FOOLS RUSH IN WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

Slipped into culinary exploration mode for an adventure with deep fried Kool Aid.

More to come after some fine tuning...

GIMME A SINKER AND A CUPPA JOE

So, as I traveled around the greater Santa Cruz area in order to achieve some manner of orientation to my new environs, I could not but notice that, for a town with a natural foods coop on every corner not already occupied by a Starbutts, there was also a preponderance of good old fashion donut shops. 

As I am a long time fan of what Anthony Bourdain  happily refers to as the Fry-o-lator arts it seemed only a natural (oh, look. There’s that word natural again…) course of events that I should enlist my wife into a series of early morning soirees to establish a pecking order for the aforementioned donut vendors.  

To that end we are sampling all of the donut shops we can find, and will report back to the waiting masses when we have all the info that is to be had.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." 

                                                                                                                     -Yoda

SOCIAL NETWORKING ON THE INTERNET: The new Hollywood Squares.

In the “good old days” when one wanted useless information on tertiary celebrities and their ilk you were at the mercies of re-run classics movie theaters or that treasure trove of the totally unnecessary detritus - daytime television.  Queries such as “Is so-and-so still alive?” and/or “What ever happened to that woman who starred in that midnight movie we saw last weekend?” required a commitment of some measure by the inquisitor. Inevitably, and with some effort, the answer could be found in one of three places… The Merv Griffin show, The Love Boat, or that Holy of Holies where grand dames like the highly interchangeable Gabor sisters carried on their meteoric descent from the panoply of stars to that ignoble cubicle on Hollywood Squares (or the mysterious wild cards like Paul Lynde who, seemingly without celebrity resume, sprang forth whole and fully grown, like Athena freed from Zeus’s forehead, to take possession of the all critical center square). The “three-in-the-afternoon” timeslot - much too early in the day for anyone but alcoholic housewives, late night entertainment workers and the chronically unemployed – was hardly any advertiser’s dream-team demographic but then any press is good press as long as they spell your name right.

Of course these days all you need is a little broadband and the ability to remember your password occasionally.  Thanks to those all prevalent social networks, literally anyone and everyone can become a tertiary celebrity and, if I choose to squander my time thusly, I can all too easily learn how very too much sorority sister "A" had to drink at the bar on Friday or what clever things "B"s piss-dog puppy did this week or the coma inducing dietary habits of "XYZ".

I can be friends with uncounted numbers I have never actually gotten to know and I can even make friends with corporate giants and local dining establishments (sorry, but the last time I went to a friend’s house for dinner they didn’t slip me a bill alongside my dessert plate…) Best of all I can exercise that nifty new verb and un-friend those who garner my displeasures… even easier and less emotional than dumping your girlfriend with a quick text.

Now I’m all in favor of free speech but let’s not dwell on the free part at the expense of the speech part.  Speech is the communicating of thoughts and ideas by speaking, not just opening your mouth and letting images and words tumble out all willy-nilly with little or no regard for content or the permanence of the expressed word.

My fear is that we are creating a mind-numbing, culturally stupefying realm devoid of critical thinking and the art of the wordsmith where pabulum, stirred up for the palate of the most common of denominators, becomes the lingua franca of a generation steeped in an ugly brew of self indulgence and transient fascinations.

Although I am a practicing, card carrying curmudgeon I am not a Luddite… a fact made obvious by my dubiously applied talents in Photoshop and the mere fact that I am blogging this complaint rather than transcribing it by hand with a quill pen in the dim light of a single flickering whale oil lamp.

That being said, I would like to quote Jaron Lanier from a recent New Yorker article, “...it’s not that technology has taken over lives but that it has not given us back enough in return. In place of a banquet, we’ve been given a vending machine.”

MORE THAN JUST ANOTHER WIDE SPOT IN THE ROAD...

Everybody has some manner of home town pride. That little something that sets your birthright apart from the next guy's.  That little something that put your town on the map long ago and far away.  This is one of mine...

Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood was born in 1893 in Keytseville, Missouri and, when she turned 13, moved with her family to the newly founded town of Twin Falls, Idaho.  There she attended Twin Falls High School but did not graduate.  She was courted by Robert C. Dooley and, at 19; she married him on March 17th, 1912.  They lived on his ranch along with his brother, Edward, and in October of 1913 Lyda gave birth to a daughter they named Lorrain.  For a brief time they gave every appearance of being a happy, typical farm family until, two years later in 1915, everyone around her began dying in rapid succession.  First baby Lorrain died suddenly; not that unusual an event in the early days of the 20th century.  Then on August 9th of that year the brother-in-law, Ed, also died without warning.  The Coroner’s Inquest and autopsy settled on ptomaine poisoning, Ed was buried and the couple collected $2000.00 from an insurance policy they had taken out on him.  In less than 2 months Lyda’s husband Bob was also dead, supposedly victim of typhoid fever.  This time she collected $4500.00 from another conveniently held insurance policy naming her as beneficiary. 

Lyda seemed to have a problem with being a widow and so, by May of 1917, she was married to a William McHaffie.  With her new husband she moved to Hardin, Montana where, surprise of surprises, Mr. McHaffie passed away suddenly from “flu”.  This time she had an insurance policy valued at $5000.00 but could not collect since, no doubt unknown to her, McHaffie had missed payments and let the policy lapse.  A widow again at 26, Lyda began casting her spell over one Harlan Lewis, a well-to-do engineer from Billings, Montana who had often visited the ranch in Hardin.  In March of 1919 Lyda and Harlan married and by July he, too, had collapsed and died.  The death certificate listed gastro-enteritis as the cause of death and, having made certain that he was paid up, Lyda collected most of $10,000.00 worth of insurance.

Short on overwhelming grief, Lyda forged ahead with practiced skill and planning.  She used her charms on an unsuspecting ranch foreman named Edward T. Meyer, and the three time widow became Mrs. Meyer on August 10th, 1920 in Pocatello, Idaho.  Apparently feeling impervious to discovery she, with her husband, returned to her old stomping grounds in Twin Falls where, in less than a month, on September 7th, 1920, the unfortunate Mr. Meyer left Lyda a widow for the fourth time.  Again the death certificate listed typhoid fever as the cause of death and folks finally began to wonder at the all encompassing misfortune that surrounded Mrs. Lyda Dooley Mchaffie Lewis Meyers; four husbands, a daughter and her brother-in-law all dead before she made it to the ripe old age of 28.  Sadly for Lyda, one of those folks who began to wonder was a Twin Falls County chemist named Earl R. Dooley (no relation…).  Earl Dooley not only knew Ed Meyer but had seen him, pale and ill, leaning against the outside wall of his ranch house only a couple of days before his death.  Recalling the scene in his mind, Dooley remembered that Meyer had vomited while leaning there and, wasting no time, he went to the ranch and collected a sample of the dirt where Meyer had stood.  Returning to the laboratory he ran tests and confirmed the presence of arsenic.  Seeking independent examinations, Dooley gave samples to Dr. Hal Bieler, a local physician, and Edwin Rodenbach, Idaho State Chemist.  Both men ascertained results that confirmed the original findings.  The State’s Attorney, Frank Stephan, was notified and the body of Edward Meyer was exhumed and the examination revealed large amounts of arsenic in the remains. 

A murder warrant was sworn out against Lyda, but when the deputy went to her home to serve it, she had flown the coop, saddened no doubt by the fact that she had to forego collecting yet another $12,000.00 insurance payout.  In her absence the state’s investigation went forward and, while looking for a motive for the multiple murders, it was discovered that Lyda had insured all her victims through the same insurer. Records at The Idaho State Life Insurance Co. of Boise, Idaho showed that husband #1, Bob Dooley was insured for $4500.00 - Lyda Dooley the beneficiary; husband #2, Bill McHaffie, was insured for $5000.00 – Lyda Dooley McHaffie the beneficiary; husband #3, Harlan Lewis was insured for $5000.00 – Lyda Dooley McHaffie Lewis the beneficiary and husband #4, Ed Meyers was insured for $10,000.00 – guess who… yep, Lyda Dooley McHaffie Lewis Meyers the beneficiary.

With a suspect and a motive well in hand if not in custody, all that remained was to figure out how the crimes were committed.  Sheriff’s Deputy Virgil Ormsby of Twin Falls began poking around in the case and interviewed Bud Taylor and Ben Squires who both worked on the Meyers Ranch.  They both thought it odd the way that Meyers gotten married, and Squires, who had eaten with the family, had also gotten sick at the same time as Meyers but had recovered.  Ormsby talked to Dr. J. F. Coughlin who had attended Meyers during his illness and hospitalization and who said Lyda had been running about the house wildly insisting Meyers was dying. When the he had arrived, Meyers was having difficulty breathing. When he stopped breathing altogether, stiffened and died, Lyda fainted. When she revived, she asked the doctor what could have killed him. Dr. Coughlin told her it might be ptomaine poisoning whereupon she left and the doctor never saw her again.  Taylor and Squires also noted that after the funeral Lyda had only shown up at the ranch for a couple of hours to collect some papers before disappearing. 

Going deeper into the background of the case, Ormsby traveled to Hardin, Montana to look into the death of William McHaffie. Looking for a source of the poison, Ormsby interviewed a drugstore clerk who remembered Lyda buying up their entire stock of arsenic laced flypaper in the fall of 1918, just before William McHaffie died.  McHaffie’s attending physician was questioned and said that Lyda seemed indifferent while McHaffie lay dying.  While visiting with the Hannifins, who had purchased the McHaffie place in Hardin, they took Ormsby down to the basement and showed him a barrel that contained a battered, dirty kitchen pan and a stack of used flypaper.  Flypaper, at that time, came as flat sheets of paper impregnated with sugar and arsenic.  The paper was placed in a shallow pan of water to re-hydrate and the flies, coming in for the sugar, would also ingest the arsenic and be killed.  It would later come out that Lyda was in the habit of boiling down the sheets of poison flypaper until she extracted the arsenic crystals which she would then add to soups or sprinkle on top of apple pies to feed to the unsuspecting husbands.

Exhumations were now ordered for all of her husbands, lethal levels of arsenic were found in each and she was formally charged with their murders on April 22nd, 1921.

Lyda was finally traced through California and Mexico to Hawaii where her newest husband, Paul Southard was stationed.  He listened incredulously to the stories hinting that his wife was a multiple murderess. "She's been a mighty good wife to me," Southard protested, "and I don't care if she married ten men before, and they all died. That wouldn't make her a murderess."  Lyda waved the charges away. They were silly. She'd return to Twin Falls and face them.  Authorities placed her under arrest and she was held until Deputy Ormsby arrived on May 24th.  He returned with his prisoner on June 7th to San Francisco, traveled by train to Wells, Nevada and then on by car to Twin Falls for trial.

On June 17 Mrs. Southard was formally charged with murdering her fourth husband, Edward P. Meyer. She sat apparently emotionless throughout the day at the preliminary examination before Probate Judge Duvall. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Trueblood, were constantly at her side and Lyda seemed oblivious of the gaze of the spectators, mostly women, who had crowded into the court.  Counsel for the defense offered no testimony in behalf of Mrs. Southard, and the prosecution called witnesses which included Dr. J. F. Coughlin, who attended Meyer in his fatal illness and testified that Meyer had suffered a relapse almost immediately after a special nurse had been discharged as a matter of economy and Mrs. Southard was left alone in care of the patient; Dr. Hal Bleler, who made the post mortem examinations of the body of Meyer; Ben E. Busmann, attorney, who identified a copy of Meyer's will, drawn soon after his marriage to Mrs. Southard, naming her as sole legatee, and a Mr. C. D. Thomas and his son, Rex Thomas, who testified as to Meyer obtaining life insurance for $10,000 and of his widow's repeated efforts lo collect on the policy.  Lyda was indicted and bound over for trial for the murder of Ed Meyer.

The trial began on September 26th with Judge William Babcock presiding.  Working at the prosecution table were State Attorney General Roy L. Black, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Frank L. Stephan and lawyer E. A. Walters.  Lyda’s defense team consisted of W. P Guthrie, A. J. Meyers (again, no relation…) Homer Mills and A. R. Hicks.  Only Edward Meyer’s death was at issue and Lyda pleaded “Not Guilty”.  Although the trial was long and occasionally bogged down by a great deal of technical and chemical evidence, it was sensational enough to draw reporters from all over the world, descending on little Twin Falls, Idaho to cover the store of “Lady Bluebeard”.  It was, in fact, one of the “sob sisters” covering the trial for a London newspaper who, in her dispatch home, coined the phrase “serial killer” in describing Lyda Dooley Mchaffie Lewis Meyer Southard.  The trial ended at the beginning of November and on November 4th, 1921 the jury, having deliberated for twenty-three hours, returned a verdict of guilty to the charge of murder in the second degree.  The judge sentenced her to the Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise for a term of ten years to life.  Lyda had just turned 29. 

Paul Southard, the clean cut navel Petty Officer and current husband, who had stood by his wife up to this point, quickly filed for a divorce (although there appears to be no record of an actual divorce…) and Lyda was transferred to Boise to begin her sentence.

Female prisoners at the Idaho State Penitentiary were housed in a single building inside the grounds and separated from the rest of the population by a high stone wall which enclosed both the women’s ward and a small grassy yard.  By all records Lyda was a model prisoner, often the only inmate in the women’s section.  She did what was know as fancy work to sell and worked in the warden’s house as a housekeeper, nanny and cook… an irony not wasted on many an uncomfortable lunchtime guest.

After nearly a decade however, prison life began to lose its charm and whatever talents Lyda had used to win herself an unending string of heavily insured husbands were not diminished by a prolonged stretch in the slammer.  In spite of the limited contact between prisoners of the opposite sex Lyda soon beguiled a male inmate, David C. Minton, to aid and abet her bid for freedom.  After securing his help, Lyda used her skills on warden R. E. Thomas, asking for and getting his permission for Minton, who worked in the prison metal shop, to avail of his time and talents in the making of several iron trellises for Lyda’s rose garden in the women’s yard… how could you not see this one coming?  All sat fallow until Minton was paroled and then, on the pre-arranged night of May 13th, 1931 and in classic jailbreak style, Lyda loosened a bar in her cell window, knotted together her bed sheets and slipped into the night.  Quickly snapping together the well designed trellises she created a ladder tall enough to clear the wall, over she went into the arms and waiting car of her loving confederate.  By morning’s light they were well on their way east to Denver. 

A year later the police caught up with David Minton and arrested him for his part in the prison break.  Lyda had dumped him and moved on to greener pastures and he was bitter and willing to talk about her whereabouts.

In December of 1931 Lyda had answered an ad for a housekeeper and a nurse for one Harry Whitlock and his ailing mother, Theodosia.  Whitlock’s mother soon died of gastro-intestinal problems and, although there was no investigation, it is easy to imagine Lyda sweeping clean the path to another insurance windfall.  By March she was Mrs. Whitlock and she was pushing him to get adequate coverage.  With the information from Minton the police approached an understandably stunned Whitlock who, upon learning the truth about his new wife, agreed to help with her apprehension.  Lyda, who had allegedly gone to visit her mother, sent her husband a general delivery letter from Topeka, Kansas.  Whitlock replied and when she came to collect his letter the long arm of the law was waiting.  Whitlock had the marriage annulled and, in August of 1932, Lyda was returned to the prison in Boise.

A little plumper and pushing 40, Lyda apparently still had her skill sets.  A 1933 exposé which cost then Warden George Rudd his job revealed that she had received extraordinary favors in prison.  She had been allowed, unguarded for five hours, to visit her sick mother outside the prison, she had been taken for afternoon automobile rides, permitted all-day outings to a nearby resort and allowed to attend the moving pictures in Boise on a number of occasions.  Warden Rudd’s defense was that, although he had allowed these liberties, Lyda had never betrayed the trust he placed in her…

Back in Boise, Lyda began a campaign for a pardon.  She applied for parole in April and again in November of 1935, but was denied on both occasions. She became almost hysterical every time it was denied and was nearly as hysterical in October of 1941 when her request for parole was finally granted. Parole board member Idaho Governor Chase A. Clark voted against it, remarking that he felt the interests of society would be best served by keeping Lyda locked up, but he was outvoted by his two colleagues.

 In setting the terms of her parole, the judge spoke from the bench and said, “…that, since she was now old and no longer attractive, she would not be a threat to any man.”  Lyda insisted that the only men she was interested in were God and Uncle Sam.  She was released on October 3rd, 1941; paroled for a six month period of probation to her sister, Mrs. John Quigley of Nyssa, Oregon.  After her probation ended in 1942, Lyda returned to Twin Falls, Idaho where she married one more time to a man named Hal Shaw.  Two years later Hal Shaw would disappear without a trace…

Lyda moved to Salt Lake City, Utah where she lived until she dropped dead of a heart attack while walking home from the grocery store on February 5th, 1958.  She was buried in the Twin Falls cemetery under the name Anna E. Shaw.

Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood Dooley McHaffie Lewis Meyer Whitlock Shaw

1893-1958

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S SHIT TO PRINT

Yeah, I know… if YOU had a blog you would write for it all the time… No, wait… I like to think that I am teaching you something with this blog and, being a teacher, I took the summer off. There. My conscience is clear…

Well, since last we gathered around the ol’ cyber campfire, many things have transpired. Unfortunately most of them were without great merit and require no comment here. Of note was a road trip with the missus back for a visit to Quincy.

Tama had a burning urge and a financial obligation to attend the annual, Patchouli soaked, High Sierra Music Festival over the 4^th of July weekend.  Since I am buffing up my skills as a curmudgeon and saw scarcely a venue name I recognized, I elected to remain outside the gates and spent my mornings soaking away in Michelle’s hot tub to the dulcet tones of cackling hens and the boastings of the pip-squeak banty rooster.  I did tow her away from the hub-bub on Saturday night for a dinner date at Le Coq which was, as you would expect, casual, homey and superb… one of those delights that I miss the most.

Monday morning was a run to Reno to put Mrs. B on a plane for home so she could get back to tormenting her underlings at work while I stayed on for a busman’s holiday to do some work for the Museum and for Michelle.

I stopped by  Plumas Arts to say howdy and to drop off a few examples of my recent labors as a potter… a little something to clutter up the shelving in their gift shop. I got to see pretty much everybody I wanted to this time around so, all in all, more fulfilling visit than the previous, shorter one.

THE FUCKIT LIST

In these days when we are inundated by reminders that vita is, indeed, brevis --1000 places to see before you die and a Bucket List of personal goals that need achieving -- I think we could all use a bit of a reminder course in “things we promised we would never do (or, perhaps, do again). Thus was spawned the Fuckit List and in it we will find the mundane and personal… never eat beets… never watch televised golf, etc. and the more practical and worldly… don’t shoot people… don’t drink and drive… well, you get the picture so get to work on your own list, and make damn sure you don’t do them before you die!

YES, I HAVE EATEN LATELY TOO

On the advice of a friend who could be trusted, we went ‘tuther day to dine at a place just around the corner from our house.  The Main Street Garden & Café is an unassuming, remodeled house in the middle of a residential Soquel neighborhood and, if it wasn’t for a largish mosaic sign out front, you would probably never find it.

We didn’t have any preconceived notions so we were more than pleasantly surprised by what we found.  First off, everybody who worked there seemed to be twenty-something and when it came to wait staff, the owners must have called the employment agency and said, “Just send us one of each kind.”  One Nordic amazon, one curly-haired, tie-dyed hippie chick, one urban goth, a homo and a skater… plenty of ink and metal bits everywhere and much more than a passing acquaintance with the food and wines.  This works well because their customer base appears to be just as eclectic.

The kitchen staff were appropriately covered in body art and black t-shirts and dancing around the stove to metal music (which, since it was divided from the dining area by only a half wall pass-thru, occasionally conflicted with the dulcet strains of Loreena McKennitt in the front of the house…). This by no means implies that they don’t know what they are doing back there.  All their produce is organic and locally sourced and they buy all their meat on the hoof and butcher, cut and prep it all themselves, including smoking meats, packing sausages and the like.  There is a massive wood-fired oven where they produce their breads, slow cooked dishes and pizzas which gives everything that yummy, campfire dinner hint-o-smoke.

Tama had a slow roasted pork shoulder that came with boiled potatoes and mustard greens and I ordered up their classic goat pot pie which was slow cooked nanny goat in a savory sauce with taters and veg all wrapped in a crusty shell and wood-fired… served with a mint salsa. Wash it all down with a couple of pints of Murphy’s fine Irish Stout and you have one happy fat guy.

Having left a wee bit of room for dessert, we shared a fig & olallieberry galette. This is a wood-fired, flaky pastry dough wrapped around (obviously…) a fig and a puddle of olallieberries along with some sweet seasonings and a dollop of some manner of mascarpone style cheese, yum-yum. Boy, oh boy, it made the old taste buds sit right up and say howdy.

We were going through the list of our friends we wanted to bring here when they came to town but, when the check arrived, we pared that list down to friends who would like to come here dutch treat… It took a Franklin to get out the door, but we did have a$14 appetizer, several drinks, two dinners and dessert.  The only sense of being cheated was that we couldn’t afford to eat there all the time.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

A week ago Friday PG&E shut off all the electrons flowing to Cabrillo College so we had a weekday run away.  We actually rolled out early in search of breakfast on the town. There, just around the corner from us was the Bayview Hotel, a rambling old Victorian pile with a dining room in a converted sun porch. 

Luckily we were on a no-schedule holiday because they are in no hurry at the Bayview.  We got our first inkling when it took us five minutes to find anyone at home. Menus were quickly brought forth but coffee took another ten minutes.  Tama ordered crepes stuffed with oranges and brandy and I called up buttermilk pancakes.  Well, apparently they had to make a quick run to France for the crepe batter… our waitress (the owner…) informed Tama that crepes took 25 minutes… no problem, we had nothing ahead of us.  I guess that the staff is dyslexic and had transposed the 2 and the 5… okay, so it was actually 45 minutes but by then the “real” waitress had arrived so the really good coffee kept coming and we had two copies of the Santa Cruz Weekly to peruse.  And when the food arrived it was fresh, hot and damn tasty…just don’t stop by to get a bite before the movie or on your way to work.

Next stop was in the teeny burg of Corralitos between Aptos and Watsonville which is home to The Corralitos Market, a carnivore’s wonderland of meaty bits of steaks, chops, bacon, sausages and the like. All made in-house and remarkably cheap considering.  Since we had the good old Trader Joe’s insulated bag we grabbed up some andouille, some Santa Fe flavored sausages and a pound of smoke-house bacon.

The only real plan we had for the day was to eat some Mexican food in Watsonville… but breakfast had turned out to be brunch so we did a quick pass thru Watsonville and headed east to the bucolic splendors of San Juan Batista. Staying off the arterials led to a wrong turn, but Tama had it once again at her fingertips (smart phone:2, dumb guy:0…) and in no time we were looking for a road into the old part of town.

It seemed so quaint when we had to stop dead to allow a small flockette of chickens wander across the main drag… from a dead stop it was then easy to maintain the posted 25 mph.  Well, within an hour we had been privy to two ardent locals with diametrically opposing views on “The Great Feral Chicken Debate”. It seems that San Juan Batista is awash in droves of wild chickens that wander, dine and drop anywhere the mood takes them.  Half the locals think this is cute and is a great hook that brings a smile to the lips of the hordes of touristas (yes, we smiled…) and, as we all know, a happy tourist is a spending tourist.  The other half of the Batisters think the chickens are spreading shit, feathers, disease and a hillbilly attitude and need to head out to that great processing plant in the sky.  Both sides are at the signatures on a petition stage of the game and Monday night council meetings are probably hellish to say the least.

Still not hungry and having seen a surfeit of antique stores, we popped into a local main street watering hole for a cold one & some salty peanuts and then we were off to Moss Landing and a stop at our favorite fruit & veg stand.  Grapefruit (10 for a buck), raspberries, peaches, cilantro, spuds, dinky Ecuadorian bananas, mango, plums… a heaping shopping bag full of farm fresh eatables for a mere seventeen bucks.

Okay, so now it’s after 5 o’clock and we are finally hungry and on our way back to Watsonville.  Tama had done a quickie poll of her Hispanic employees so we had a short list to draw from and settled on Real Colima.  A brightly colored building in an equally brightly colored neighborhood and a mostly non-anglo room full of diners showed great promise.  We got the menu and ordered our food.  Dinner came in good time but that was the last time we saw even a flicker of interest from our waitress… and we thought that the breakfast service had been bad… the only way I could have caught this waitress’ attention would have been with a fishing rod and a treble hook.  The food was very good… Tama had mole and I went with a tamale platter but, goddamn it, you can’t really eat Mexican food without washing it all down with great lashings of Tecate, and you can’t get a beer unless you can get a waitress.  Sorry, but in a neck of the woods where Mexican food joints pop up like Canadian thistle, you only get one chance to hit the mark or wind up on the also ran list.