Rainy Season Review – Chapter MMMCCCLXXXIII

Jesse Bishop - NOV 15, 2016
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The really big news this rainy season is that it actually happened. It used to be that every year
there’d be a whole lot of water falling out of the sky between the months of May thru October with
maybe a short break sometime in mid-July, a pattern that seemed to come to a screaming halt
about three years ago. Suddenly those who chose to stick it out were faced with beautiful sunny
days in September and October and no tourists to share it with.
Up until that time Guanacaste had always seemed to have an abundant and never ending supply
of water and it was kind of a shock when the same trend of “no rain” continued for the next few
years. Suddenly water rationing was instituted, the going price for a water permit skyrocketed, and
a lot of good grass died. Possibly the only good thing to come out of the drought were the lower
water bills.
But not this year! Rains started right on time in May and continued in a way that reminded many of
the good ‘ol days of precipitation. As your current scribe sits here in the middle part of the month of
October desperately trying to get this column done before that day’s dreaded deadline, it is still
acting like a real rainy season, but only you, the reader fifteen days in the future, knows how the
wet season ends. Please drop me a line at howlermag,com and let me know.
As usual a great many Tamarindo residents chose October to go someplace else, leaving all the
people who couldn’t afford to leave looking for something to do. The aforementioned current
scribe falls into this category. It used to be, in the aforementioned “good ol’ days” you used to be
able to sit around and watch the grass grow, sadly no longer possible after water rationing and the
Draconian measures used by AYA’s dreaded meter police (fuerza medidor).
Here’s something I do to pass the time while waiting for November to show up: read. This I do a
whole lot. I used to spend a lot of time at Jaime Peligro Bookstore where I got to know just about
every book on his shelves. Although I still count Jim and Samuel as good friends I rarely see them
these days after accepting Kindle into my life.
The good people at Amazon also make sure I receive a daily dose of free books to download with
the hope of yours truly actually buying something. They obviously don’t know what a cheap ass I
am.
I’m currently reading a novel about Midshipmen in the Royal Navy circa 1773, and have just
finished a novel about the English Civil War (1642–1651) before which I read about the good ol’
boys at Agincourt (1415) and before that a novel about the battle of the Somme, which lasted for
five months in 1916.
I’m hoping there will be lots of questions about British Military History at tonight’s Big Huge
Gigantic Trivial Pursuit Grudge Match at the Langosta Surf Club, where my wife Susan and I will be
facing off against teams that have been diligently training in an effort to take us down once and for
all. No easy task, as long as there are no sports questions.
But enough of this rainy season stuff…… let’s talk about mandolins. If I can remember that far
back I bought my Martin A style in Austin, Texas probably about 1978.
Someone had put a pickup on it that made it sound Heavy Metal, not the sound I was looking for,
so I had it removed and patched up. It was made in 1948 and was a really nice instrument… Until
almost forty years later it just self-destructed during a gig at The Shack.The next day I noticed that
the left side of the mandolin had fallen in and something was rattling around inside the body. This
turned out to be a brace that, for whatever reason, came apart.
We music types get pretty emotional about our instruments, somewhere between wife and dog, so
my next move was to take it to my repair guru genius guy in San Jose, an ex-navy guy named Kent
with dreads down to his knees. If anybody could fix it he could. Which he kinda did, it’s back to
playing form but extremely fragile, much like its owner. So I bought a new mandolin. An Epiphone
M 50 F model, which I’ve found to be very different from the Martin, in both looks and playing.
The old A model was round with the sound hole in the middle while the Epiphone’s F style is much
more ornate and the sound is projected from two F holes on the sides. The neck has a different
feel also, but I’m hoping to have it mastered by the time the next high season comes around, which
should be just about the time you’re reading this.