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Eva Rocke to me July 26^th 4 days ago

We had a nice time too! It has begun to occur to me that there are a surprising number of older (over 40) men in Quincy who think they have a chance with young ladies in their 20s. Maybe I'm missing something, but Saturday night was an interesting taste of how folks will put forth a solid effort trying to impress a young woman like Alba who is obviously totally out of their league (simply by age, of course). Can you explain this phenomenon to me?

LUCKY BASTARD

He was rolling down the state highway between Calpine and Loyalton, Stairway to Heaven blasting out of the cassette player and the ‘74 Ford F150 pick up belching a spiraling plume of black smoke as the knocking of the bad main bearing kept a steady back beat to the music. Jesus’, he thought… I’m gonna have to get a job soon so I can afford to drop a new short block into this old wreck. One hand held on the wheel while the other simultaneously balanced a can of Bud Light, reached for a smoke and muffled the rattle of the stick shift.

Eyes partly closed and head thrown back he almost missed seeing the car on the side of the road with its hood up and the driver standing forlornly alongside the driver’s door. “God damn!” he muttered as he hit the brakes and reached up to steady the rear view mirror. “That was (oh, for example…) Halle Berry!” Disregarding his standardized Aryan leanings he shimmied to a rolling stop and flipped a u-turn while he wondered out loud, “What would she be doing out here by herself and how did her clothes get in such a mess just looking under the hood of her car?”

She was already smiling as he coasted to a stop nose to nose with her crippled vehicle and, as he unfolded himself from the seat, pinched the chew out of his upper lip and tucked his beer gut into his pants, she said, “Oh thank you for stopping. I would be ever so grateful if you could give me a lift into town or give me a place to stay for the night until I can call someone.” “No problem little lady,” he said as he used his teeth to clean the dirt from under a particularly dirty thumbnail. “Always ready to help a gal in distress. My double wide is just down the road and in the morning I can drive you into town.” Hey, this is really gonna work out he thought as she eyed him up and down with what seemed to him to be a bit of a hungry look in her gaze.

Buddy leaned forward, took a long hit off the pipe and went through his wife’s purse looking for beer money. “Hell yeah, it could totally happen just like that.” He said as he reached in his pocket for the truck keys.

(pee ess... does this mean I don't have a chance with you or (and) Alba?)

and things not so hard to leave behind in Quincy...

MAKING A JOYFUL RACKET UNTO YOUR OWN PARTICULAR LORD

While sneaking in the back way from San Jose to Tama’s new Santa Cruz digs on a winding, narrow country road we passed through the middle of a massing of Seventh Day Adventists who were attending an annual gathering replete with a giant revival tent and acres upon acres of RV’s, trailers and dome tents all filled with happy Christian souls patiently awaiting the rapture. Not quite the body mass of High Sierra but close. Seeing all those bodies stacked cheek by jowl brought on a 4^th of July flashback and gave me more fodder for my moving pros & cons debate.

The joys of High Sierra aside, if you live by the county fair grounds you get a little of everything else coming your way… the fair (obviously…) Saturday night stock car races and on Labor Day weekend… it’s JesusFest! Well, okay, it’s actually called JoshuaFest but its three very long days of Christian Rock music.

We have elderly neighbors living between our home and the fairgrounds. Sid & Maggie are retirees from Quincy and Miss’ippi and Sid likes to fritter away the hours in a barcalounger, watching TV by the open window. When the festival began, with a thundering crash at 2:30 that first Friday afternoon, I thought that perhaps Sid had suffered a cardiac episode and, in its throes, had clutched tightly at the remote, thereby simultaneously raising the sound and shifting to an MTV special on Thrash bands.

For me there can be nothing less gratifying than the mind-numbing banality of a high volume baptism under the self-righteous waters of church based rock & roll. For three days we had Rappin’ Jesus and Heavy Metal Jesus and Rock Ballad Jesus and Punk Jesus (no doubt replete with a pink mohawk like his disciples raiding the shelves in Safeway for Wonderbread and tuna fish…)

Now, I got nothing against Rock & Roll and I’m not so old that I don’t like it loud, but when you can’t hear your radio inside your house when all the windows are closed it might be time for these ardent believers to practice a little of the old “love thy neighbor” and perhaps refine the biblical admonition to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” to include something about both volume and content quality. Mix this near cacophony with bouts of amplified testimonials from lead guitarists various and sundry and you have a syrupy concoction that goes down more like ipecac than honey.

Having received what I considered to be a full dose from the comfort of my own living room I must confess that I didn’t actually wander onto the grounds for in depth exposure. The whole affair is billed as a family event and in truth the grounds are packed cheek by jowl with expensive looking RV’s and Airstreams. But either this event draws a primarily youthful audience or these families have teenagers still willing to run the family errands & fetch up some more wieners and diet sodas. It is a longish but easy walk around to Quincy Junction Road and into town to the shopping center and, like army ants on the move, both shoulders of the road were filled with happy campers; a veritable stream of modern day Visigoths sacking the local food supply and carrying off the last of the ice and Doritos.

Safeway becomes a madhouse and all the checkout lines are filled with tattooed and punky teens smugly acknowledging each other’s plastic wristband “tickets”, confident that they not only have a place in heaven but that it is down in front where they can hear the word of God despite the damage to their hearing.

If, truly, Jesus saves, could he please save me from this?

On the subject of Santa Cruz doesn't exactly suck...

WHERE GOD EATS ON HER DAY OFF

Whether quizzing security guards in front of an Albuquerque convention center at 6:00 AM or rolling into a new hometown and stopping at the locally owned and operated seafood market, Foodie that I am, the first query out of my mouth is always, “Where’s the best Mexican food in town?” It is surprising how well informed the working class is regarding such critical matters. In the small seafood shop in Santa Cruz earlier this week the guy behind the fresh clams and mussels on ice didn’t miss a beat. “Been here 30 years and the best is Casa Rosita’s on Portola.” Not a surmise nor an educated guess. Not a second hand tale by word of mouth. A statement of fact. Directions were a little vague, but the best is always small and out of the way; hard to find especially if you are an incomer like myself and don’t yet know Porter from Cliff Drive.

Now I know that some of you will swear that I often claim to have had the best Mexican food ever… and, on a sliding scale, this is true. What I probably said was more akin to “the best I’ve had in a long time” or “truly amazing… etc.”

So much for the disclaimer portion of this epistle. This was, without reservation, the very best, authentic, rural Mexican food that I have ever eaten. There. I said it. And I stick by it.

True to the directions, it was tucked in behind a BBQ joint in a little strip mall, next to a barbershop and, equally true, the owner, a tiny abuelita, was running the cash register and keeping things ship-shape. She seated us at a window table surrounded by the de rigueur tinware Corona parrots, plastic vines & flowers, thick stucco and a festive palate of colors… so far, potential but business as usual.

The menu was slightly more sparse than usual which is always a good sign to me. I told her why we had sought out her fine establishment and I could sense that our pilgrimage based on endorsement alone ratcheted things up a notch and we were in for a treat.

We all have our favorites that become our yardstick when dining a la Mexicana so, keeping form, Tama ordered mole verde con pollo and I had my standard litmus test; enchilada verde. (to me chicken in the house green sauce will always be the deal breaker…)

If you read the back stories on all the “big boys” like Mario Batali or Anthony Bourdain you soon learn that they slaved for years in fancy pants restaurants where food comes stacked in singularly small but vertical heaps, covered with the likes of black truffle/rare port reductions and flakes of 24 carat gold. When they grow weary of that they inevitably find themselves in the kitchen of some ancient old granny who only uses a handful of the most basic ingredients to create food that awakens taste buds one never knew one possessed.

Such was the case at Casa Rosita’s. Simply made, simply presented and simply the best. I was raving like a lunatic about my enchilada and its stunning sauce to which she replied, “My green sauce is alright but nothing compared to my red or white sauce… I’m known for my white sauce.” Without prompting she provided us with a small dish of each for taste comparison and, by gum, she was right. The white sauce, which in truth is a sort of pale, pale yellow sauce, was a cornucopia of flavors I could not untangle but it was the kind of ambrosia that prompted me to order up a shrimp enchilada swimming in white sauce on the spot. Oh, lordy was it good. Damn.

Of course, the universe being the practical joker that it is, she is thinking of closing up shop in the near future. She has a staff of grandchildren because the children have no interest in the business, 71 years old (30 in this spot…), the economic downturn and a bout of stomach cancer two years ago and she is ready to sit down and relax.

You can buy the restaurant if you want but she said in no uncertain terms that the recipes leave with her. I pled my case for a cookbook idea but I was not the first and she is unmoved by our cries.

At least I was able to eat there that one time.