My maternal grandfather, Jesus Lozano, taught high school Algebra in Monterrey, Mexico most of his adult life. By the time that I met him, he was already retired but he still tutored students in the foyer of his home on Colegio Civil (the street name means Community College, more or less). The foyer floor was a fancy fired tile. The walls were painted cement. The ceiling was at least 12 feet high with heavy wooden beams that supported the second floor. He had a desk with chairs for himself and his students. There was also a cupboard with glass doors that held math books and a small typewriter.
I don’t remember the brand of typewriter, but the family also had a large, Olivetti model M20, I think. It weighed a ton, and it was a monster to operate. My grandfather’s mechanical typewriter was smaller and lighter. I remember that he often typed small memos on paper that might have been fit for a personal letter, placed them in a properly addressed envelope, and walked them to the post box at the end of the street. This was something that he seemed to do almost every week.
I learned later that these small, typed messages were his letters to the editor of the local newspaper. I don’t know what he said in his letters, but they would now and again show up in the paper – much to his delight. This was during the presidencies of Lopez Mateos, Diaz Ordaz, and Echeverria – all members of the ruling PRI party. My grandfather never discussed either his letters or his politics with me, but my uncle did.
My uncle was an unabashed socialist. He celebrated Russian cosmonauts. I suspect that he hated the PRI party and its presidents. He liked VW beetles and Opal automobiles. He was fond of menudo and Carta Blanca beer, and he was always ready to treat me to a strawberry malt. I don’t know whether my grandfather shared any of these predilections; he never said.
I write to the desks of John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. I post here and on other social media. I suspect that most of my rants and concerns fall on deaf ears. Perhaps I am not so different from my grandfather. It is only the medium and the crises of the day that are different.
We are our parents’ and grandparents’ children, after all.