by Walter Hodges, text and photos

The calm smile flows out of him like fresh water from the high ground. It wraps around his weathered face as though there is no other place for it to go. His family and friends call him "Uncle," Tío Gonzalo. He is a gardener, pushing a wheelbarrow packed full of flowering plants through San Miguel, delivering them to upscale homes in el Centro.

I first saw Gonzalo, briefly, five years ago, out my car window, pushing his large wheelbarrow full of plants uphill on a cobblestone road, navigating through traffic and around pedestrians, balancing it over uneven ground. It was an impressive sight on that 95°F day. I thought, "Right there, that's a working man."

Over the years, as I drove around San Miguel, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of him pushing his wheelbarrow. More than once I had the opportunity to stop, park and engage him, but my Spanish is poor and I don't know how to say "photo-shoot."

Recently, with my translator, fixer and partner, Margo, riding shotgun, we came upon Gonzalo and arranged for me to chat with him and follow him on his rounds for a while.

Tío is 70-years-old. He says, "I spent a lot of early years up in Texas milking cows. It was good money, but it was hard work. I sent most of the money back to my family. I came back to Mexico because my family is here. Now I deliver plants and live flowers to people. The best part of my job is the plants. I'm happiest when surrounded by and embraced by plants. There's peace with plants I can't find anywhere else."

Let me paint you a picture. Plants, most of them flowering, get delivered to Gonzalo's home in colonia Allende several times a week. He fills his wheelbarrow and walks to el Centro, where he delivers them to customers' homes, a core group of 25. He also sells plants directly from his wheelbarrow to people he meets on the street. Then he walks back home, picks up another load, and repeats the process usually four times a day.

If his round trip is 2 km and he does that 4 times a day, 5 days a week, then in the 20 years he's been at it he has pushed his wheelbarrow, often under a relentless Mexican high-desert sun, for 41,600 km or once around the world's equator.

Then there are the larger plants in heavy pots that have to be carried to the third floor, because the patron prefers the light from a particular window. Gonzalo says, "That's hard. Getting those plants up those stairs. The stairs seem to be getting higher all the time."

Wheelbarrows are wonderful tools; you don't have to carry the load, only keep it going. Of course, pushing it uphill and balancing it across cobble stones is another issue. With that, and carrying plants up two flights of stairs, Tio Gonzalo gets his exercise each day.

If you will allow this expat to make a generalization about my adopted country, I would say that Mexicans have a different attitude towards physical labor. I think that in general they are more in touch with the physical world. It's tempting to feel sorry for someone breaking concrete or carrying bricks all day. But in some ways, if they think of us at all, they probably feel sorry for us, because we are so much in our heads and not our bodies.

It seems to me that Gonzalo has the best of both worlds. On one hand, he's cultivated his people, plant and sales skills. On the other hand, he has the grounded satisfaction of performing physical labor in the physical world, free to put down his wheelbarrow and rest in the shade, when the hill gets too high or the sun gets too hot. He doesn't think much about the future, "I don't know how much longer I can keep it up, but God's will is going to be done."

Gonzalo radiates a peace that's infectious. His family says everybody he meets loves him. I do. If you see him with his wheelbarrow, stop and chat. Buy a plant, and say a silent prayer for Tio Gonzalo each time that you water it. I do each time I water mine.

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Walter Hodges is a retired commercial photographer and writer from the Seattle, Washington area. Walter spent over 50 years on assignment traveling the world as a corporate and industrial photographer before retiring to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2019. He currently writes and photographs stories about underpublicized aspects of Mexican culture, as well as interesting profiles of average Mexican citizens

Website: photography, writing, blog
hodges.walter@gmail.com

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