There’re times I wish I had a camera with me; today was one of those times.
I went to see a mechanic here in Mexico, to get my oil and filter changed. His name is Abel and he has a bustling business that is actually under a large shade tree. Abel’s shop does fairly sophisticated mechanical work, from brakes and tune-ups to rebuilding engines. He even has my car’s correct type of synthetic oil called for by Toyota.
Just a car length away in the shop, from where my oil was being changed, was another stall where a mechanic was building an engine back up, you could still see the exposed crankshaft. The Ranchero music from that area could be heard near my car.
When I went over to see the engine being reassembled I realized the music was coming from the mechanics cell phone laying flat on the ground using the top half of a 2 liter pop bottle as a megaphone. The mechanic had hacked the bottom half off the bottle and turned the top half upside down with the mouth of the bottle balanced on the cell phone’s tiny speaker.
The mechanic stepped away and I took the opportunity to take the bottle megaphone off, and without the repurposed megaphone the volume was much lower. I put the bottle back on the cell phone and the music continued on, loud again.
In Mexico I see people listening to music on their cellphone’s tiny speaker all the time, a sort of new age transistor radio. That’s kind of a private use. But when you want to share your music sometimes all you need is an empty pop bottle cut in half. Pretty clever.