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I don’t write too much personal information because I’m really a private person. Recently, around family, I found out that my family, originally worried that I would write about them, they are now worried that I won’t write about them
What are you going to do?
Shrug.
So Easter Vigil services, the Paschal Candle, and lovely services Saturday evening left a cool, dark and rainy Sunday without much on my agenda.
Started with sleeping late, then coffee at home, then coffee with friends, the usual Sunday morning coffee gang, and while there, a buddy pops up.
“He’s single?”
“Yes,” I said, “to the best of my knowledge.”
“Good looking. Why?”
Well, think about it. One of my friends. Probably got a skeleton or two in his closet. Who knows?
Chatted, talked Buddhist doctrine, meditation, and other crap. Got a second cup of coffee, and set out for a repast, just a quick meal on a dreary, rainy, cold Sunday morning in San Antonio. Thinking about all those people camped out in the city park. Weird local phenomena — camping Easter weekend in the city park.
Looked depressing.
Drove past El Jarro, closed for Easter. Same with Alamo Cafe, then El Chapparel, looped down to La Hacinda, the gate was closed there, too. 24-hour grocery store: closed. Walmart parking lot was packed, so that was hard pass. All the TexMex places were closed. Who knew?
“Try Torchy’s?”
Torchy’s Tacos is a chain, now, a national chain, but it started in the “aughts” in a trailer park in old south Austin. Rapidly grew, almost exponential growth, exporting that old Austin sensibility, just weird enough. The icon is a devilish cherub with a pitchfork, deep red, adorned with horns. Motto? Damn good tacos. Fact? Good food.
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Commuting back to Austin, the old rock store was just south of the Mueller Airport (old Austin airport), and there was a new Torchy’s there. Perfect stop while waiting on traffic to die down. (As if.) I got used to the new Torchy’s at the old airport. Road food on Austin Tuesdays was either Torchy’s or What-A-Burger. Fast food done, well, fast food. The tacos are good.
So that’s how I found myself Easter Sunday, looking at a the “taco of the month,” a specialty taco that brought back a flood a memories.
It was a hamburger patty, like any kind of a fast food hamburger patty, a gray, circle of meat, or meat-like substance, griddled to death, folded into a taco with sauce and a sprinkling of garnish, some pico, some purple pickled onions, other stuff. First bite, though, rockets me back in time to Sandy’s in Austin, then further back to a Bob’s Big Boy, along the highway, or even the Melios Brothers with their “special sauce,” just ketchup and mayo whipped together. The flavor of a round patty of hamburger meat, griddled to death, then lightly dusted with lettuce, tomato, whatever.
That Torchy’s taco — the monthly special — tastes like a hamburger from the days of long before, when hamburgers tasted like they were full of youth and hope. How they captured that flavor — so exactly in a single taco?
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It was an Easter miracle.
