Childhood memories are like teeth; we all have good and rotten ones. If you grew up in Texas in the 1950s, you will identify with some of mine, or maybe not.
I was nine years old before I dined in a Mexican restaurant. I knew they existed because my father and mother enjoyed them, bringing home little mints and matchbooks touting the restaurant’s name. I got the mints, and my parents put the matchbooks in a jar in the kitchen. I dreamed that one day, I might visit one.
In Texas, Mexican food is part of life. It’s one of the major food groups; a boy cannot grow into a man of substance without it. Not having real Mexican food at that young age affected my evolution into a healthy young specimen. I harbored a nervous tick, stuttered sometimes, and had one leg shorter than the other. All those maladies were cured once I ate the real stuff. The medicinal qualities of Mexican food are exceptional.
For many years, I had eaten tacos at my cousin’s house, believing them to be authentic Mexican food. Sadly, they were nowhere near the real deal. Several times over the summer, my cousin Jok’s mother, Berel, would cook tacos and invite the families for a feast. Cold Beer and tongue-scorching Tacos. Pure Texas.
Berel would stand at her massive gas range, a large pot of ground beef, and a cauldron of boiling Crisco, heating the room to cooking temperature. She would drop a tortilla stuffed with meat into the witch’s cauldron, pull it out, and toss it to the pack of wild African dogs sitting around her kitchen table. The dogs, of course, were my cousins and me. My poor mother would leave the room. She could not bear to see her son eat like a feral child: growling, biting, snarling as we consumed the tacos like they were a cooked Wildebeest. That is what I consider Mexican food and proper behavior when consuming it.
Driving Northwest of downtown Fort Worth on Jacksboro Highway, right before you come to the first honkey tonk, you would find “Trashy Juanita’s” Mexican restaurant. Legendary for its tacos, frijoles, and cold Pearl Beer. It was also legendary for things my father would not mention until I was older. Gambling, shooting dice, and generally questionable behavior were part of the after-hours entertainment. It wasn’t on Jacksboro Highway for the view.
The owner of Juanita Batista, Carlita Rosanna Esposito, was not a trashy woman but a middle-aged Latin beauty with a bawdy laugh and sharp wit. The restaurant’s front yard adornments earned the name. Offended at first, she finally accepted her crown and wore it proudly.
Two rust-eaten pick-up trucks, one painted blue and the other yellow, sat abandoned in the front yard behind a cyclone fence. Pots of flowers decorated the fenders while the beds overflowed with vines and small flowering trees. Fifty or more chickens strutted and pecked around the yard, giving the place a barnyard atmosphere. Some saw a work of art, while others called it a junkyard that happened to serve great food.
In an interview in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Juanita claimed to be related to General Santa Anna, Pancho Villa, and the Cisco Kid, making her royalty in Mexico. The people of Fort Worth loved her, and she was considered a local character of some importance. She often dined with Ben Hogan and the Leonard brothers at Colonial Country Club.
Trashy Juanita’s was my first introduction to authentic Mexican food and all that comes with it.
My father sold one of his many fiddles to a buddy, and with the profit, he took the whole family to dine at Trashy Juanita’s on the Fourth of July, 1958.
Juanita had gone “whole hog” on this holiday. American flags hung from the front porch and draped the cyclone fence. Two small children sat in the front yard shooting bottle rockets at the cars driving on Jacksboro Highway, and the chickens were wrapped in red-white-and-blue crepe paper streamers. Very patriotic and also very redneck Texas.
A jovial Juanita escorted us to a large table beside the kitchen doorway. A waiter delivered tortillas, chips, salsa, and two Pearl beers for my father and grandfather along with large, frosty glasses of sweet iced tea for the rest of us. There was no menu; it was Tacos or nothing at all.
The unfamiliar aroma of exotic food floated on a misty cloud from the kitchen, filling my young nostrils and activating my developing saliva glands. A torrent of spit dripped from my mouth onto the front of my new sear-sucker shirt. My mother cleaned me up and wrapped a napkin around my neck. I was ready: I had my eating clothes on.
We decided the family would dine on a medley of beef and chicken Tacos, frijoles and rice, and guacamole ala Juanita. The waiter rushed our order to the kitchen.
The evening was turning out great. My father was telling jokes, the cold beer flowed, and a waiter walked past our table into the kitchen. Under each arm was one of the patriotically wrapped chickens from the front yard. My grandfather must have forgotten that two young children were at the table and remarked, “There goes our Tacos, can’t get any fresher than that.”
His remark went unnoticed until I asked my father, ” Dad, are we going to eat the pet chickens from the front yard?” He didn’t offer an answer.
I got a big lump in my throat, and my eyes got misty. My sister whimpered and cried like a baby, and my grandmother, seeing her grandchildren in such distress, shed tears in support. Mother gave the two adult men the worst evil eye ever. The mood at the table went from happy to crappy in a minute or less. So much for a joyous family celebration. We might as well be eating Old Yeller for supper.
There was a ruckus in the kitchen, yelling, pots and pans clashing, and the two chickens, still wearing their streamers, half-flew, and half-ran through the dining room and out the front door. The cook was right behind them but tripped over a man’s foot, knocking himself out as he hit the floor.
Standing in the middle of the dining room, Juanita announced that there would only be beef Tacos tonight. The two doomed birds had escaped the pan, and my sister and I were happy again. My father breathed a sigh of relief that the night was saved, and my grandfather bent down and polished the new scuff on his size 10 wingtip.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 