Day: February 11, 2025

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The Truth About Ambiance in Tex-Mex Restaurants


After a trip to Frisco Texas for a doctors visit today, Momo and me stopped off at a local Fort Worth Mexican restaurant for an early supper before taking the cattle trail back to Granbury.

Seated, beers in hand, decompressing from two hours of hell on earth Dallas traffic, our Senorita waitress stopped by to drop a bowl of chips and salsa at our table; the usual fare for Tex-Mex food.

Over the years I have told my readers that my social filters have left on the last train to Clarksville, so I’m apt to blurt out any number of insults to no one in particular. The damn music was so loud I couldn’t understand a word the young miss was saying.

“Miss, can you turn down the music, or maybe give me a tablet and a pen so I can write out my order?” I say.

She was well indoctrinated. “Sir, the music is here to add to the ambiance and to make the food more tasty. We want our customers to think they are in old Mexico enjoying a meal while gazing at the Pacific ocean or the Gulf of America.”

Momo is giving me that ” you had better not say it” look, but I did anyway.

In my best old man I mean business voice I say, ” lookey here, Senorita, your food ain’t that good, and the music sucks, I can’t speak Spanish so why do you think I can understand a word that girl is singing? As far as ambiance, I’m looking out the window at the traffic whizzing by on Hulen Street and there is not a palm tree or a beach, or a dude leading a burro with a margarita machine strapped to its back. It’s Fort Worth Texas, not Cancun.”

Thoroughly insulted, she turns and stomps away. A few minuets later, Dire Straits is playing Money For Nothing. I notice all the folks our age are tapping their feet and digging the music. A few words of wisdom: music doesn’t make the food taste better.

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Traumatized By Puppets!


A Childhood Tragedy

Back in 2020, I penned this true account of one of my favorite childhood tragedies: there were more than a few.

The asphalt parking lot is so hot it’s melting the rubber soles of my PF Flyer “tinny” shoes to the pavement. It’s July of 1957, and there are at least one hundred kids, including our neighborhood coterie of twenty-five, standing on that lot, waiting to see our television idols, Mickey Mud Turtle and Amanda Opossum.

Piggly Wiggly Food hired the puppet duo from Channel 11 for the grand opening of their newest grocery store on Berry Street. With the show’s growing following, the folks at Piggly are betting on a full house because every kid in Fort Worth, Texas, wanted to meet Mickey and Amanda up close and in person.

Without an introduction, the puppets popped up onto the stage of their television theater and launched into their shtick. The jokes are age-appropriate and corny. Birthdays are shouted out, and then more jokes, but with no cartoons to kill time, the felt and cardboard critters are out of material and are bombing like the Hiroshima fat boy.

The Mud Turtle launched into a commercial for Piggly Wiggly, and the Opossum began her’s for Buster Brown Shoes, over-riding Mickey, which in turn made him mad, and he grabbed a small bat with his mouth and popped Amanda Opossum a good one. The kids loved it. Watching the two puppets fight is better than cartoons, any day, hands down.

I feel a tug on my shirt and realize my mother is dragging me into the grocery store. As we pass the back of the puppet theater, the side curtain is halfway open, and there, in living color, are two adults sitting on low stools with their hands stuffed up the butts of our beloved stars. Kids are good at fooling themselves into believing things that aren’t real. I know they are cheesy cardboard and fabric puppets, but destroying my imagination is serious stuff.

Mortified and traumatized from the scene I witnessed, my mother drags me through the air-conditioned store as she completes her shopping. There is no sympathy or coddling from this tough-as-nails woman. She mumbles something about puppets being stupid, and I feel tears forming on my cheeks. I may never recover from this destruction of my childhood.

Leaving the store, we pass the stage, and a man and woman are putting the puppets into their wooden boxes and autographing glossy postcards of the critters. I still have mine.