At the southeast corner of Lower Congress and Oltorf, in tony South Austin, there’s a grocery store.
Two Meat Tuesday (the book)
(cure for the common horoscope)
To a casual visitor, it might look like an “H.E.B.,” and to me, it looks like “Ay-shesh – EEEE – Bee.”
Shopped there, frequently, got to the point that I couldn’t walk in without seeing someone I knew, or, at least, that I did a reading for. For years, I’ve resisted the siren’s call of the little “taco stand” trailer in the middle of the parking lot. I call it a taco stand but that’s an emotional expression, it looks like a taco stand, but what they really sell? Shaved Ice and Roasted Corn.
It’s too convoluted to explain what I was doing, in the parking lot, why I was there, or why I was talking to three women. Libra, Sagittarius, Pisces, arrayed in a semi-circle around me.
“Ya’ll never had roasted corn? You just don’t know what you’re missing.”
I was trying to explain, while the woman in the trailer was scraping corn off a cob and into into a small cup. Two (much younger) guys were ahead of me, both latino, and both of them were muttering in spanish. One of them winked through the window to the woman as she prepped their corn. Outside, on the shelf, condiments included big, half-empty canisters for chili powder, lemon pepper and cayenne. There were squeeze bottles with mayo and margarine.
The two guys in line, one of them tried desperately to flirt with the woman working, then both those guys dressed their cups of corn with mayo, lemon pepper, chili powder, and cayenne, and topped it off with squirt of margarine.
My putative audience looked on while I mentioned the creamy goodness of roasted corn. I ordered mine, a single ear of corn. Corn on the cob, Elote Entero, like I knew that. I ordered in flawless English.
When she handed me the corn over the counter, it was a long, steamy ear of corn with a decent piece of stalk for a handle, and the ear sat on a foil square that was atop two brown paper towels. I proceeded to address the corner and my audience and explain that the way the corn should be eaten includes a squirt of mayo (or mayo-like substance), then sprinkled with lemon peppers, chili powder and cayenne. Which is what I did. I skipped the butter topping because I wasn’t interested, and I had me my dinner.
Somewhere, though, my street urchin cred was questioned.
“No, Kramer, I don’t usually dine in the parking lot of the grocery store.”
You don’t know what you’re missing.