I hate to disappoint you, but there some very good restaurants down here. Yes, they serve cow tongue, intestines, and other things I won’t even bother to list, but you can get “normal” food also. We go to a different restaurant depending on our appetite on any particular night. One of Joeline’s favorite places is Casa de Campo. They have wonderful pork chops.
The chops come with mashed potatoes and two - count them two - green peas on top of the potatoes. We have eaten there probably ten times in the last year and Joeline , being the adverturess she is, always orders the chops - and they always come with two peas.
However, one of the disadvantages of being here is that the people have a distinctive European outlook on a lot of things, one of them being smoking. It seems like everyone here smokes and most restaurants let them light up everywhere. Now, Joeline handles this much better than Jody - Jody is downright indignant if anyone smokes within 100 yards of her, but Joeline definitely does not like it. They know that I hate it more than anyone alive, but I never make a scene.
Anyway, the other night we were out with a couple and people at the adjoining table were smoking. Joeline moved her chair a few times and murmured a few choice words. Finally, I went on a rampage about smokers in general. After I had calmed down, the guy with us said, “I understand not likeing smoking, but you really seem to have a downright annoyance for the smokers and not for the smoke. Why.”
I thought about that for a few minutes and then realized why that probably is the case - the smoke really doesn’t bother me. I don’t cough and hack and get sick like Jody, but……
When I was 14, Dad dropped me and another boy, who was 17 but not too “bright”, (kind of a Rope type for those of you who knew dad) off in Stockton, California, to watch a few horses at the Fair. He was going somewhere and the two of us were to take care of the horses for a week before the Fair actually started. I’m sure he left us enough money to get us by for the week, after all, how much do beans, Vienna sausages, cheese, and crackers cost. We slept on cots in one of the stalls and there was a bathroom at the end of the shedrow. Pretty good gig for a kid.
The first evening this other kid had the bright idea that since we had money we should go to the track kitchen and eat up. We did so, but it set us back more than I had expected, but I wasn’t worried – yet. The next day we walked outside of the gates of the track and found that there was a bowling alley only a block away – what could a few games cost?
Let me cut to the chase. Dad, and the owners of one of the horses were coming back Saturday at about 11 to get the horse ready for a race. By Thursday at noon the other kid and I had a total of about .50 cents left between us. We got our heads together and decided we would go to a grocery store and do the best we could. I figured we could get a box of crackers, some cheese, and a couple of cans of beans and stretch them out. In the store we wandered the aisles, just being near food was comforting. Finally, the other kid said I should give him the money and he would make the purchases. I was watching a couple of other kids play pin-ball and did as he said.
When we got outside I found that he had spent every cent of our money on cigarettes - which I must admit he offered to share with me. I went nuts. Which for me meant I said, “You cottinpickin idiot” twenty or thirty times. He had been telling me for at least a day that he was out of cigarettes, but what did I care, I was hungry and never in my wildest imagination would I have ever imagined that someone would chose to inhale smoke rather than eat! It made no sense to me then and still doesn’t today.
We ate absolutely nothing the rest of the day Thursday or all day Friday, but he had his stinking cigarettes and was a happy camper. Gee, I wonder if that warped me towards smokers?