Texas Tidbits : Hungry in Maine for Texas Vittles

Numero Uno BBQ

Yesterday's post on Texas Tidbits left me a bit nostalgic for The Lone Star State. I figured that since moving back to Texas ain't gonna happen anytime soon, I got to thinking about a solution to this dilemma. I found one. If I can't go to Texas, I'll bring part of Texas to Maine! Off the top of my head, I came up with a short list of things back home that I'd like to bring to The Pine Tree State.

• Mexican Food made by real Mexicans - I have eaten Mexican food all over the country. None of it is as good as Tex-Mex. End of story. There are many Mexican eateries around the USA that have great food, but none compare, according to my taste buds, to La Cocina Mexicana in Tyler. Probably the best Mexican food I have ever eaten. La Cocina, Spanish for kitchen, has the usual array of menu items you'll find at most Mexican Restarants. But even their "ordinary" stuff is better than most others' best stuff. For instance, beef tacos made with steak instead of hamburger. Slap me down and call me shorty, those tacos are flat good. One item on the menu at La Cocina Mexicana that stands out, even amongst all the authentic and outstanding cuisine, is the cactus tacos. Si, cactus tacos. With fresh cantaloupe juice for your drink. If you are a fence-sitter on the subject of God, one dose of these cactus tacos and all doubt will be forever removed from your mind. These things are inspired by the Almighty His Own Self. I almost forgot! When you first enter the place there is a pastry case with fresh homemade Mexican desserts, pan dulce (sweet bread), and other pastries that are mama-slappin' good. Even if you are just passing by La Cocina Mexicana, stop by just to open the front door and get a whiff olfactory awesomness. La Cocina Mexicana is located on Gentry Parkway in the barrio in northeast (?) Tyler, just north of downtown. Friendly advice : go hungry, very hungry.
• Bar B Que - Not much for Bar B Que up here. I 'd import any roadside BBQ stand in Texas to Maine. I have eaten at this sort of BBQ stand all over Texas and they never disappoint me. Even the bad stuff is good. The one BBQ restaurant in Texas that I'd relocate to Maine is Sammie's Bar B Que in Fort Worth. This place is/was (I don't know if they are still open for business). Sammie's had been in business for many years when I was a kid and if they are still open, I wouldn't be one bit surprised. This joint reeked of Texas Bar B Que. A section of picnic tables lined up side by side, some regular restaurant tables, sawdust on the floor, baskets of peanuts on every table, a jukebox, beer, a Budweiser clock with a waterfall and the Clydesdales in it (!) and of course there's the food. Brisket so sweet and tender, ribs cooked to perfection, red beans, cole slaw, onion rings, french fries the size of small baseball bats...hungry yet? UPDATE! : Sammie's is still open! I found their website also! Get a drool napkin and click here to slobber like a teething baby. You're welcome.

This is one of those posts that I could easily turn into a novel, so I'll pick up on this subject another time. Anyway, La Cocina Mexicana and Sammie's Bar B Que, a little taste of Texas that I can taste just thinkin' about it. And believe me, I am thinkin' about it real hard right now. Somebody please pass the rib plate!

Maine Minutiae : Earl Takes a Turn...I Hope

Take a right, Earl!

(Augusta,ME) On August 31, I mentioned that Hurricane Earl is headed for Maine, but I wasn't quite sure how bad things would get, or if things would indeed get bad at all. The latest (as of 2PM, EDT) projected path for ol' Earl, from WeatherUnderground looks like this. While the current  threat level assessment predictions  from The Weather Channel gives us a little more insight as to what's shakin'. (Hurricane...shakin'...damn, I'm funny pitiful) As you can see, the probability of Earl hitting the coast of Maine is a little iffy, but still very real. From where I sit typing this post it's about 45(?) miles as the crow flies to the coast, where Earl could strike. In that case, we'd be in for some very unpleasant weather here as well. As it looks for now, the storm will likely hit either/or New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. If that's the case, I'll be in a bit of a quandry. Assuming this scenario, Earl will blast the town of Eastport pretty good. "Now, Toby," you ask yourself, "where's the quandry?" Thank you for asking. The quandry : my wife is from Eastport, therefore the hurricane would bring a lot of property damage to the town along with all the other stuff that storms like Earl bring - power outages, flooding, etc. "Still, no quandry, Tobe", you insist. Well, let me finish my thought, counterclockwise breath. My Mother-in-Law lives in Eastport! If Earl blasts Eastport, THIS will be coming to stay at MY house for a few days. I'd rather sit through a direct hit from Katrina than have that happen. But, since she's my wife's mother and my wife can beat me up, the old battle axe poor dear will stay with us for a few days, if Earl threatens Eastport. I will give each and every one of you 10 bucks* to say a prayer that Earl takes a hard right hand turn by Friday night. Providing that these pleas to the Almighty work and Earl takes a hard right, he'll drift aimlessly out over the North Atlantic and die a slow, miserable, cold Hurricane Death, as it should be. But the real beneficiaries of this Divine Intervention (time is of the essence, there, Lord!) will be the people of Maine (namely me), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia! A perfect ending! Is that really too much to ask of my friends? I thank you all in advance, especially the Lord, for doing your humble servant a deranged, middle-aged white guy a solid.

*Not really, but thanks for the prayers :)

Texas Tidbits : Remember When....

I got an email from my Mom a few days ago that was like a walk down memory lane to a world a million miles away. Thing is, it was right here on our Big Blue Marble not so long ago. Maybe thirty-five years. There's a passel of memories on this email, so I'll highlight a few today and save the others for a rainy day, or possibly even a mini-series of posts. We'll see. Be sure to take detailed notes, we'll have a pop quiz on this material later. :)

Remember when...

• Gasoline was real cheap? When I first started legally driving, my Dad had a brand new 1971 Monte Carlo. AM/FM 8-Track, 4 speakers, and cruise control! It was a great car. The chicks loved it. Anyway, this Monte Carlo had a 16 gallon gas tank on it and I remember stopping at Wakefield's on Shady Grove and Rodgers to fill it up. The damage? FOUR DOLLARS! I don't stutter and your ears don't flap, I said FOUR DOLLARS to fill up that sled. Four bucks today won't even get you a double bean sprout tofu wheat germ oil frappaccino (however the hell you spell it) at that national sissy coffee place. But, four dollars will get you a 6 pack of cheap ass beer. So, I guess there is some justice in the world.
• It was a treat to go out to eat with your family? We were pretty lucky here. My Dad had a good job, so we actually went out to eat fairly often. It wasn't always Sunday after Mass going out to eat either, even though we did that regularly, mostly at Luby's or some Cafeteria like that. I was always extra hungry for Luby's. Our usual out-to-eat experience was some place like Joe's Coffee Shop on 6th Street in Irving. Joe's was a cafe that had home cooked food every day. Chicken Fried Steak was always my favorite. The roast beef was damn good, too. The best thing about Joe's? Breakfast. Enough said. For those who don't know about Joe's, think about the diner on the early Andy Griffith Show. That's Joe's.
• Kids played baseball and no grown ups were needed to enforce the rules? My buddy James Ott will remember this one. James and I lived in the same apartment complex for a while when I was in Junior High School. We had a big vacant lot next door that served as a baseball diamond and football field, depending on the season. Heck, I remember times when we had two, two man teams and would play baseball for hours. No adults required. One other time, I lived on a dead end street with a big field at the end of it. All the kids, ages 9-12 or so, got together mowed the empty field into our version of Yankee Stadium, formed a league with all the other neighborhood kids, played a pre-arranged schedule and never, not one single, solitary time did we ever need an adult to do anything for us. We policed our own.

There's plenty more I could blab on about, but like I mentioned, I'll do this type thing again soon - perhaps tomorrow. Who knows? Now, if you'll excuse me, school got out early today due to the heat here in Maine, and I gotta go pitch for both teams of neighborhood kids. No adults required. Just us kids.

Maine Minutiae : I Saw the Future Get on a Bus Today

Issy Woo Woo

The little girl in the photo is my soon-to-be (Oct.19) eight year old. Please allow me to lay a little backstory on you. I first met her, Isabella, when she had just turned two years old. It was on the phone. I instantly fell in love with her the first time she called me "Tovy". She would talk the gibberish that two year olds talk, throw in an coccasional "Tovy" and I pretended to understand every single syllable. Come to think of it, I think I really did understand every single syllable. That "conversation" took place almost six years ago and I am no longer "Tovy", I am "Daddy". She is no longer "Daddy's Little Girl", at least in her mind, she is "Daddy's Young Lady". She's my first little girl and until the Good Lord calls me Home, she'll always be "Daddy's Little Girl". I have two grown sons and love them dearly, but there's just something supernatural that touches your soul when you are blessed with a little girl...at the age of 49. This morning about 7:30, Isabella got on the bus for her first day of second grade. At that moment, I saw the future. The future of a little girl that wants to be a Pediatrician, the future of a little girl that will some day will give me my next round of Grand Kids, the future of a little girl that in so many ways offers endless opportunity for her dreams to come true. I also saw the future of the United States climb up on that bus this morning with about thirty other kids. I saw the future of this country that will be responsible for the mess our elected dumbasses in Washington are making worse by the minute and I was damned mad at those idiots. How dare they do this to my little girl! A bunch of pantywaist elitists doing their dead level best to shatter my little girl's dreams before she even finishes 2nd grade! How dare those bastards! Then, out of nowhere, a sudden calm came over me. As spark-spittin' angry as I was a moment before, I was strangely at peace, comforted by something. Or someone. A soothing silence set in around me. Despite the chatter of a bus load of children,  the growling of the bus' diesel motor and my three year old screaming goodbye to her big sister, I heard nothing but a reassuring voice speaking to me. "Toby, don't be angry at the future, be confident in it. The trials and tribulations you face today are in good hands tomorrow". The Voice was right, the future will be fine for my little girl, and yours, too. How do I know? About 7:30 this morning, I saw the future get on a school bus headed for the first day of second grade.

This story was inspired by eddiebear at doubleplusundead.

Texas Tidbits : How to Grow Tomatoes, Peppers & Missile Launchers?

I am a gardener. I grow stuff - tomatoes, peppers, squash, you name it, I've probably grown it or tried to grow it. Gardening is something I learned from Grandma Shoemaker as a young child. I was fascinated that one day she would put a tiny seed in the ground and a few weeks later BAM!, there was a tomato! Even now, in my mid-50's, that little boy of the early 1960's shows up every time I spot a new blossom on a tomato plant or some such. Wow! That's gonna be a (fill-in-the-vegetable-name-here)! And I think of Grandma. The secret to a productive garden is good dirt, so preparation is key to a bountiful harvest. And let me tell you, while tilling up the ground for a garden, you are liable to find almost anything - nails, rocks, silverware, coins, old bottles, missile launchers....missile launchers??? Yep, there's nothing like digging up discarded military explosive devices to get a bang out of gardening. That's exactly what happened to 34 year old Jarrette Schule of Comal County near San Antonio. From the article, "Schule spent Tuesday afternoon calling the FBI, Homeland Security, the Sheriff’s Department — every agency he could think of. He was stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.
“Everyone was handing it off to everybody else,” Schule said. And some people want more government? This guy found this missile launcher on a Tuesday, made all the right phone calls to all the right people and nobody seemed to care! WTF? This tale does have a happy (and safe) ending, however. The next day, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio was kind enough to send an ordinance disposal team to pick up the military hardware and do whatever they do with rogue missile launchers found by civilians while preparing some land for a garden. I don't know about you, but a few questions come to mind regarding this peculiar situation. Questions like...where were the local cops? Dunkin Donuts? What about Homeland Security? Were they too busy at the airport frisking nuns and 90 year old women who pose a threat to our national security? And the FBI? I hear they were deep undercover at the Glenn Beck 8/28 Rally looking for right-wing extremists carrying homemade signs that "Obama is a Kenyan". Don't get me wrong, I'm not raggin' on law enforcement here, their job is tough enough as it is. I love the guys and gals in blue and the Feds, but c'mon folks. One of the higher ups in one of these agencies should have had a passing thought like, "This old boy in Comal County found a missile launcher while digging up his garden and maybe, just maybe, there's an element of danger to him and the general public. Finkelstein! Get somebody out there pronto!" But, all's well that ends well, I suppose. Excuse me while I go get my dirt ready for next year's garden. I might dig up Osama Bin Laden.
                    

Maine Minutiae : My Name is Earl

Have You Seen This Hurricane ?

Yesterday we talked about the eminent approach of autumn in Maine. I had no sooner hit the "publish" button on the blog dashboard, when I checked the weather for our area and found out that Hurricane Earl was going to be moving up the East Coast beginning some time Thursday. On July 16, when I wrote this, I thought, "Yeah, right. It'll be a cold day in hell when a Hurricane hits Maine again any time soon." Guess what? Satan is wearing a sweater right now, because there is a decent possibility that Hurricane Earl could brush the southeastern and eastern part of the state Friday night into Saturday morning. That "strike zone" includes Augusta, where I live. Admittedly, if Earl does pay us a visit, we'll more than likely get the outer bands of the storm. But still, it could impact me, my family and neighbors with heavy rain, tornadoes, flooding, power outages and so on. I am not really worried yet though, today is only Tuesday, so we've still got a bit of wiggle room to work with. I'll keep my eye on the weather over the next couple of days in order to do whatever we need to do to be prepared in case Earl slams us. It's kind of weird, though, I was talking to a neighbor earlier today about winter and now we (you and I) are considering how we (my family) could be affected by a hurricane this weekend. I suppose I'll go check the latest storm path info on various weather sites I know to what's shakin'. And maybe read a do-it-yourself ark-building book, the Bible. Does anyone know how to convert "cubits" to "feet"?

Texas Tidbits : Remember Goliad!

When the subject of  Texas' war for independence from Mexico is brought up, people reflexively conjure up thoughts of the Alamo, myself included. This is as it should be, for one of the most famous battles in the history of warfare. When an event of the magnitude of the Battle of the Alamo happens, it becomes a hallmark of a larger series of events that define history, in this case the Texas Revolution. My question is : what major event preceded the Battle of the Alamo that made it of such import? Answer : The Goliad Massacre . The skinny : Colonel James Fannin and his force of 350 men had engaged the 900 man army of Mexican General Urrea near Goliad . Fannin lost about 20% of his men in the battle and concluded that surrender  - his men had no water or supplies - was his best option.  He signed a surrender deal with General Urrea and Fannin's men were marched back to Goliad and held captive, and under Urrea's orders were to be treated humanely. That was the case until Mexican General Santa Ana heard about it and overrode Urrea's order and declared that all prisoners would be executed immediately. On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, Fannin and his men were divided into groups and marched out of Goliad in different directions and brutally slaughtered.  As the news of this mass murder spread like a Texas wildfire, the citizenry of Texas were enraged that such a horrific thing could happen, especially after Fannin and his men were promised that they would be treated humanely upon surrender. Texians, as the people of Texas were called at the time, were both appalled and inspired at the same time by this turn of events. And the rest, as it said, is history. Santa Ana was victorious at the Alamo, then promptly got his bloodthirsty ass handed to him at San Jacinto.  While Goliad will always take a back seat to the Alamo in terms of history, come next March 27, hold a moment of remembrance for 350 Texians, our forbears, who, like the brave men at the Alamo, gave their lives so that today, Texans can live in free of tyranny. We owe them that much. Remember the Alamo! But also, Remember Goliad!

Photo from scrapperguide.com