You are looking at the premises of Santa Fe Saddlers S.A. de C.V. in Guadalajara. That door next to the row of windows is the visitors' entrance. Actually, it's the only entrance.

No sign identifies this business. You just have to know it's here.

The three-phase transformer and circuit breakers lend a gritty look. A huge fan serves as air conditioning. The façade doesn't look particularly inviting.

Nor does the lobby—industrial chic: fiberboard receptionist's desk bearing an old-fashioned monitor, cpu on the floor. Looks like my office. Except for the crucifix next to the fire extinguisher. Fire extinguisher!

A window behind her desk admits a glimpse of Javier Delgadillo Alvarado, Gerente (manager).

I'm tagging along with Clint, who is contracting with Sr. Delgadillo for the manufacture of leather bands used on western hats. Clint seems to have an unending list of items for trade. I'm guessing he struck up a conversation with a supplier of western gear on his last trip to Texas and found a niche he could fill: high-quality handmade leather hatbands at low prices. These would be a new line for him—he's always experimenting. But he has an uncanny knack for knowing what will sell.

In the conference room, Sr. Delgadillo has a wide variety of hatbands to show Clint. They interest me for about fourteen seconds. Then I sneak off into the back to check out the factory.

Now this is more like it. I hate conference rooms. I spent 35 years in them watching harried managers blowing out their antiperspirants and dampening the armpits of their white shirts. We used to call the phenomenon "pitting out."

But factories! I have been fascinated by them ever since my seventh-grade science teacher, Miss McManus, took me to a copper smelter.

Santa Fe Saddlers has a great factory. Unadorned concrete floors beneath, chain-hung fluorescent lighting fixtures above, grimy machines in between. My kind of place.

I immediately see that Sr. Delgadillo is one of a new breed of Mexican manufacturers. Floors are painted with yellow and black striping to warn away passers-by from work areas so hands won't get stabbed with sharp tools or sleeves caught in spinning pulleys. And wonder of wonders, another fire extinguisher hangs on the wall to the right. I checked the gauge: the charge is full and the date is current. These are the first overt signs of industrial safety I've seen in Mexico.

A worker punches holes, another sprays dye on leather bracelets under a vent hood.

Ascending a perforated steel catwalk, I line up a shot of people assembling leather wastebaskets. My presence provokes laughter. "What's that crazy gringo doing, taking our picture?"

The panels of these leather wastebaskets and laundry hampers are being sewn together with thongs—part of a large order for a new hotel in Cabo San Lucas. Sr. Delgadillo says this order is unusual because almost 100% of his output gets exported to the United States.

Shelves hold remaindered material...

... hanks of horsehair...

... and scraps.

The latter will be ground up to make "corkboard."

Negotiations successfully completed, Sr. Delgadillo offers Clint a gift of a beautiful handmade belt.

If you call, the receptionist answers the phone in polished syllables: "Buenos Dias, Santa Fe Saddlers." One imagines her sitting at a granite desk in a glass and steel high rise.

Reality is this scene of the executive suite. Sr. Delgadillo runs his empire from a small table flanked by a rolling cart bearing a printer and a fax machine.

Santa Fe Saddlers is an honest business run by a no-nonsense guy. He doesn't worry about images. There's no talk of branding. Sr. Delgadillo probably doesn't use "leverage" and "dialog" as verbs. He doesn't have an MBA.

What he does—he makes artisanal leather items. He hires craftsmen, types his own correspondence, and fixes broken punch presses. If you are a potential customer, he'll drive over to your hotel and pick you up. Personally.

He's also the complaint department. You got a problem with your briefcase? Talk to Mr. Delgadillo. He'll come to the phone if you ask for him. If something is wrong, he'll make it right.

It's a business model increasingly scarce north of the border.

Tonalá, that great center of artisanship! Clint and I visited Tonalá to call on potter Salvador Vásquez (see previous post) and to buy some hand-blown bullseye glass—that oldest type of windowpane. I had hoped to photograph the glass blowers in action, but they had gone home for the day. Clint's transaction consisted primarily of delays: Issuing facturas (official receipts for income tax purposes) and counting change can take ever so long. I became bored and walked out of the glass factory, wandering down the street, coming across this...

... some of the most garish furniture I have ever seen. I was so shocked that I walked past it twice before I thought to photograph it—to share with all of you. You're welcome.

I couldn't imagine anyone putting stuff like this in an actual home. It looked uncomfortable, impractical, and exquisitely ugly.

Here, an orange vinyl end table flanks a red divan shaped like a pair of female lips. Lips!

When I got home, I looked these photos over, wondering how it is I can't comprehend tastes so different from my own. Suddenly an image flashed into my mind—of an ultramodern, hip apartment full of playful furniture and art: Spirals painted on the walls, 3" shag carpets, ameba-shaped glass coffee tables. I could see how this stuff might work.

I'm a Brooks Brothers kind of guy. Living in Mexico has been widening my range of tastes.

Once I called on Yahoo, Inc. during its early days. In the lobby they had placed yellow and violet upholstered wing chairs built so large that sitting in them made one fell like a five-year old. Playful. Perhaps I could accept this vinyl furniture as playful.

Yeah. I can see that.

I peered inside the furniture store. The first thing I saw was a painting of mama and baby giraffes.

An original painting rendered with a certain skill and little substance, I couldn't wrap my mind around what kind of decor it might enhance. A Motel 6 lobby, maybe.

The proprietor came running over, telling me to stop photographing his furniture.

"Why not?"

"Because you'll steal my designs."

With effort, I am able to comprehend—somewhat dimly, perhaps—the esthetics of the vinyl furniture. A big step for me. Tastes that aren't congruent with mine should be valid; a tough concept for an engineer who thinks in terms of right and wrong. The giraffes, though—not them, not ever.

Mexico throws challenges at me. Today I'm in my late sixties, and I feel like I'm just now getting a glimpse of life's real lessons—like the spirituality of vinyl.

Fomento Cultural Banamex is a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving and promoting Mexico's cultural heritage. It has played a part in the preservation and renovation of important historical buildings in, among other places, San Miguel de Allende.

The foundation has published a number of elgant coffee-table books all of which are worth reading and if you can afford them, owning. Perhaps the best known of the Banamex books is Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art. Sadly, it is out of print, but you can find copies on the used book market. Be prepared to spend something north of $200 for a volume in good condition. If you're interested in collecting Mexican folk art, you'll gladly pony up the money: It's the bible. You can't manage without it.

The very best artists and artisans are profiled in this book. Hundreds of exquisite photographs give an idea of their work. Perhaps those honored here don't quite rise to the level of those individuals honored as Japanese Living Treasures. Perhaps they do. These people are most accomplished and talented, and there are none better in Mexico. And most of them are still alive and working.

We who live here are privileged in that we can meet these masters simply by finding out where they live and work, and going there. On last week's trip, I met Salvador Vásquez Carmona, a potter living in the Guadalajara suburb of Tonalá. Here is the portrait photograph of Sr. Vásquez in the Banamex book, taken ten years ago when he was about 60.

And here he is today in his studio alongside Clint (who cannot abide being in the vicinity of an active camera without posing).

Sr. Vásquez is holding a blue pottery dog covered with smiling new moons. Clint is negotiating purchase of the piece. Prices of this work are surprisingly low. An object like this one, made by a Japanese master, would sell for 100 times as much.

Below are some pieces representative of Sr. Vásquez' work. Today's collection seems to feature cats, a favorite motif.

Sr. Vásquez' son Salvador Jr. shares his father's love of the art. Here he is removing pieces from a mesquite-fired kiln.

Looking into the interior of the kiln, we see two recently-fired pieces along with a thick layer of broken pottery, placed there to raise the level of finished work to within easy reach. That Sr. Vásquez achieves such fine results with equipment so crude seems astonishing.

Northern California potters I have known use thermostat-controlled gas-fired kilns capable of maintaining reducing atmospheres or other special conditions. They have motor-driven potting wheels. They buy clay and glazes from specialized suppliers. Sr. Vásquez digs up his own clay out of a riverbank, and makes his own paints from natural vegetable and mineral sources. He grabs a glob of clay, mashes it until it's the right shape, fires it, paints it and fires it again. Potting wheels are for wusses.

I don't think you can call the paints Sr. Vásquez uses glazes. Pieces acquire a matte finish after the second firing, as illustrated by this vase.

To achieve a shiny surface, he burnishes each piece with a chunk of iron pyrite, as he is demonstrating below. He's embedded the fool's gold crystal in a piece of clay to form a handle for his tool.

The result is a muted shine, less glassy than that produced by glazes.

The plate above depicts La Llorona (the crying woman), a mythical figure who searches the world for her lost sons, making spooky crying sounds all the while. It's a scary tale told to children to make them behave. Or to provide a ghost story thrill.

In the studio, mussy tables and shelves hold work in various stages of completion. A group of unpainted vases are carelessly piled up against a finished urn worth thousands of dollars. The artist doesn't care. If it breaks, he'll just make another.

Sr. Vásquez insisted I come into his house to see his "diplomas." He has lots of them. He is known globally, and has pieces in museums and important private collections.

Unaccountably, he manages to show great pride in his accomplishments, and simultaneously, the deep humility of a man whose life is his art. His home is modest: he's uninterested in the material things his notoriety could buy him. His house is open to any visitor who wants to drop by to see great art in the making, or to simply sit in conversation with an interesting old man.

Mercado de Abastos is one of the large covered buildings crowded with small shopkeepers in Guadalajara, a smaller cousin of the Mercado Libertad. I love these places—bustling, chaotic, friendly and often exotic. I'm here with Clint and our hostess Moni for breakfast.

You can't order a grand slam breakfast in a place like this. Or yogurt and fruit. People here work too hard to survive on such light fare. They know that breakfast should consist of meat and something made out of cornmeal. Anything less is simply inadequate.

The reason for my visit is to try a dish that is new to me: enfrijoladas. My order starts out with slices of ropy-looking beef. The meat is broiled over a charcoal fire until nicely browned and infused with a wonderful smoky flavor.

The cook chops and rolls the meat into a large, freshly-made corn tortilla. You can see the uncooked beef stacked in front of her chopping block.

The rolled tortilla is bathed (bañado as Mexicans say) in a sauce made of beans. Sounds unexciting, doesn't it. That's what I thought before I tucked in.

Usually when I wrinkle my nose at some Mexican dish, I turn out to be wrong. Enfrijoladas turned out to be one of the tastiest meals I have eaten. Better yet, they'll last you until dinnertime. This is substantial food.

Regulars at this stand who have tired of grilled beef enfrijoladas can opt for other fillings; say, beef tongue or tripe.

I'll stick with the grilled beef, thank you.

Food concessions in mercados consist mostly of kitchens with narrow counters and stools jammed next to each other. They're not the French Laundry by any means, but in my opinion, they're much more fun, and cost approximately 97% less than exclusive Napa Valley restaurants.

Photo: CLint Hough

Mercado food used to frighten me. But I've never had any trouble with it. I've contracted food poisoning and other ailments any number of times in classier, sit-down restaurants in San Miguel de Allende, but never at one of these lunch counters.

Tlaquepaque was once a small town situated southwest of Guadalajara. Today it has been absorbed into the larger city's sprawl, just as Santa Monica has been engulfed ameba-like into Los Angeles. It's a favorite destination of Credit Card Bearing Gringas bent on buying folk art and antiques. It is also of interest to my friend Clint, who scours Tlaquepaque's galleries and workshops for stuff to export to the USA. I accompanied Clint on one of his trips there.

Our headquarters was the Hotel Casa Campos, a small, warm, and friendly hotel owned by Monica Kabande, seen here walking past the hotel restaurant with Clint. Moni served as our friend and guide during our visit.

A courtyard inside the hotel serves as habitat for a dozen marmosets; perfectly tame creatures, delightful to watch as they scamper on the philodendrons. They like it when you feed them marshmallows.

The hotel is set in a quiet part of town. On a nearby street you'll find a tile replica of Diego Rivera's mural A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.

Parking is permitted in front of the tile mural, and a tree has been planted there as well. Apparently the directors of civic art and of streets and sidewalks don't speak to each other.

A kiosk on Tlaquepaque's plaza advertises Systema Apartado. In response to my question, I was told the term refers to a lay-away plan. You put a little money down for something you want to buy, and make additional payments from time to time. When the shopkeeper has collected the full price from you, he gives you the merchandise. Seems cumbersome to me: I doubt anything in the kiosk—cheap sunglasses, pink plastic purses—is priced at more than US $10.

Sitting on benches, we ate lomo and salchichon tostadas from a cart on the plaza. Across from us, a little girl in an avocado dress enjoyed her ice cream. The plaza is a relaxed and safe place.

Tlaquepaque is a quiet sanctuary amid the bustle of Guadalajara. Hotel Casa Campos is the perfect retreat after a day of art and antique shopping.

The large and energetic Kabande family and their friends welcome travelers enthusiastically. Stay here, and you immediately have a circle of good friends. Reasonably priced, with comfortable common rooms and an excellent breakfast of yogurt, fruit, fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee included, Hotel Casa Campos has become my favorite Guadalajara-area hotel, in my favorite part of town.

Note to beleaguered San MIguel residents: Fireworks are rarely set off in Tlaquepaque.

For my money, Zihuatanejo is much more fun to visit than Ixtapa, the neighboring resort city to the north.

One of the early developments of Fonatur (the Federal Bureau for Tourist Development), high-rise Ixtapa was the second choice of the government for a west coast resort. (Fonatur is the outfit that gave us Cancun.) Originally they chose Zihuatanejo for development, but the townspeople rejected the idea, preserving it for their own enjoyment, and for ours.

Zihuatanejo remains a fishing village, at least in part, although a fair number of small-scale hotel operators have joined the fishermen.

Captain Max owns the Cobra, a boat outfitted for charter fishing. His work is easier and more lucrative than that of ordinary fishermen: no fishing in the dark, no hauling in heavy nets.

He will throw this inedible needlefish back into the ocean, hoping next time to hook a dorado.

Divers pursue spiny lobsters, a method that seems risky. But lobster brings high prices—US $10 per pound on the beach.

A rusty air compressor mounted in the middle of La Perla Negra supplies air to a diver. Exhaust from the small motor gets sucked into the compressor intake if the wind is right.

The day's catch is sold on the beach in the center of town. Local residents come early to buy today's dinner; everything is sold by 8 or 9 AM.

On offer is whatever was caught early this morning. The fish are not the carefully graded and displayed product I remember from the Sonoma Market in California. But they are much, much fresher, and they don't cost anywhere near $20 a pound.

Nobody's getting rich fishing, but this man is able to afford an early morning cigar as he waits for buyers.

The way you buy your fish, you walk along until you find one you like. Then you pick it up and haggle with the fisherman. Don't expect him to gut it or fillet it for you. He will weigh it if you insist, but most people don't bother.

Huachinango in his right hand, pesos in his left, this man is ready to deal.

No power, no refrigeration. Block ice keeps fish fresh for a few hours before it is cooked and eaten.

Selling fish is hungry work, and in Mexico, where people might be hungry, there's always someone to fill the need.

Maybe you were expecting a plastic bag to take your purchase home. Maybe someone around here has one. Probably not. It's easier just to grab your black tuna by the tail and walk away.

This customer in his Tommy Jeans tee shirt and Crocks presages Zihuatanejo's future. As the developed world crowds in, land prices rise. As in so many Mexican coastal villages, fishermen will be unable to afford to live here on what they can make. The fleet will disappear, to be replaced by jet skis and parasails.

No point in bemoaning progress. As the Mexicans say, it is what it is. Get out there and enjoy it while you can.

Paul (El Guapo) Latoures and I were driving on the periférico when we spotted this humongous truck parked in front of a repair shop.

He said, "That would make a great picture."

I tried to blow him off: "Yeah, yeah. Lets go get some coffee."

Paul launched into his usual interminable lecture about how the best pictures were the ones he didn't take. With a sigh, I pulled over to inspect this monster.

The battered truck crouched ominously. Like something out of Mad Max, it had seen many highway battles. Paul pointed out the Grim Reaper decal obscuring the windshield.

Believe me, you see this in your rear view mirror, you'll get out of the way.

It was parked in front of a vulcanizadora for tire repairs. If anything, the tire place looked more marginal than the truck.

An apparent believer in minimizing start-up costs, the proprietor had pressed a claw foot bathtub into service for locating punctures.

The truck had major tire issues. Several had chunks missing from treads. Others were virtually bald. The trucker had managed to squeeze every last kilometer out of the life of these tires.

Photo: Paul Latoures

A bottle jack supporting an axle of the fully loaded truck leaned precariously. I doubt there's a hydraulic rack capable of lifting this vehicle anywhere in San Miguel. Why buy a pricey machine when a $50 hand tool and a block of wood will do the same job?

I wondered if the truck could fall off the tiny jack. Well of course it could. But resourceful mechanics would see such a happenstance as a minor setback at worst.

A closer look at the truck revealed other signs of heavy use and repairs. The frame supporting the box had been welded where it had cracked. The box itself was supported on new-looking pine blocks—surely a stopgap repair.

The battery hold-down was long gone, replaced by a knotted rope.

The box was deteriorating. Paul, amused, points out broken slats. The load doesn't look any too stable either.

This truck would not be permitted to operate north of the border. I doubt it could even be restored to operational standards. But such matters are not taken so seriously here. I often find myself following vehicles like this as they labor up some grade, ghastly clouds of black smoke issuing from their stacks.

But today, vehicle safety standards are becoming part of drivers' lives. After losing a couple of rigs descending the long grade on the Carretera a Querétaro, a truck inspection checkpoint was established at the top. That this beast would be allowed through is dubious.

But I have to say I like this truck. It has the quality of a much-used and worn hand tool. You don't throw stuff out here. Not if there's any way of fixing it. I bet the owner figures there's lots more life left in this baby.