By Julio Cesar Uribe Hermocillo. Taken from El Guarengue. https://miguarengue.blogspot.com/2023/02/quibdozen-iii-maranones.html
The paliadera was so high that from there you could even see the leaking zinc and thatched roofs of the neighborhood houses and even glimpse the two- and three-story houses on the first street, the decorations on their balconies and some of the furniture in its spacious rooms. You could also see from there the clock towers of the parish church, from which once -a few years ago, when seaplanes were still a novelty- the slender acrobat of a circus that passed through the city descended by hanging down a handle, without harnesses. or anything, only with gloves covering her hands, until she reached the floor, half disheveled and with a triumphant smile.
That was in that unforgettable San Pacho, when Father Miró was parish priest, in which the procession took place the next day, because the day itself it rained non-stop all day. Those were the times when the party began to become something for everyone, even for those who lived in the houses made of straw and palm trees that were scattered throughout the mountains of La Yesca and La Aurora. Those houses where the men only came out on Saturdays to sell coal and firewood, and once or twice a month to sell the occasional fruit, a few bananas and some wild meat, in order to have enough to buy half a pound of salt. , a package of candles and a bottle of kerosene, a paste of soap, six yards of nylon and half a pound of lead, to prepare the cast net and the pichindé, bamboo or bamboo rods with which they fished for sardines, charres, logs , boquianchas and the occasional young bocachico who got lost with the floods and ended up in the ravine instead of becoming an adult back in his Atrato.
Those houses where the women left, every two or three days, only to collect and deliver the bundles of clothes that they washed right there in the river for a long time, until a police commander decided to forbid washing in the ports. and railings, and determined as the only places allowed the ravines and some banks of the river far away, by El Paraíso, below the Nausígamo, almost reaching what they called Calle de Quibdó, a wide turn from which the town could be seen when it was coming up and from which the boats coming from Cartagena whistled announcing their arrival.
To the washerwomen from those mountains of La Yesca and La Aurora, who did not mess with anyone and who only came to those houses from the back, to receive and deliver the clothes and collect their pay for each dozen pieces washed; What hurt them the most about that order was that the same people whose clothes they washed were the ones who had intrigued the cursed commander to forbid them to wash on the nearby banks and force them to do it farther and farther away; they say because it was “very sad the spectacle that was presented with the hanging of certain clothes, almost in the middle of Calle Real, just for the washerwomen to escape from the walk to the place that they have indicated for it”; as those people who had not carried even the four ounces of cheese they ate at lunch had written in their ABC, much less had walked half a league carrying on their heads all the clothes of a house wrapped in a joto, where they also carried the rallo and the manduco, the batea and the totuma.
In addition to the three tanks in which rainwater was stored to do household chores, for cooking, bathing and washing clothes, there was space in that paliadera for four pots planted with seasoning herbs in three milk jars. Klim and Quaker oats and in a can of La Sevillana butter.
At the end of the paliadera, there was emptiness, the deep precipice of the mounted patio where all possible bushes, shrubs, trees and herbs grew freely.
The red beauty of the ripe cashews and the green beauty of the biche cashews, whose birth was heralded by the copious magenta rain of the abundant flowers that burst from that formidable tree until they covered the ground with fuchsia, crowded together in abundant segments hanging from the solid branches where the leaves were a party in homage to all the shades of green with which it was possible to paint hope.
Twisting against the wind, vigorous and compact, some twisted, others straight, all brilliant, the guamas were meticulously elongated on the robust branches of this portentous tree, which rose to the sky offering the pristine whiteness of its light flowers and the smoothness of cotton. from the succulent wrapper of its seeds. Among its heavy filigree green pots, which on dark nights and cold dawns fell plummeting onto the soft ground and with their dry and harsh noise woke up the worms and the worms, the countless seeds of the breadfruit tree multiplied. silently reproducing the serene and smooth delight of its incomparable flavor.
Scattered around the parts of the patio where water flowed, there were one or two crown sticks that peeked gracefully and lavishly through the varied bushes and the aroma of the Santamaría de anís bushes and the leaves of the Santamaría boba and the lulo bushes. always abundant and loaded. Right there ran that small ravine that was formed with the waters of a dozen crabeaters, those tiny but unstoppable sprouts of fresh and limpid water -with grains of gold in its sandstone- with which the swamps on the right bank of the river are full. Atrato where these towns grow from where the peasants bring the tastiest food to Quibdó, on Saturdays at dawn, in their large and wide ranch canoes, as beautiful as they are jealous; in its long-lined shacks like the shadow of people at noon; in their cedar sheds and their fast colts.
There was no shortage of alligators, smooth, as smooth as a cloud and so beautiful that before eating them one contemplated them for a while to fix in memory the perfect combination of yellow and green in their impeccable shell. The massive and delicate borojós, beautifully fragrant and exquisitely tasty, also abounded there, bending the branches to the ground with their weight equivalent to the deliciousness of their juices.
The sour guavas, with their heavenly aroma; the appetizing red guavas, whose softness was a treat for the teeth and the palate; the milk guavas that even on the stick itself, without detaching them from their segment, always provoked biting; the lemons from the mountains and the grapefruit, which were the sour note among the sweet spell of such a lavish orchard; the subtle flavor of the humble badeas and the dusty colorful delicacy of the chontaduros were not lacking in that patio, in whose center a coconut palm rose whose immense leaves reached the height of the roof of the house. According to what the man who climbed it to get the coconuts and pipes full of water used to say, from the heart of that palm, on clear days, you could see the mountains on the other side of which they said was Colombia.