In 1988 I was in San Carlos, Sonora, at a Christmas party. Someone asked me what I liked about Mexico.

“Arches,” I said. “I like the architecture, the arches of Mexico.”

“Well,” he responded “You need to go to Álamos. They have lots of arches.”

I asked at the party if they thought it was safe for me, a single woman in her early 60s, to drive south three hours alone. “Would you feel all right if your wife were to drive alone to Álamos? They all said yes, it was safe.

A page from a travel directory described Álamos as a picturesque pueblo with Spanish Andalusian architecture, cobblestone streets, and a profusion of flowers. The directory described it as a colonial city that dates back to the 16th Century, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, the site of some of the richest silver mines in Mexico, 400 miles south of Arizona, 30 miles off Highway #15, and 60 miles from the coast of the Sea of Cortez. In the directory was the picture of a lovely hotel with arches, Los Portales.

I arrived the first week in January, checked into the hotel, took a shower (which ran all over the floor and never quite turned off), looked again at the travel directory page and realized the directory was 25 years old. The Portales had suffered through those years, but the signs of neglect were balanced by the charm and eagerness of a young boy who came to my room to build a fire. He threw liquid from a coke bottle onto the pyramid of wood and tossed in a lighted match. Woosh! Javier Salazar laughed as I jumped back, startled by the explosive flame.

The next morning I wakened to the deep clangs of bells. I heard the soft rhythmic hum of women’s voices intermingled with the murmuring of doves. The tones drifted from the church across the plaza. I hurried out to explore, and in the street I met a lovely Norte Americana, Elizabeth Nuzum, who asked me to coffee the next morning. Farther away from the center, I met a couple unloading groceries from the trunk of their car. “Come back in an hour,” she said. “We’ll have coffee.” I returned to visit with Pat and Joe Axelrod.

“You’re so lucky to have a house here!” I told them.

Come with me,” Pat replied, and led me to look out their bedroom window. “See that door half-way down that long building? I think that house is for sale. The owner lives in California, in Sea Ranch. Here’s the key. You can go have a look. When you’re through,bring the key back and we’ll talk some more.”

Thus I stood in Bill Norton’s house in Barrio Tacubaya at Vera Cruz #2. The vines had grown into the grapefruit and avocado trees. I could barely see the back wall through the jungle. The dining room roof lay in a heap on the floor. The vigas (beams)were still in place. Sun and shadow striped the crumbling walls. The palm tree thrust skyward from a circular bed, thick with dark green vegetation. It seemed powerful, dominate, and protective. Debris cluttered the sagging portal. Yet my heart soared! When I returned the key, Pat gave me Bill Norton’s telephone number in California and the name of a contractor in Álamos.

I contacted Ben Anaya and met him at Bill’s house. After a few formal opening comments, Ben announced, “Now, Donna, first we must decide if we are speaking in meters or feet.” I laughed and liked him right away.

I asked Ben to improve the kitchen. “This kitchen is falling off, Donna. I’ll build you a new one.” We agreed on an arched window over the sink and tiles such as I’d seen in a magazine. He would replace and repair the roof and check the bathroom. He’d take care of it. He knew the house. His family had once lived there, before indoor plumbing. He told me the front portion of the house was 200 year-old adobe with original doors and shutters, and that the three current attached homes were originally all one--a block long.

I returned to San Carlos and, since there was no phone where I was staying, found a phone booth in front of the police station. I told Bill Norton that yes, I’d pay his asking price of $30,000 U.S. We arranged to meet in April at the entrance to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. I would carry a small American flag and my checkbook. He would bring papers necessary for the transaction. I would call Ben to tell him to proceed. I, a small-town girl from southwestern Oregon with a smattering of high school Spanish, was to be the owner of a house in a foreign country! Who could have imagined it! The thrill made me want to dance and shout right there in the parking lot of the San Carlos Police Station.

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The following October I returned to Álamos and gazed out the arched kitchen window at the brilliant bougainvillea on the back wall. The creamy glazed tiles gleamed on the counters. Ramón Sanchez and Alejandro Valdez Garcia had cleared the back garden and pruned the grapefruit and avocado trees. Nasturtiums blazed around the base of the palm tree. New steps led to the roof of the new bodega (store room). The debris was almost gone. The dining room ceiling was in place, and the bathroom worked.

Instead of a beautiful new kitchen floor, there were scraps of plywood across dirt. “Ben! What is this?” I called to him to come from where he was supervising a painter. “Oh, I didn’t know what you wanted to do about that small spring that dampens the soil. It will darken part of the tile floor. Do you want us to build it up so it will be above the dirt? It will take a little longer.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ve heard of a similar situation in another house and the owner explains the stain with a story that the house is haunted by a young boy who can’t find the bathroom.” He chucked and went to find two of his men who started that day to lay Saltillo tile.

Lupe Macías de García came to help sweep and mop and do the laundry by hand with the garden hose in a large, hollowed-out stone. She showed me how to deal with the gas tanks and tinaco (water tank on the roof). I sat on the front steps with neighborhood children, who taught me Spanish nouns and giggled. They climbed the trees, picked the fruit, ate some, took some hoe, and left some for me in baskets on the kitchen table.

The young family of Manuel and Luz Aliulez lived in the house on one side. The husband sang energetically while he made furniture in their back yard. The woman, probably in her 20s, cared for beautiful, dark-eyed, little children. On the other side of my place, an ancient woman, Anita Acosta lived alone in a partial ruin. Some of the ceilings had collapsed, and the back yard was full of broken concrete and vines. She stared at the television in the one intact room and drank tequila. People came at noon with cloth-covered dishes of food for her. We were three women in a row: one in her 20s, one in her 60s, and one with 100 years.

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Too soon, circumstances changed. My new husband didn’t like living in the barrio, so we put a se vende (for sale) sign on the Tacubaya house and asked Ben Anaya to remodel a newer, larger house on a walled acre we found at Durango #26, on the edge of town. It took two weeks to buy, two years to remodel, and two days to sell. My husband didn’t like Mexico. In about 1995, we left.

Now I go back. No longer married, I returned in March of 2005 to stay with friends for almost three weeks. This year, 2006, I rented a house for the month of February. I have gone to eat, walk, and talk with friends from those years when I lost my heart to Álamos. The first women I met, Elizabeth Nuzum, and I have lunch together at the Cafe del Sol. Joe Axelrod died in a tragic automobile accident and Pat has moved to be near her children in Florida. Javier Salazar, the boy who lighted the fire with petróleo, has graduated from the university and owns a cyber store on Calle Madero. Ramón, who with Alejandro, cleaned the back garden of my first little Tacubaya house, greets me with a hug. Alejandro, who now works at the Hotel Tesoros, brings me a tall glass of tonic water and smiles, “Para usted, Mamá, a su salud.”

“Gracias, mi hijo,” I reply back.

Lupe asks about that husband, and I show her my bare left hand. She shrugs and says, “¡Ah, que bueno!” Old Anita Acosta died, and a couple from Chicago rebuilt her ruin into an elegant small home.

The sun rises, the bells clang, and the doves murmur with the women in the church on the plaza.