During last Tuesday's wonderful ¡Viva Milagro! dinner for Día de los Muertos, a few lucky folks were honored with calaveras written especially for them. What is a calavera? Well, in Spanish, the word calavera means, literally, "skull" but also refers to festive verses written for the Day of the Dead intended to poke fun at the living. Here's one that former board member Emma Oliver presented to the president of our Board of Directors ...
JOHN "PEPE" RODARTE
RIP
Pepe Rodarte died standing
A cerveza bottle in his hand
Drinking beer like Pancho Villa…with torpedoes of tequila
And listening to a live mariachi band
If Puerto Vallarta had an ocean and a sun
Pepe Rodarte never saw them
He sat hidden from the world
in a bar
Drinking, singing, and having lots of fun
La Calaca poisoned the worm inside the bottle
Pepe didn’t have a chance
He gulped it down in one long swallow
But he was wasted so he didn’t care
That there was no time left for one last dance
Such a mystery was John Rodarte
He seemed so respectable in his own town
Always quiet and well mannered
Working hard at keeping Portland’s weather nice
And giving time and money to causes that he liked
It was such a shock to people who knew him
To hear of his drunken death
But oh well, caras vemos, corazones no sabemos
as they say
Now all that is left is for us to pray
Pepe’s soul split into two and still lives in this world
One is at the Miracle Theatre
where it sits
At the Board of Director’s meeting
With a ghostly President’s gavel in his fist
The other is seen at the bar in Vallarta
Where it sings to its heart content
Songs of love and happiness
to a live mariachi band.
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