¿HABLA USTED SPAMGLISH?
na tardecita in summer, la familia had finished lavando los trastes after
pero it was still too early para ir a acostarse.
After Grama Cuca had finished putting the dishes away, ella recomendó que they might all walk over pa’l campo santo and look at the graves. Canutito always liked visiting the cemetery porque allí, he
las historias más interesantes de las personas who were buried there.
Since they didn’t live muy lejos, pronto they were trudging down the dirt road mirar las sepulturas all decorated con plastic flowers y con wooden crosses.
Grama tenía una very sharp memory y sabía los nombres de todos los dearly departed. Cuando vieron el tombstone de Mana Senona, Grampo Caralampio remarked: “Cuando la Senona was a young girl, era muy modesta y bonita, pero then she went to work en el Montgomery Ward. Entonces she thought que era la gran cosa – murre profesional – and so she cut her hair into uno de esos ‘unisex-I-can’t-be-bothered-with-it hairstyles.’
“¡Y luego que puso so many blond highlights en el cabello que she began to look como un zorrillo – and not even a cute skunk!”
“It is not nice de hablar mal de los muertos, viejo,” Grama Cuca reminded him as they walked para otro gravesite. When they got cerca de la sepultura, Canutito sat down en un cerquito hecho de wrought iron to listen to Grama.
She said: “Aquí está el difunto Donatelo who came bien close to being born como una muchachita.”
“¿Por qué dice que Mano Donatelo came very close de nacer como una baby girl?” Canutito asked Grama Cuca mientras que he shifted en el wrought iron fence.
“Cuando su mamá, Mana Nuria, iba a tener al baby, she went a ver a una curandera. She told her de que quería saber el
agender of the child que iba a tener. La curandera hechó una teaspoon of valerian root en un vaso de agua and put it arriba de la mesa.
“Entonces she told Mana Nuria to take it and drink it.
atold her: baby boy.’ Mana Nuria asked her: and the folk healer ‘You picked up the glass instead of with the right hand. That indicates que vas a tener a un niño.’’”
“I didn’t know de que agarrando algo with the left hand era diferente from picking it up con la right hand, Grama,” Canutito commented. He sat down cautiously en otro cerquito de fierro. He was going to add otra cosa más pero de repente he forgot what he was going to say porque the wrought iron fence estaba digging into him.
Grama Cuca had always told him de que cuando se le olvidaba something that he were trying to say es porque era una mentira, so it must have been a lie. He got up uncomfortably del wrought iron fence y se puso a pensar en otras cosas instead of thinking de cuánto le dolían las nargs sentado so uncomfortably como un bird on a wire.
“Tu grama siempre tiene una answer para todo, m’hijo,” Grampo Caralampio said. “But it must be como dice el proverb: ‘El hombre propone y Dios dispone’ and to that I would add, ‘y luego viene la mujer y todo descompone.’’”
Canutito laughed y mientras que he was standing there, he was trying to pull out sus chortes out from between sus nalguitas.
Grama Cuca noticed de que tenía su underwear bien metido and so she asked him: “¿M’hijo, why are you pulling en tus chortes?”
He replied, “I think de que tengo un ‘cemetery wedgie.’”
Grama Cuca smiled y le preguntó, “Where did you get ese wedgie, ¿m’hijo?”
“I got it here, right en el mero campo santo,” Canutito replied.
This is Episode #765 of the weekly Spamglish series, written by Taos historian, linguist and teacher Larry Torres. Find previous episodes at taosnews. com.