Mexican Dominoes and a fun evening at Rogillio Rincon's place...

Rogillio Rincón is one of Rodolfo's younger brothers, and he's quite a guy. Like everybody elese in the family, he's charming, friendly and hard-working, and he's the type of guy that would give you the shirt off his back. He and his lovely wife Anna have two children, Rogillio Jr. and Penelope, and Anna runs a restaurant which occupies the kitchen, front room, and the space in front of their house. When Rogillio isn't helping out at the family restaurant, he's teaching science and physical education at the local high school.

María Rincón, who is the matriarch of the family, lives with Rogillio and his family, and she helps Anna with the family restaurant. Maria is a really nice lady, and is an excellent cook, and makes the best menudo found in the state of Tamaulipas. In addition to helping Anna run the restaurant, she performs a lot of household chores and helps Anna with the children when needed.

Left: Rogillio, standing in doorway, sitting, from left to right, friend, Rogillio Jr., Lettie, Anna and El Pollo. Right: Jr., Lettie, Anna, El Pollo and Jerry are enjoying the fine fall evening.

I got a real kick out of Rogillio Jr., has every time he greeted me, he produced his right hand for me to shake and greeted me as "Senor Eric." You can tell he comes from a nice family for an eight-year old boy to have such flawless manners. Penelope is a shy, pre-teen girl, who is very active, as she's quite involved with school activities and always seemed to be running around, or riding her bicycle.

After stuffing ourselves at with the fine food that Dora and her helpers prepared in my honor, Rogillo and his charming wife Anna invited us, along with Rodolfo and Dora, over to their place to socialize, enjoy each other's company, and play Mexican dominoes. Rogillio brought out a couple of tables and some chairs, and we proceeded to get the party started, in front of their house.

Anna's restaurant was still open for business, but business was slow, and she let us know that if any customers showed up that she'd be glad to prepare a meal for them. The night was beautiful, as it was a typical late September night in the lower Rio Grande valley that invites families to spend the evening outdoors, socializing with friends and neighbors. The temperature was in the mid 70's, and with no mosquitoes. It was truly a nice evening to spend outside, socializing with these wonderful people.

Left: El Pollo demonstates the art of sipping fine mescal. Right: Lettie joins in for a little cheer from the bottle.

After spending a bit of time chit-chatting and sipping on delicious Mexican cokes, Rodolfo challenged us to a game of Mexican dominoes. I hadn't played dominoes for years, and I'd never played Mexican dominoes before, and I was busy re-adjusting myself to my somewhat rusty Spanish and getting acquainted with my new friends. Jerry produced a set of dominoes, and he, Dora and Rogillio set up a table and began to play.

Mexican dominoes differs significantly from the Anglo version in many ways. One player is the scorekeeper, and a score is agreed upon before starting the game, and the player who reaches the number first loses, and the player with the lowest score is declared the winner. Each player is dealt, in the manner of cards, six dominoes, with range in value (the number of spots...) from zero to six. Somebody places a random domino from the unused ones in the center of the table, and the player who's turn it is to start places a domino, with the matching number of spots, next to the domino on the table. If he or she has another one that matches, they can place it on the other side. The idea is to get rid of your dominoes first, and then the other players have to count the number of spots on their dominoes and tally their results on the score card. The first player that reaches the bogey number, in the case of tonight's game the score was 100, so the first player to reach that score was crowned the loser.

Photo: El Pollo looks on as Rogillio, Rodolfo and Dora play Mexican dominoes. Note that Jerry is smoking a cigar, which in this case, is a genuine one from Cuba, which is banned in the U.S. I smoked one too; they are terrible!

As the game was being played in earnest, we received another visitor, Rogillio and Anna's next door neighbor, a fellow nicknamed "El Pollo." Pollo is a tall, lanky guy, with an infectious, easy-to-like smile and is a non-stop talker. Rogillio didn't seem to particularly welcome him, but he sat down in a chair next to Lettie and myself, and began to talk non-stop about the theories of dominoes, Anna's fine cooking, the great weather, and just about any subject that crossed his mind. Rogillio seemed to scoff at many of Pollo's comments, but I found him interesting and entertaining, and the guy can speak pretty good English. I asked him how he got the name "El Pollo," which means "chicken" in English, and he replied that's what many people called him, due to the fact that chicken is his favorite food. If you're not familiar with Mexican culture, you'll find that Mexican's are very fond of nicknames, as almost everybody has one.

It was really entertaining to watch the game of Mexican dominoes in progress. Naturally, there was a lot of laughing, good-natured teasing, and everybody was trying to outdo everybody else. I alternated between watching the game, and talking to "El Pollo," Maria and Lettie. María really warmed up to me when we got on the subject of Mexican cooking and Mexican food in general, especially when I professed to her my love of menudo. Chatting with everybody, I got quite a lesson in contemporary Mexican slang, something that I hadn't had for a number of years. I'll give you an example, as Mexicans refer to the capitol city, Mexico City, as "La Ciudad," which literally translates to "The City." What really made me laugh is when either Rodolfo or Rogillio would best each other or Jerry, they would refer to the other as "El Pinchon," which means "pigeon" in Spanish. Mexicans have as much disdain for pigeons and find them just as stupid as Americans do.

All members of the family are well-educated, hard-working, professional people. As I mentioned before, Rogillio is a high school teacher, and Rodolfo owns 2 restaurants, is a former mayor of Lucio Blanco, dabbles in many other monetary enterprises, and has a Master's Degree in Engineering from Monterrey University. The Rincóns live in Mexico, and the language of Mexico is Spanish, so the Rincóns speak Spanish. Actually, it's remarkable that they speak as much English as they do, as even if I didn't know a word of Spanish, I'd be able to communicate with them. But for me, it was "instant immersion" into Spanish, and I used my Spanish as much as possible, despite the fact that our wonderful hosts wanted to use English so they could get practice using a foreign language. The conversation was interesting, as it included a mix of both languages.

Photo: Sitting, from left to right: Anna, María and Penelope. Standing, your author, Rogillio and Rogillio Jr. Jerry took the photo.

I didn't really take notice, but "El Pollo" had slipped away sometime while I was engaged in pleasant conversation with Lettie, and had returned with a large bottle of mescal, which he proudly displayed. Rogillio managed to produce a couple of shot glasses, and the party really got started. I noticed after Pollo produced the mescal, the Rincóns seemed to warm up to him a bit... could it be the mescal? Everybody took a shot or two, and beautiful Lettie seemed to enjoy drinking the mescal straight from the bottle, and "El Pollo" didn't seem to mind helping her out!

Rodolfo won the domino game, but that really didn't matter, as the evening was made special, as I had the pleasure of spending time with some of the nicest people that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I can't wait for the opportunity to spend another evening at Rogillio's place.

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