I’ve had really good Mexican food the last few days feasting on chile rellenos and tacos de carne asada with all the corresponding salsa and guacamole, rice and beans.  Mexican food is a true love of mine.  As a born and bred American— I was born in Muskogee Oklahoma for god’s sake— when I think of American food I don’t think of apple pie or cheese burgers, I think of tacos.  I have no latin heritage.  I can find no branch on my family tree that ever hung over Mexican or Spanish soil (except for my Texas relatives, but does that really count?  They are crackers to the bone).  Yet I’ve been eating Mexican food all my life.
It all started when I was really young and my parents took me to my first fast food Mexican Restaurant.  The food was very different and I loved it.  I think the place was called taco tico or something.  I’m sure it would taste terrible today if I could go back in time.  It was, however, an experience for a kid.  My family graduated from  that experience to actually buying tortillas and mexican seasoning for hamburger meat to make our own tacos.  Of course we had to have shredded cheese, sour cream,and salsa.  Oh yes, salsa.  I’ve loved salsa since I first tasted it.  Yes it was cheap grocery store salsa more like ketchup than the real stuff, but it was my favorite thing.  Oh, and those cheap frozen grocery store buritos.  Man I used heat a pile of them up and melt sliced cheese over them.  Add some sour cream and pour salsa over the top and presto my young pallet was in gastronomical heaven.  At the time I didn’t know what tastes lay  ahead.  I didn’t know that Mexican food would drive me to extremes.
I ate mexican dishes all the time in my youth.  After church on sunday some friends of mine would invite me over  to have chicken fajitas.  I would eat until I lost the ability to chew.  Anytime I smelled Mexican food I would salivate like a dog.  There were times when my love for Mexican food got me into trouble.  I was a rodeo cowboy as a young man.  We would be driving from one rodeo to another and the truck stop diner was our primary source of sustenance.  Sometimes truck stop diners are not the best place to order the mexican platter.  It’s on the menu in most of them, but trust me, it’s not good.  I’m not even sure if it’s food.  Those truck stop Mexican platters had cheese on them, that’s the only part I could distinguish as an actual food source.  But I digress, there were times when we would run onto a real Mexican restaurant in some small town in South Texas or Arizona and all those bad platters and microwave burritos would fade from memory.  When I quit rodeoing I enrolled in college.  It was college that pushed me over the edge for Mexican food.
I had been going to classes at the University of Oklahoma for about two weeks.  One day I was riding my bike down this side street and I saw this sign for a Mexican restaurant.  I decided to try it out.  I walked in and had some pork tacos with rice and beans and some salsa verde.  I had a religious experience as I ate.  I had never had such good food.  The people who owned and ran the restaurant were from Acapulco and they could cook.  I began going every chance I could get.  I was soon running out of money.  I just couldn’t’ go to my apartment and eat raman noodles when I knew the restaurant was just down the street.  I was getting desperate.  One day while on my bike I happened upon a place that pays you for your plasma.  It was only about three blocks from the restaurant.  I went in and inquired about it.  In a matter of minutes I was hooked up to a machine that sucked my blood out of me, took the plasma out, and pumped what was left back in.  They gave me juice, a cookie, and fifteen dollars.  FIFTEEN DOLLARS!  I could eat the lunch special three times for that if i ordered water for my drink.  I could also sell twice a week.  That meant I could eat six days a week there.  Yes!  This went on for a long time.  Young nurses in training would gouge my veins missing over and over and I got to eat this food.  Finally one day I got one very incompetent nurse who stuck me so much I was bleeding all over everything.  My arm was so sore I couldn’t bend it for a while.  I had to quit selling my plasma and go back to eating there every once in a while when I had the money.  It was either that or die of anemia with blown out veins in my arms.  Do you  think I would have done that for apple pie or a cheese burger?  I don’t think so.  God bless Mexican food eaten in America.  You can have the apple pie.  I’m ordering flan.