Fiesta time was a fine time for a drifting youngster from Nebraska inclined to lie about his age, to land in the cobbled town of Mazatlan.
In a series of rattlely, smashed-windowed buses, I was traveling among a dozen or so Mexican pueblos. It was the first interior trip to Mexico for me. There were no other foreign passengers on those buses.
Armed with noticeably slight Spanish, I bumped through a number of towns along the west coast. And tumbled into “Carnival” then sweeping the languid port of Mazatlan. That port town was then a small, dusty place dreaming of blossoming into a resort for game fishermen from the United States. But for a brief period that February, Mardi Gras turned it into a rough national resort center, its cobbled and dirt streets becoming an impressive tangle of musicians and dizzying crowds.
Carnival excitement swept through adobe buildings lifting and caressing thousands of Mexican visitors in a pressing rush through the town. (Later, in the hard-used 1950s, this rawness would be worn off by the tourist trade and the film industry.)
But for that brief slice of February, Mardi Gras turned into a colorful influx attracting a huge number of Mexican visitors from various areas of the Republic. Most colorfully attention-getting were musicians both from Mazatlan and other sectors of Mexico, including Jalisco.
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