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Don McLean’s American Pie: Relevant Then, Relevant Now

Scientists say that smell often triggers memory in people; Proust and his madeleines are an excellent example. Songs trigger memories, too, some tunes more than others. One song that always does that for me is Don McLean’s American Pie, released in 1971.

I heard the song on the car radio Tuesday afternoon as I made the long trek up I-45 from my home in Houston to my mother’s home just north of Dallas. The song’s opening lines, “A long, long time ago/I can still remember how that music used to make me smile” (McLean, 1971, track 1) took me right back to a sunny afternoon back in 1972.

It was a different time

I was eight years old at the time. My parents and I lived on the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. My unbelievably beautiful, hip mom was 28, and we had just finished a shopping trip at her favorite department store, Liberty House in Kailua, Hawaii.

American Pie was playing on the radio that day when my mother started the car to drive us back to our house on the base.  The song was often on the radio as it was a big hit (it went to #1 on the charts in 1972), and I loved to sing along when I heard it, even though I didn’t understand fully what all of the lyrics meant. And, apparently, I wasn’t the only child of my generation who did that.

As Morgan (2015, para. 2-3) explains, American Pie “became an anthem for an entire generation – who memorised every line. Their children in turn grew up singing it – fascinated by the mysterious lyrics with their cryptic references to 50s innocence, the turbulent 60s, and 70s disillusion.”

But on that day in 1972, I was particularly curious about a specific line in the chorus that didn’t make sense to me, the line that refers to rye whiskey: “So bye-bye, Miss American Pie/Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry/And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and ryeSingin’ this will be the day that I die” ((McLean, 1971, track 1).

Now, I knew what a levee was – my mother’s family is all from Louisiana.  I knew what whiskey was – I was, after all, the daughter of a hard charging Marine Corps fighter pilot – but I couldn’t understand why or how anyone could drink rye. I only knew the word in association with rye bread, which I thought and still think is delicious!

My mother patiently explained to me that the words of the song referred to rye whiskey, which, like bourbon and scotch, is created, or distilled, by aging a combination of corn, malt, and rye grains in oak barrels for a certain number of years.

“So, is it like the stuff that Hawkeye and Trapper make in their tent for martinis?” I asked – my parents were fans of M*A*S*H, which we watched together once a week on our 13” Sony Trinitron color television set, so I was familiar with the strange ongoing lab experiment (which I later learned is called a still) in their tent.

“It’s a similar process, yes,” my mother replied.

“Oh, okay,” I said, content  with my mother’s answer.

The actual process didn’t interest me. I really only wanted to know how rye figured into it. And that was that. To be honest, I didn’t pay closer attention to the meaning of the lyrics until I was much older and learned how to explicate poetry in college.

Still a favorite

American Pie is still one of my favorite songs.  It’s in my iTunes library, and I always turn up the radio when it’s played.

Like many people, I have pored over the lyrics to the song over the years.  And, as a teacher, I turn to it again and again.

In 1988, at the suggestion of a fellow graduate teaching assistant at Texas A&M University, I started to use American Pie as a teaching aid for introducing students to poetry because, as previously noted, the song is  chock full of allusions.   Plus, the allusions are old enough that my students have to take the time to do some research in order to support their ideas/arguments for what they believe the song’s lyrics mean.  Granted, they have the benefit of the Internet, but it is still a valuable exercise.

Not a parlor game

When I sat down to write this piece, I Googled  the words “McLean” and “American Pie” to find out the exact year the song was released. To my great surprise, I discovered that in 2015 McLean finally broke his silence about the meaning of the words to his song. (I also discovered that he had sold the rights to the lyrics for $1.2 million dollars).

McLean’s explanation for deciding to finally do so was included in the Christie’s auction catalog in which the lyrics were listed for sale:  He said, “I thought it would be interesting as I reach age 70 to release [my original notes] on the song American Pie so that anyone who might be interested will learn that this song was not a parlor game [emphasis mine],”  (qtd. in Meyer, 2015, para. 4).

But, to be honest, I have never thought of McLean’s song as “a parlor game.”  Even as a child, I realized that, despite the catchy tune, it’s a melancholy song – in 1970’s parlance, “a bit of a downer.”  As Moyer (2015, para. 10) explains, American Pie captures the way in which the  “ideals of the 1960s turned into the cynicism of the 1970s.”

Out of the mouths of babes

Twenty five years ago, when I was  was working on my dissertation on the literature of the Vietnam War., my mother told me that, in spite of my parents’ and maternal grandparents’ best efforts to censor the news of the war and prevent me from watching the war’s terrible images on the 6:00 evening news, I understood, on some subconscious level, as McLean sings, that “in the streets, the children screamed/The lovers cried and the poets dreamed/But not a word was spoken.”

She said, “When you were five and your stepfather was on his second tour, I took you and your best friend Piper to see a movie one afternoon. On the way home, we drove by the local cemetery. Piper was visibly upset and explained that one of her parents’ friends had just died and been buried there..”

Her reaction was, of course, completely normal.  Mine, however, was a little different.

My mother continued. “When Piper shared that,” she said, “you just reached over, patted her hand, and said to her, ‘That’s okay, Piper.  My parents’ friends die all the time, and . they just make new ones.’”

If only life had truly been that simple then

Kaneohe Bay was our next to last military posting. We moved from there to Cherry Point, North Carolina, and then my stepfather retired from the service. It was a time of personal upheaval in the context of a sea change in American culture.

My father, an Marine Corps F-8 Crusader pilot who was killed in 1963; my stepfather, a Marine Corps F-4 Phantom pilot; and all of my parents’ friends had joined the military because they believed they were fighting for the ideals of America; they were the front line against Communism.

Yet it was an entirely different world off the base. Pilots and soldiers returned from Vietnam to an America that no longer honored their service or believed in the war that the military had sent them to fight in its name.

Quite simply, the return to civilian life was a shock 

But I grew up. I assimilated. I forgot that the childhood I experienced was unlike that of my peers.

It wasn’t until I went to see Platoon in 1986 with two friends whose parents had not served in the military or ever gone to war that I realized the vast divide that separated us.  In fact, I think that, in spite of its flaws, that film helped many of the people in my generation to understand that everyone, both combatants and non-combatants, lost their innocence in that war. And I truly believe that Americans have never been able to regain it or the trust they had in their country’s leadership.

As McLean sings in Verse 2 of American Pie, “Now for 10 years we’ve been on our own . . . But that’s not how it used to be” (McLean, 1971, track 1).

Still relevant today

On Tuesday, I heard American Pie on the 70s channel on Sirius XM radio, but as I sit and write this, I cannot help but think that it is a song whose time has come once again. I imagine that the lyrics would resonate for today’s generation in much the same way that they did back in 1971 when the song was released.

References:

 McLean, D. (1971). American Pie. On American Pie [Vinyl]. New York City:      United Artists Records (1971, October 21)

Morgan, J. (2015, April 7). What do American Pie’s lyrics mean? BBC Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32196117

Moyer, J. W. (2015, April 6). Gloomy Don McLean reveals meaning of ‘American Pie’ — and sells lyrics for $1.2 million. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/08/gloomy-don-mclean-reveals-meaning-of-american-pie-and-sells-lyrics-for-1-2-million/?utm_term=.d14678ec9f36

 

 

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find

 My daughter called home in a panic over Memorial Day weekend. Her car wouldn’t start, and she was stranded up in the Texas Hill Country five hours from home. My husband’s first thought was to jump in his car and drive to her rescue. I calmly reminded him that we have roadside assistance through our auto insurance company, so it really wasn’t necessary for him to go anywhere.

After calling and verifying that someone from roadside assistance was indeed available and could be at our daughter’s location in about 20 minutes, my humbled spouse called our daughter back to let her know that help was on its way. Everything worked out for the best, and she was back at her job as a summer camp counselor about an hour later.

Déjà vu

 Her situation brought to mind a memory of a similar experience I had back in 1989 when I was working as a summer counselor for the same camp.

Every counselor is allowed specific afternoons and evenings off from the camp’s grounds to go into town and grab something to eat; to do laundry at the local washateria, The Soap Opera; and to blow off steam. If you work both summer terms, you are allowed to take an entire 24 hours off during each of the four-week terms. Your “24” is like a micro-R&R. If you plan right, you can make it into San Antonio or Austin meet up with friends, have some fun, and spend the night in something other than a twin bunk bed.

In 1989, I was dating my future husband. For my “24,” I made plans to meet him in Austin and do some sight seeing. Although I am a native Texan, I had never toured the state capitol and thought it would be fun to do that.

After spending the night in Austin, I drove to the capitol building with my then boyfriend. We marveled at the architecture of the capitol dome, walked the halls, viewed the various artifacts on display, and acted like tourists. Then we headed to a local Tex-Mex establishment, Chuy’s.

Back then, only one Chuy’s existed. It’s still there, and the food and margaritas are still awesome. The restaurant is actually an old house. Its exterior is painted in pastel colors. When you walk in, you’re greeted by a shrine to Elvis. The floors are multicolored linoleum tiles, the tables and vinyl booths are straight out of the 1950s, and garish, hand-painted fish hang from the ceiling in every room.

Beware the Banditos!

After we were seated, we ordered margaritas and an appetizer called Banditos – deep fried jalapeno peppers stuffed with cheese – and proceeded to peruse the menu.

For some reason – probably the strength of the margaritas – I couldn’t help but laugh at the name. When I graduated from college in 1986, I traveled to the Club Med resort at Playa Blanca. When I booked my travel arrangements, I was warned that I would most likely not be able to get a taxi to take me from the Puerto Vallarta airport to the resort because of several recent attacks on tourists by Mexican banditos. (Ultimately, I was met at the airport by a Club Med employee, placed on an old, rickety school bus, and driven to the resort – two hours away – alone in the dark. But that’s another story.)

I truly thought that the Club Med agent was pulling my leg. All I could think about was the old Fritos jingle, which was sung by a dancing cartoon bandito; of course, I had to sing it aloud for boyfriend!

Ai, Yi, Yi, Yi

I am the Frito Bandito

 I like Fritos corn chips

 I love them I do

I want Fritos corn chips

I’ll get them from you!

Ai, Yi, Yi, Yi

Oh I am the Frito Bandito

Give me Fritos corn chips           

And I’ll be your friend

The Frito Bandito you must not offend.

“Now, boys and girls,” he said, “you are Frito Banditos, too!”

Yes, I am well aware that this type of information is taking up space in my brain that I could use for more important things like my husband’s cell phone number.  And, today, I would never dream of singing the Frito Bandito jingle for fear of offending someone.   But that was then, and it’s safe to say my  judgment was a little impaired at the time.

Time to Go

An enchilada and a taco later, we left the restaurant. My boyfriend had picked me up at my hotel in his car, so he had to drive me back to my hotel so I could pick up my mini Toyota pick up truck (it really did look like a toy) and drive back to camp.

I was running late, so I didn’t stop to buy gas on the way out of Austin. I figured I had enough fuel to last me the two-hour drive back to Kerrville. I have never been very good with math.  My estimate was wrong:   I ran out of gas somewhere between Fredericksburg and Kerrville.

Uh-Oh

I did manage to make it to a lonely CITGO station on the side of the road. I pulled up to the pumps, relieved to find that the station was open and had an attendant on duty (this was well before the days when you could just slide your credit or debit card at the pump and pay without human assistance). I reached into my purse to get my wallet and my CITGO card only to discover that my wallet was gone!

It was at that moment that my formerly wonderful day turned to dog poop.

After my initial panic subsided, I remembered that I had taken my wallet out of my purse and placed it into the glove compartment of my boyfriend’s car before heading into the state capitol building. Yes, I realize now that it was a stupid thing to do, and for the life of me, I cannot recall why I thought someone would mug me while I was inside with my boyfriend, who is 6’ 7”.

I did, however, have $5 worth of postage stamps in my bag.

“Great!” I thought to myself. “I’ll barter these for $5 in gas. That will be enough to get me back to camp. I can then borrow some money for additional gas from a fellow counselor and fill up on my next afternoon off!”

And That’s How I Met Curtis Green

 I got out of my truck and went inside the station. I explained my situation to the attendant. He told me that he couldn’t trade gasoline for postage stamps. He would, however, be happy to loan me enough money to put enough gas in my tank to get back to Kerrville.

I was so grateful! I thanked him profusely for his kindness and then asked, “Could I also borrow 50 cents for a can of Sprite? (This was an old fashioned gas station, which sold paper road maps, engine belts, and oil. It was not fully stocked like the gas stations of today.)

The gentleman (he truly was a gentleman) said, “Yes, of course!” before handing me some change for the Coke machine.

I asked him to write down his name and address on a piece of paper and promised him that I would send him the money within a week. He said he wasn’t worried about it and sent me on my way.

I still remember his name: Curtis Green.

Safe and Sound

I finally got back to camp. I was late, and the Camp Director was standing outside in front of the dining hall waiting for me. I explained what had happened and why I had not been able to call and let everyone know I was on my way. I knew I was in trouble.

“That’s a great story,” she said. “I tell you what – I won’t dock you any time off for being late, but you have to stand up and tell everyone in the dining hall what happened to you after dinner.”

“That sounds fair,” I replied, before heading into the dining hall.

Fortunately, one of the divisions was out on its assigned overnight activity, so the entire camp wasn’t there to hear my story, saving me some embarrassment.  But camp being camp, the story got around.

Later that night, I was able to use the pay phone in the Counselor’s Lounge (this was well before the advent of cell phones) to call my boyfriend collect and explain what had happened. He promised to send me my wallet the next day.

My Care Package Arrives

A few days later, I received an enormous box emblazoned with a Dos Equis logo – it was obviously from a liquor store. Nothing at all embarrassing about that, right?

Inside, I found a virtual treasure trove. My boyfriend had mailed me my wallet along with enough Jolly Rancher candy and other junk food to keep all of the counseling staff on a sugar high for a week! He had also enclosed a handwritten letter, which I still have today. On the back of the envelope, he had written the following message: “Jerry Jeff Walker said he would quit drinking until the Ayatolla died. No one has seen Jerry Jeff for a week.”

This was all news to me. We didn’t have the Internet, laptops, or cell phones back then, and there were no televisions or radios on camp. It had been this way since I was a camper. I still remember standing on the front lawn with my parents, my fellow campers, and their parents as we listened to Richard Nixon give his resignation speech to the nation over the camp’s PA system – it was August 8, 1974. The parents were there to take us all home.

I don’t know if the Jerry Jeff Walker anecdote is true, but it was very funny to all of us at the time.

I Made Good On My Promise

On my next afternoon off, my friend and I went into town, where we bought Pop Tarts and picked up a $5 money order, which I mailed to Curtis Green at the address he had provided.

I never heard from Mr. Green again, but Houston is the world’s biggest small town. The last time I told this story at a party, one of the women listening said, “I know Curtis Green! He’s my cousin.”

So, you see, a good man isn’t that hard to find after all.

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Halcyon Days: The Wonderful Summer I Spent Teaching Canoeing on the Guadalupe River

When I was growing up, I was given a tremendous gift: for one month every summer I got to go away to camp. The camp I attended, Heart of the Hills Camp for Girls, is located about four miles from Hunt, a tiny town in the Texas Hill Country. It was only four hours by car from my parents’ home in Houston, Texas, but it was a world away. My fondest childhood memories are of swimming in and canoeing on the South Fork of the Guadalupe River, a clear yet deeply green body of water that is as cold as that beer your dad used to get out of the fridge after mowing the lawn.

I was a camper for five years. After my first semester of graduate school, which nearly killed me, a friend asked me where in my life I had been happiest. The answer was immediate: CAMP!   The friend suggested that maybe that was where I should go when the spring semester ended to take a much-needed respite from the rigors of the ivory tower.

I applied for a job as a counselor and was promptly accepted; one of my childhood counselors now owned the camp with her parents and was happy to have me back. As I had many years before, I went out and bought a trunk, dress white shorts, white t-shirts, and white Keds tennis shoes for Sunday; 10 pairs of socks; 10 pair of underwear, 5 bras, two pair of pajamas; two bathing suits; the requisite number of pairs of running shorts; a pair of running shoes; twin sized bedding; 2 beach towels, a laundry bag; stationery; and stamps. I was ready to go – or so I thought.

All counselors were required to spend a week of orientation and training for their assigned classes before camp started.

Counselor orientation was a lot like I imagine boot camp would have been had I been so inclined. We rose to a recording of a bugle. We went to flag raising before breakfast and said the Pledge of Allegiance with our right hands over our hearts. We ate family style in a large dining hall, slept in bunk beds, and turned in at 10:00pm to the sound of Taps blaring from the loudspeaker. It was great! Nothing had changed from when I was a girl.

I had been selected to head up the canoeing department, so I spent orientation earning my Red Cross certification as an advanced canoeing instructor. During the day, I spent my time putting canoes into the water, paddling up and down the river, swamping canoes and then struggling to climb back into the righted craft, and putting the canoes and paddles back into their racks before heading off to classroom style lectures on camp traditions, rules of etiquette, motivation, personal speaking, and caring for children before doing it all over again.

By the end of the third day, thanks to canoeing class, I had bruises the size of small dogs on my thighs and forearms. It sounds awful, but it was the most fun I had in years. I spent my days in the sun on and in the cool waters of the Guadalupe. I spent my afternoons and evenings making new friends. I had no papers to write, no papers to grade, no errands to run. I didn’t have to go to the grocery store, pay rent, or clean my apartment.

For both terms that summer, I taught five canoeing classes Monday through Saturday.  My favorite classes were in the morning before the heat of the day set in and the campers were rested and ready to go on an adventure. Very few cars went by the river during the day, so you could hear the birds singing, the frogs chirping, the voices of the waterfront staff and their campers in swim classes, and the rush of the rapids upriver.

Early on, we taught the girls various basic strokes from the safety of the canoe dock. Kneeling on bright red square life jackets, the girls learned how to paddle forward, how to paddle backward (you have to lean a little to do it right), how to draw water towards themselves with the paddle, and how to push water away from themselves with the paddle.

By the end of the first week, the girls were tired of the canoe dock and were ready to get into the canoes and go somewhere!

At the start of each class, the canoes had to be taken down from their holding racks. My co-counselor and I would pair off the girls for that day’s lesson before taking the long, cool aluminum canoes off their racks. We’d each pick boat up by the gunnels at the midpoint of the canoe and carry it to the water, always mindful not to slip on the mossy concrete of the dock. Once there, we’d flip the canoe upright and place it in the water before helping a pair of campers climb into it.

Getting into a canoe can be a dangerous business; we were always very strict about canoe discipline. My co-counselor would hold the stern of the canoe tightly against the rubber lining the dock while I held the canoe tightly at the bow. We would watch intently as, one at a time, each girl stepped lightly into the center of the canoe boat before bending her knees slightly and carefully walking slowly backwards to her assigned spot in the stern or forwards to her assigned spot in the bow.

This can be tricky when you are wearing a bulky life vest, but we followed the safety rules to the letter. No one got access to the dock until she had selected a vest off the long cypress racks and had picked up a paddle.

After both girls were seated in their positions, my co-counselor and would give the canoe a gentle push to get it out into the water and underway. As the saying goes, lather, rinse, repeat. We would repeat the exact same steps until every camper was in a canoe.

My co-counselor and I would join the campers in the last two canoes launched. We were always very conscious of gross weight and selected our crews accordingly, classes as a passenger in each girl’s canoe. We’d each lower ourselves into the center of the last two boats and sit cross-legged on its cool, smooth bottom. One camper was assigned to paddle up the river on the right side of the boat while the other paddled on the left. They would switch positions and sides on the way back.

After leaving the safety of the dock, the girls would turn their canoes around and paddle down river to Rat’s Bridge, a low river crossing that was essentially a driveway constructed across the river. When the girls got to within about three feet of the bridge, my co counselor and I would walk them through the steps necessary to turn the boat parallel with the bridge. Then they would use the draw stroke they had learned to move the boat to the side of the bridge. Once there, Id climb out of the canoe and hold it tightly to the side of the road while the girls clambered out.

The water was very shallow on either side of Rat’s Bridge and so clear that you could see actual dinosaur tracks left millions of years ago in the soft limestone. We’d sit and watch minnows swim about and water spiders scamper across the water in the shade of the giant cypress trees. I’d help the girls select the flattest pebbles they could find and we’d practice skipping them across the glass like surface of the water. After a few minutes of resting and playing around, it was time to head back to the canoe dock.

Once again, I’d hold the gunnels of the canoe tightly against the worn concrete of the road while the girls entered the canoe one at a time. The camper who sat in the bow on the way over to Rat’s Bridge paddled in the stern on the way back. She would enter the canoe just at the center next to me, placing her hand on my back for support before carefully placing first one foot and then the next on the silver rivets in the center of the canoe. Then, holding onto the gunnels, one hand on each side, she would carefully walk backward to her position in the stern while I watched, a mother with her cubs.

Then it was the partner’s turn. She would perform the same, slow ballet of short careful steps up the spine of the canoe until she reached her spot in the front.

Once the girls were in their spots, I would hand each of them her paddle before carefully climbing into the center of the canoe. I’d use my paddle to push us away from the bridge and then walk the campers through the steps of turning the canoe: one girl would make a wide sweeping motion with her paddle from bow to stern on her left while the other girl used her paddle to make a wide sweeping motion from stern to bow. Tiny whirlpools, created by the motion of the paddles in the water, spun harmlessly with each stroke.

Once we were back in the middle of the river, we’d head back, each girl reaching forward with her paddle to dip it into the clean, clear water before pulling it back, taking it out of the water, feathering, and then cocking the paddle for the next stroke.

The girls always preferred to ride in the stern of the canoe because the person in the stern is responsible for steering, making small corrections with her paddle to ensure that her boat did not end up on a crash course with the bank.

All too soon we would arrive back at the canoe dock, where the girls would both perform draws on the far side of the canoe to push us sideways to the dock.

When the canoe was snug against the wood and rubber lined dock, I would get out of the boat and once again hold it steady while each girl carefully exited the canoe. No one was ever allowed to simply stand up, turn, and hop onto the dock. That spelled catastrophe. I’m proud to say that no one slipped and cracked her head open or slipped and fell into the river when getting in and out of a canoe on my watch!

I’d teach two classes in the morning before lunch. After lunch, to beat the Texas heat, all campers took naps during siesta. It was a very civilized way to live. After siesta, the bugle would sound and the campers would stream out of their cabins to the Village, where they would pick up the afternoon snack, a piece of fresh fruit, a granola bar, or even on special days, a Blue Bell ice cream treat.

I’d head down to the waterfront, walking through the long, high concrete culvert that had been installed under the highway many years before I was born to provide girls safe access to the river, which was located across the two-lane highway from the campgrounds.

The great great grandchildren of the Daddy Long Leg spiders who had lined the roof of the tunnel when I was a girl waited silently as the campers, rested and with veins awash with sugar, ran through the tunnel. It was a tradition to scream the entire way, although no one was really afraid of those spiders. I often ran my hand along the cold, rough wall; it never ceased to amaze me how cool it was inside that dark but safe space. After a few steps, you could see it: the vivid green waters of the Guadalupe shaded by the century old cypress trees. It was like a siren’s call.

Once out of the tunnel, I’d turn left, walk down the concrete path lined with cypress branch guardrails, and head back to the canoe dock, where I’d run through the morning’s lesson with the afternoon class. It was a wonderful time.

Last summer, I’m proud to say, my daughter spent her first year as a counselor at Heart of the Hills. She went to camp for seven summers; my sojourn was limited to five. She was an Archery instructor, a sport she excelled in as a camper. Before she left, I told her, “You’ll work harder than you ever have and have more fun than you can imagine.” And you know what? She did. She signed her contract for 2017 before packing her car to head back home.

NOTE:  This was previously published on the Heart O’ the Hills Camp blog as “Canoeing Days Seem to Be a Dream <3” at http://hohcamp.com/2017/05/02/canoeing-days-seem-to-be-a-dream/

My daughter is enjoying her second year as a counselor this summer; this marks her tenth year (!) at Heart O’ the Hills.

© Leslie Kennedy Adams 2016

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The Five Best (and worst) Things About Tacos

The Five Best (and worst) Things About Tacos

Those who know me are familiar with my lifelong struggle to reach and maintain a healthy weight for my fighting class. Wait – that’s not entirely true – I am not a boxer.

Anyway, one of the challenges of eating healthy is being surrounded by a number of prime establishments which serve Tex-Mex, the Holy Grail of food in my family’s book.

As with many things in life, Tex-Mex is not all bad, however. Please allow me to present my take on the five best and worst things about the main staple of Tex-Mex, the taco.

The Five Best Things About Tacos:

(1) You can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

(2) They give you an excuse to drink margaritas.

(3) They’re cheap and widely available.

(4) You can make them at home.

(5) Tacos are delicious with sliced avocados, which are good for your heart.

The Five Worst Things About Tacos

(1) You can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

(2) They give you an excuse to drink margaritas.

(3) They’re cheap and widely available.

(4) You can make them at home.

(5) Tacos are delicious with sliced avocados, and avocados are good for your heart.

Let’s review:

1. You can eat tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

One of my fondest memories of my time as a graduate student at Texas A&M University were made over queso, chips, guacamole, and various types of tacos at a little green shack by the tracks known as La Taqueria. (Sadly, it no longer exists.)

Although I was born in South Texas and have spent most of my life living in Texas, I was not introduced to breakfast tacos until a friend ordered them at La Taqueria.   Pancakes, French toast, Belgian waffles, even country ham and homemade biscuits pale in comparison to a freshly prepared breakfast taco. My favorite combination is potato, egg, and cheese, but you can get just about anything you like on a breakfast taco in Houston, including brisket. Some places, like the current culinary darling of the moment, Torchy’s Tacos, serve breakfast tacos all day and into the night.

I was introduced to vegan tacos at La Taqueria, too: black beans, pico de gallo, guacamole, and shredded cheese wrapped up in a fresh, warm, soft whole wheat tortilla. Yes, please!

The old standby, of course, the one by which most Tex-Mex establishments are compared, is the ground beef taco: seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, and shredded cheese encased in a fried corn tortilla.

Today, you’re just as likely to find fajita beef or chicken tacos, also called tacos al carbon, or fish tacos. Those are yummy, too.

Best of all, you can usually get your taco anyway you like it. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night snack – it’s all good.

Except it’s not. That taco in your hand most likely packs a whopping number of calories and other things that your doctor would tell you are bad fro your cholesterol.

The damage ultimately depends on the type of tortilla you choose (corn, flour, whole wheat; soft or fried) and the fillings you select.

2. Tacos give you an excuse to drink margaritas.

If you have never had a good margarita, then please skip to item #3.

If bananas are “Nature’s perfect fruit,” then margaritas are Nature’s perfect alcoholic beverage: the perfect blend of lime juice, Triple Sec, and tequila. Available on the rocks or frozen (thanks to the genius of Mariano Martinez, who decided it would be a fun idea to try making margaritas in a soft serve ice cream machine so people wouldn’t have to wait on the blender) and in a variety of flavors (often based on the season) like strawberry, watermelon, mango, etc., margaritas taste great with tacos, especially before, during, and after you’ve eaten them.

Again, a caveat. Drinking too many margaritas can result in a hefty hangover, and you should never drink and drive. This is probably why Taco Bell hasn’t figured out how to sell margaritas yet.

3. Tacos are cheap and widely available.

 While it’s true that you get what you pay for, tacos are cheap and widely available. Here in Houston, you can get them at fine dining establishments, family eateries, fast food outlets, and food trucks. (One of the strangest and funniest things I’ve ever seen as a Houstonian was a man lying spread eagled under the watchful eyes of two police officers, guns drawn, in a convenience store parking lot while a customer at the taco truck three feet away picked up her order and started munching away completely unfazed by the scene unfolding in front of her.)

Taco Bell even has an app that allows you to order your taco(s) of choice on your phone for near instant gratification. According to Taco Bell’s web site, https://www.tacobell.com/food/tacos, prices range from $1.19 for a Crunchy Taco to $3.19 for a Doritos© Cheesy Gordita Crunch (although I’m not sure that actually qualifies as a “taco”).

And, boys and girls, some locations are open until the wee hours of the morning! The one closest to my house (according to the web site) is open from 7:00am to 4:00am.

Of course, cheap, readily available food is not always the best thing for you. You may truly regret eating that Doritos© Cheesy Gordita Crunch when you are fully awake and sober. Or maybe you won’t.   I’m not sure which is worse.

4. You can make tacos at home

Tuesday is Taco Night in many people’s homes because . . . tacos. Seriously, tacos are one of the easiest meals you can prepare for yourself and anyone else in your household. If you so desire, you can even purchase Taco Bell branded products like taco shells and hot sauce so that you can have Taco Bell anytime.

All you really need is a microwave, a refrigerator, and a can opener. Stoves, especially gas cooktops, and ovens are great for cooking various meat fillings and for warming up both soft tortillas and fried tortilla shells, but you can cook most proteins, including beans, in the microwave.   You need a refrigerator to store any grated cheese, sour cream, pre-made guacamole and/or pico de gallo you may have purchased. You only need a can opener if you’re using canned beans (I don’t know of anyone using canned tuna in a taco, but I’m sure someone out there has tried it.)

The best part is that children, teens, and adults like tacos. It’s fun to set up all the fixings on the table and let everyone create his or her own taco delight. And you get to eat them with your fingers!

Again, the only real disadvantage here is overindulging. In terms of food preparation, tacos are really just a step away from ramen noodles. In terms of sodium content and calories, they’re about the same. Just saying.

5. Tacos are delicious with sliced avocados, and avocados are good for your heart. 

This is a scientifically proven fact: avocados have more potassium than bananas (remember, they’re “Nature’s perfect fruit”), they’re chock full of nutrients, they provide you with fiber in your diet, and are considered a healthy fat choice (yes, I realize that’s an oxymoron).

Now, lest you think I am throwing you a red herring, let me just say that many people like freshly sliced avocado or guacamole (of which avocados are a key ingredient) on their tacos.

So there.

I can’t really think of anything bad to say about avocados. Plus, it’s always good to end on a happy note!

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Cat Poop on the Roof

Cat Poop on the Roof – a true story

Back when I was in college, a friend told me, “If you want to know whether you can handle being a relationship, get a cat. If you want to know whether you can handle being a parent, get a dog.” I had a cat at the time; the husband and the child came later. I have to say, however, that neither my husband or my child has ever pooped on the roof.

Several months ago, I was looking out the big plate glass windows across the back of our house and noticed something odd in valleys of the roof where the garage roof meets the breezeway roof. It looked like someone had thrown rocks onto the roof. Now, we have decorative rocks in the flowerbed across the back fence of our home, but I have never seen and couldn’t imagine a situation in which someone would choose to hurl them onto the roof.

I called my husband over and asked him to take a look.

“Yep, we’ve got rocks on the roof,” he said, nonplussed. “So what?”

“Well, I don’t think those are rocks,” I replied.

Determined to solve the mystery, I retrieved the pair of binoculars we sometimes take to football games and took a second look.

Sure enough, the items on the roof were not igneous in nature. They were pieces of fossilized cat poop.

Horrified, I went around the garage to the driveway to see if the poop was visible from the street. It was.

Now the dilemma. How, exactly, does one go about getting cat poop off his or her roof?

Years and years ago (and I’m talking about the time when dinosaurs walked the earth), my friends and I would climb the fence in the backyard of my parents’ house and climb onto the roof. Sitting on the roof was cool. This, of course, was before the Internet and video games were invented.

I have six knee surgeries under my belt. My husband (wisely so) has forbidden that I climb on as much as a stepstool lest I fall and break a hip. At 6’7”, my husband’s center of gravity makes climbing on anything higher than a step stool equally as dangerous, so climbing up on to the roof ourselves was a non-starter.

And so, for several days, I stewed about the problem. I hoped for a huge downpour, thinking that it might wash the waste away. Then I had a great idea: ask the yard service to assign someone to climb up on the roof and use the yard blower to clear the mess away. The yard service we use cleans our gutters this way about once a year for an extra fee, so the request wasn’t that much out of the ordinary. Believe me, I was willing to pay an additional service fee to have someone help me with the problem.

The following week, I asked the foreman if this was an option.

“Sure. No problem,” he said. “I’ll take care of it right now.”

Pleased with my ingenuity and problem solving skills (and breathing a huge sigh of relief), I returned to my computer and went back to work, which is, after all, what I am supposed to be doing during the day instead of gazing at my navel or, in this case, cat poop.

Later that afternoon, I looked out the windows at my now pristine roof as I walked to the kitchen to get a fresh glass of iced tea.

The poop was gone! Hooray!

Or so I thought.

Are you familiar with the saying, “Not in my backyard?”

Well, guess what. The cat poop was now in my backyard. That presented a new problem because most of the area is taken up by a 40,000-gallon swimming pool.

Yes, dear reader, I experienced a horror similar to that of the snooty country club matrons and their children in Caddyshack when a Baby Ruth bar in the deep end is mistaken for a turd.

But those weren’t Baby Ruth minis in my pool.

Ugh.

I had exchanged one problem for another.

Fortunately, I could solve this problem.   All I had to do was skim out what poop I could, vacuum the pool, and shock the pool. Easy, right?

I have to admit that I considered draining the pool a la Caddyshack and donning a HAZMAT suit before disinfecting it with the strongest chemicals I could buy legally, but my husband said that would be too expensive.

So I settled for cleaning and shocking the pool. Twice.

This was very upsetting for the dog, a Labrador Retriever who loves to swim in the pool several times a day. The pool is usually only “closed” to her one day a week for cleaning, just like the community pool used to close one day a week each summer when we were kids.

It was then that I realized the root of the problem. The cat must have taken to pooping on the roof when we brought home our puppy (now dog). The backyard and all surrounding territory had previously been the cat’s sole domain, but the puppy changed all that.

I should also note that, in addition to this revelation, I also realized why the cat poop had looked fossilized through the binoculars on first glance. And, yes, I realized it must have been there for quite some time before I noticed.

I’m happy to say that, fortunately, the days of cat poop on the roof are behind us.

Nowadays, the cat prefers to use the very clean, always dry, and very private litter box provided for her in the utility room, the dog has learned a healthy respect for the cat, and I’m happy.

And, as the saying goes, “When Momma’s happy, everybody’s happy.”

The End.