The Lagoon by James Michael Dorsey

Author:James Michael Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2023-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

Six

Maldo Fischer, Johnny Friday, and Frank Fischer

If Pachico Mayoral is the godfather of the lagoon, then the alcalde is Romualdo Liera Fischer, known to one and all as Maldo. The Fischer name is everywhere throughout San Ignacio, and Maldo is aware of the position he holds. He is a “man of honor” and beloved by everyone. His colorful background conveys a brief history of San Ignacio, and it goes like this: In 1910, Maldo’s grandfather Frank Fischer was the German fourth mate on a merchant marine vessel docked at the French colonial mining town of Santa Rosalia on the Baja coast of the Sea of Cortez, several hours’ drive southeast of the lagoon in the early cars of that time. His ship had put ashore to pick up copper ore. The twenty-five-year-old Frank got into a ruckus with the vessel’s second mate and thought the looming punishment serious enough to jump ship. The story of what the fight was about has several versions, so the reader can use imagination here. Now a fugitive, Frank headed overland and hid out in the mountains until things cooled down. Eventually he made his way to the village of San Ignacio where, being handy with tools, he quickly became the town’s only blacksmith and eventually married a local girl. He was good at what he did, and no one was interested in his past. Before long, he was considered the premier mechanic on the central Baja coast with a reputation for keeping a car running, no matter its condition. This was at a time when there were no roads, and the ones that existed barely qualified as such. Because of his international maritime experiences, he spoke several languages, which came in handy, and he made most of his own tools. Mechanics were in short supply at the time, and Frank quickly became a local legend. He was mentioned in a 1958 article in a small circulation publication titled Solo Below, a Guide to Lower California. In 1971 he made it into the much larger circulation Sunset magazine, and a 1974 guidebook titled Guide to Baja also included a reference to him. Frank was the undisputed car doctor of central Baja and resident celebrity of San Ignacio, and he was lucky no one from the merchant marines read Sunset magazine.

Most important, Frank unwittingly played a role in the preservation of some of Baja’s most precious artifacts. While on a hunting trip, he discovered the first of what would prove to be approximately four hundred painted caves and rock shelters in the area. That cave had an enormous snake painted on the wall, and today it is known as “Serpent Cave.” In the mid-eighteenth century, there were a few references to cave paintings in the journals of Jesuit missionaries, most notably by Padre Joseph Maxiáno Rotheax, who apparently visited some of them. In 1789, Javier Clavigero published an account of some of the caves in his Historia de la Antigua ó Baja California. His was the first assumption that the pigment used to paint the caves came from the Three Virgins volcanoes.

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