More than half a century ago, back at the beginning of what would be known later as the Summer of Love by everyone else in the world, Sally Wall, my high school Spanish teacher loaded UP a brand new 1967 Ford station wagon with her husband, her 2 kids, and three teenagers from what was then Germantown High School.
We were to spend the summer as quasi exchange students in one of Mexico’s southernmost areas, Oaxaca City, Oaxaca.
For all of us, it was a life changing experience.
We headed out on Peggy’s birthday pulling a travel trailer emblazoned with “Oaxaca or Bust” on the back.
La Senora, Mrs. Wall, was a tad theatrical.
Looking back, I realize just how amazing a woman she was.
She fought the school board and administrators to get the go ahead for the trip, and after much wrangling and document signing, three “green as to how the rest of world lives” teens got an opportunity to “expand their horizons.”
We left Centerville, Ohio, headed through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, stopping at places of interest along the way.
Sally Wall knew how to road trip.
Adding education to the trek, we passed through Dallas and saw the infamous Dallas School Book Dispensary, where from a window, Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK.
It made the history we had lived more real.
We crossed the Rio Grande…
…arrived in Old Mexico…
…and traveled desolate terrain for days on end finally arriving in Oaxaca sometime after 10 PM one hot summer Mexican night.
I remember the lights of the city coming into view as we rounded a mountain side on the ribbon thin highway leading into the city.
We passed the Hotel Victoria which would play an important role in our Summer stay.
Settling in, La Senor set out to make the summer a memorable experience.
Not only did she know how to road trip, she knew how to be a tourist.
Speaking perfect Spanish, unlike the rest of us, she enrolled us in schools, found a family to guide us from place to place and the tour began.
There are far too many memories to put into one blog post, but one sticks in my mind as I write today.
Doña Rosa.
La Senora insisted that we see the shriveled little woman who at God only knew how old had wowed the art world with her barro negro pottery.
Rosa Real Mateo de Nieto was a ceramics artist from San Bartolo Coyotepec, a small village outside the city of Oaxaca.
Famous for creating a new technique to make the pottery that Oaxaca was noted for allowed for the opening of new markets.
Her pottery already had a cult following, but it was small.
The pottery dates back centuries, and specimens can be found at archeological sites in the region.
Mostly utilitarian in design, barro negro has remained a traditional craft of the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, the indigenous peoples of the Oaxaca area. Large, sturdy, “cántaros,” which are tall vessels used for transporting liquids, are the bread and butter of her hometown.
Before Doña Rosa changed everything, the pottery started as a gray and wet clay That when fired had a matte finish.
This came from the lava silt in the clay.
In the 1950s, she discovered a way she could change the color and shine of the pieces.
By making a few simple changes to how the clay piece is handled, she was able to change the finished product from a simply utilitarian piece to an object de arte.
What did she do?
Just before the formed clay piece was completely dry, she polished it with a quartz stone to compress the surface. She then fired it at a slightly lower temperature than traditional pieces. After firing, the piece emerged a shiny black instead of a dull gray.
Doña Rosa died in 1980, some 13 years after we had left the city and summer that changed our worldview behind, her pottery still exists, and her children and grandchildren and other local artisans still produce the pots in the same ancient way as she and her forebearers did.
I remember standing in the crowd watching a scene from a century past and wondering how she sat there day after day laboring so diligently as hundreds of tourists looked on.
I realized of course, it was art and she was an artist performing for an audience.
When I pass my “Doña Rosas” sitting high atop my wardrobe, I am reminded of a simple artisan and a summer that changed my life.
