A Greystone Family Account—Part 3
If you missed Part 2 of our feature story on Mary Lynne Arthur’s family story, you can read it here.
The next stop for the Arthur family was Mexico City, a place and time that Mary Lynne would look back on fondly.
“As we prepared for our big move to Mexico, Fatherʼs accounts dominated the talk, and I filled in with my imagination; but nothing in my wildest dreams could equal what actually happened there. The experiences we would have over subsequent years still rest in my memory as one of the most beautiful, though often brutal, places where I have ever lived.”
A bridge crossing the Rio Grande at Laredo, TX, to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in June 1940. The building at left is Mexican Customs, where Americans check in upon their return.
She recalls a particular first impression: “As we were passing through customs in Nuevo Laredo, a border guard spoke to my father in a language I had forgotten. The sound was familiar, but I hadn’t spoken Spanish since just months after my third birthday. There was some conversation about fruits and vegetables, then our luggage was thoroughly inspected, and finally, after a long wait, we were permitted to in Mexico. I turned around to look at the man who had waved us on our way. He was shaking his head as I heard him say ‘Gringos.’
“What is a Gringo, Daddy?” Whatever it was, we were that and I wanted to know what I was. My father told me, “Oh, that’s what they call Americans here in Mexico. It doesn’t mean anything much, but it’s not a compliment.”
Mexico City street, 1944.
Mexico’s population exploded at the end of World War II, as the industrialism spawned by the war became a major element in the economy. It was an exciting time for the country.
Beginning with the 1946 election of a civilian president, the military became less involved in setting national policy, and many new economic initiatives began, including massive hydraulic projects to furnish electric power and help develop regional agricultural-industrial complexes. The nationalized oil industry became a major producer of natural gas and petrochemicals, with new railroads, highways, and airline networks criss-crossing the country.
“Although both my parents spoke fluent Spanish, I would discover that Puerto Rican Spanish was quite different from Mexican Spanish. So we were gringos with parents who spoke funny Spanish. We would overcome this stigma in a matter of months to some degree, yet never totally, because gringos are identifiable by blonde hair, light eyes, our manner of dress, and lapses into colloquial American English.
When my Spanish became native-fluent, my blondness became incongruent. Somehow I never fit in completely, either in Mexico or later back in the States. I most definitely did not conform to type in the States where I was not noticed and blended into a somewhat pigmentally uniform culture, until I opened my Spanish mouth. From then on, I considered myself a Latina when we visited the United States and an American in Mexico. It served me to always be the opposite of wherever I lived so that I could be interesting.”
“Mexico City was a cosmopolitan metropolis, and our acquaintances and schoolmates came from many countries. After the initial culture shock of class structure and unusual customs, we all acclimated to a life blessed with an ideal climate, gracious people and a landscape of perennial brilliance.”
Mary Lynne recounts many more memorable experiences in her memoir, available on Amazon.
A beautiful girl by the age of 15, and fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, Mary Lynne became a working actress, performing in Mexican television and films while attending the American High School in Mexico City. Not surprisingly, she was receiving attention from various male suitors, including a brief but charged encounter with a famous Mexican bullfighter whose interest was discouraged by not only her family but also the servants (!), and, later, a famous Spanish movie actor that had captured her attention during the filming of a television pilot made for distribution in the United States.
Mary Lynne graduated from high school in June 1956 and planned to attend the University of Texas that fall to work toward a broadcasting degree. As she recalls it: “My father’s will had prevailed again, insisting that I exchange my film career for college. My dreams of stardom and life with a legend of the plaza de toros were lost somewhere in the ethers. They were like a poem that wanders around looking for a page where it might live. I had so wanted to continue my budding acting career…” [Aside: She was able to revive her acting talent later, in community theatre productions].
However, just a few months later, in August, she met “a tall, dark and handsome Prince Charming with a Southern aristocratic drawl and beautiful green eyes”—she’s referring, of course, to her future husband, Walter Johnson Jr.
Read the fourth and last installment of this series soon.
The couple, with others, are shown at right in a photo published in The Asheville Citizen-Times on January 1, 1957.
