in heated argument. We are just waved through. Or I wake up on a bus in South America in a different country than I feel asleep. Eric informs there was no checkpoint. Sometimes it wasn’t purposeful. Sometimes the backyard is in Bolivia and the front yard is in Paraguay. Well. That’s all a long time ago. It’s time to pay the piper in New Jersey. I am detained for a very long time while my lengthy list of offenses is reviewed along with my stinky luggage. I have done nothing wrong in my mind. I am an Irish Citizen. Why should I stand in the non-EU line? My passport isn’t that badly expired. I am short on answers. I am aloof. I am insensitive to the situation. I am Memo. And they let me go. #Memo

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