My Coolpix camera was beginning to show signs of its age and I suspected it might freeze on me completely one day, no doubt right in the middle of some momentous event I was covering for the Guadalajara Reporter. Such a possibility was, of course, completely unthinkable, so I turned to Google to check out the prices of the new Coolpix AW100, which is waterproof and drop-proof with a built-in GPS: the perfect camera for a dangerous cliff-hanging trail or an underground river.
“This camera probably costs twice as much in Mexico as in the States,” I told my wife Susy, “but just in case, I’ll call up a few shops here in Guadalajara.”
I started out by dialing the “Information” number, 040, to get the telephone numbers of Best Buy and Laboratorios Julio, which I know sell a variety of cameras. Getting through, however, turned out to be a laborious process, as half the time 040 seems to be busy or “not home.” I finally got the phone numbers I was seeking, but to my surprise, when I called each of them, I got the message, “este número no existe” (This number does not exist.)
“Time to get out the old phone book,” I said to myself, dreading the thought because I already knew there was no way I was going to find cameras under C, having discovered long ago that absolutely nothing is classified under the letter you would expect. Looking something up in a Mexican telephone book is like trying to find a friend’s phone number in Susy’s address book, where our friend Justus Mohl is listed under H (his father-in-law’s last name, of course)!“OK,” I said, steeling myself for the task and dropping the two monster phone books on the kitchen table. “Cameras are photographic equipment, so I should look under F for fotografía,” I reasoned.
Well, I looked under F and discovered that Guadalajara has 100 fotógrafos (photographers) ready to take your baptism, First Communion, 15th birthday or funeral photos, but, according to the phone book, only five stores in the whole city sell photographic equipment (listed under “A” for artículos, of course) and neither Best Buy nor Julio are among them. OK, I can understand why Telmex might not want me to find Best Buy: Carlos Slim probably doesn’t own it yet—but I thought it was pretty common knowledge that Julio was the place to buy photo gear in Guadalajara.
Maybe I’m wrong, I thought. Maybe cameras (cámaras in Spanish) is actually listed under “C”. To my surprise, I discovered that our fair city has no less than 16 cámaras de comercio (chambers of commerce), and even sports one “refrigeration chamber,” whatever that may be, but as for photographic cameras, I was sent right back to those five stores under “A” again.
Listening to my grumbles and complaints as I waded through those weighty – but useless – tomes, Susy began chanting “Ask Google, Ask Google,” so I did … and, of course, in a matter of seconds I had the correct working telephone numbers of both Laboratorios Julio and Best Buy.
And there on the table lay volumes I and II of the Guadalajara phone book, ready to go back to the shelves where, every year, they gather dust for 12 months before being replaced by two brand-new, equally useless, publications.
So … if its information is out of date before it’s even published – what is the Guadalajara telephone book good for?
Here are a few ideas.
Burn, Baby, Burn: Having trouble starting your barbecue or chimney fire? Save a tree! Instead of wasting ocote (pine-resin sticks), use your telephone book! Assuming ten crumpled pages will get a fine blaze going, Guadalajara’s 2,474-page phone book will help you and your family and friends start more than 247 fires.
Instant Soap Box: Is there something you’d like to get off your chest? Just grab your phonebooks and head for El Parque Metropolitano. Those two thick volumes will hold a lot more weight than a soap box – and who knows, this could be the start of your political career!
Then again, you may want to preserve those phone books in the hope that they will soon go the way of videotapes and typewriters and may someday be worth a small fortune to your grandchildren. Perhaps you may end up throwing them into your safe, along with a few mothballs. What, you don’t have a safe and mothballs? Don’t worry, no need to risk smudging one of those potentially precious telephone book pages looking for something you’ll probably never find.
Just click on Google!