Looking out my Backdoor: It's not a perfect world …

Honest to Pete, sometimes I’m blind as a bat. Yes, I know; let the clichés roll on.

These last six years that I’ve lived in my Etzatlan house, I thought my bodega roof drained frontward. My neighbor Janet asked if I knew what that large pipe was about on the other side of our shared wall. What pipe?

We asked “the boys.” Yes, that pipe drains the gutter from my bodega roof onto the other property and makes a right mess. Joe and Yvonne used to own both houses. They were here only in the winter and they didn’t care. It never rains in winter.

I was still mightily puzzled. I look at my bodega side...