6. Homage to Erma

One of the chapters I have written was about building our house in Spain when we decided to retire there in 1970.  

    A great many people remember fondly the writings of Erma Bombeck, the humorist who wrote weekly columns, appeared on the Today Show, and wrote books on everyday life as a suburban wife in Phoenix, AZ in the '60's, '70's and '8o's. Erma wrote “The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank” in 1976 and it became a best-seller in 1978.

    But I never heard of her, because my husband and I left Phoenix in 1965 and lived abroad for 44 years. Fritz had worked for Carrier Air Conditioning for 39 years but in 1971 while we were living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he decided to retire to Spain.

Fritz had grown up in Barcelona, and kept close contact with his friends from the German School there. When one of his friends, Hans Hoffman, became the German Consul in Malaga we would always stop by the Consulate for a long lunch with him on our vacations to Spain. On one of those visits in 1968 Hans sold us two acres of land in a finca (plantation) that he had developed over the years. It was called Finca La Cancelada, between Marbella and Estepona on the oceanside of the coastal highway, 45 minutes from Gibraltar.

    The finca had been a sugar plantation: a large piece of land which Hans had divided up into parcels, outlined each parcel with oleander hedges, put in gravel roads, and our water supply was a fresh-water spring up in the mountains which he had funneled down to the finca's water reservoir.

    Once the decision was made we packed up once more, arranged to ship our furniture and in early 1971 flew to Madrid, with our furniture going into storage in Malaga, on the Costa del Sol.

    After two months in Madrid, we received our Residencia Permit (to live permanently in Spain) and promptly moved to the finca, into a furnished apartment over the garage of an existing villa. There were 20 villas in the finca overall, belonging to English, Belgian, German and American ex-pats. We even had a former Russian Princess living there.

    Using the floor plan of a house we had visited during an Open House the previous winter in Tucson, we found an architect in Marbella who recommended a Danish contractor whom he felt would be reliable and started building our retirement villa. The contractor's truck had the motto painted on the side panels: “For peace of mind while building: --Cunild,” That motto obviously leads to a future story: whether it turns out humorous, or one of those stark, raving mad, what were we thinking? stories remains to be seen.

    Two months after we started, while pouring the foundations of the house, my husband got a call from Carrier asking him to come back to work as a consultant on a temporary project. None of the houses at the finca had any telephones; in fact, in 1971 we didn't even have television. Carrier had called a nearby hotel and a messenger came to the apartment requesting that he call Carrier immediately. Fritz accompanied the messenger back to the hotel, where he found out that the consulting job was in England, not Spain, and would start immediately. Carrier had purchased a factory on the Isle of Wight; they wanted to turn it into a manufacturing entity for Carrier window air conditioners to ship and sell in Europe. It was to be a 6-week assignment.

    Being a workaholic, how could he refuse? Then began the rationalizing:

“You love designing and building houses.” And “You learned to speak enough Spanish in Puerto Rico to finish up building the house.”

    No problem. Fritz rented a super studio apartment just off Hyde Park Square in London and traveled weekly to the Isle of Wight, getting the factory in operation.

I coped with workmen, most of whom were former fishermen. I began turning my Spanish 101 into Advanced Conversational Spanish as Fritz took off for London and I was left at the finca to begin picking up great cuss-words in Spanish, and construction words like vigas (Beams), techo (Roof), azulejos (Tiles), posso negro and posso blanco (Septic Tanks: poop and pee, in that order). Every 2-3 months he would fly down to the finca and deal with whatever crisis needed to be straightened out.

    The 6-week assignment interlude turned into a year and a half.

    There would be the occasional messenger treading the by now well-worn path from the hotel phone to my door, and a pleading message from my husband to join him in London for a few weeks.

    Eventually the villa got built, and we had the celebratory paella party for the workers when the tiled roof was finished and they hung the Spanish flag from the chimney.

    We hired a gardener who planted geranium clippings from the neighbors' gardens, hibiscus plants, bougainvilleas and a lot of grass, little plugs by little plugs.

    On September 14, 1971, we celebrated our 25^th Anniversary by going to a nursery and buying a large mimosa tree, planted it in the front courtyard and christened the house Villa Mimosa.

    We enjoyed sitting on the porch with our neighbors with our gin and tonics watching the ferries pass by on their way to Morocco.

    When we began getting visitors from the States, mostly friends from Arizona, I had to begin explaining why there was one large square on our front lawn that was greener than the rest.

    And that was when they told me all about Erma Bombeck and her wonderfully funny wit.

    Erma died, beloved by all her fans, in 1996. Thank you, funny girl. And yes, the grass really is always greener over the septic tank.

    

I found out much later, on a trip back to Phoenix that Erma and her husband had lived a block and a half further up the street from our Phoenix home all the years we had been in Spain.