# My Old Town Pottery Ritual

Everyone who goes to Old Town visits the pottery store. I
don't think I've ever seen anyone buy a pot there, but there
are plenty of nick-nacks to buy. I wonder if the flower pots
have actually been there for years and they're just sort of
a display to get people in to buy the smaller items.

Anyway, whenever I'm in Old Town these days, I try to buy a
different Lotería tile.

Lotería ("lottery", Spanish) is a game that's just like
bingo. It uses a deck of cards with pictures of items such
as el nopál (cactus), la sirena (mermaid), or la chalupa
(canoe).

gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Lotería

The pottery shop in Old Town sells tile versions of these
cards. You can find them in the back right corner of the
yard, near a bunch of other tiles. There are 54 kinds, so
I'll be able to find one I don't have for a pretty long
time. And they cost about $4.50, so I'm not going to tile my
whole kitchen with them or anything, but it's not a bad
price for an every-once-in-a-while purchase.

They're made of terra cotta, and I think the glazing might
develop fine cracks if you leave them out in the hot sun all
the time. At least that's what I think might have happened
to one of mine. I'm guessing that the expansion rate of the
terra cotta and the glazing is different enough to cause
problems.