Yesterday our apartment complex hosted a food truck for three hours in the afternoon. They had promoted it in emails and I had forgotten about it. But Ginger (aka J, aka Red, as I've called her in the blog in the past) spent the day down in Mesa at her folks house, as her niece is in town. She reminded me about the food truck, as she keeps better track of these things.
The truck was scheduled to start serving 5 pm. With the schedule we keep, this is actually after our normal dinner time, as we keep a schedule that skews early. At 4:55 I walked over I saw the truck was already set up, blocking off a part of the small circular access drive that loops up to the front of admin building of the complex.
I was the first one to arrive. From the mosaic of laminated menu cards on the truck, I could tell in served Mexican food, specializing in quesadilla. The truck itself looked well worn, the product of many years of service. A thin grey-haired Hispanic woman had set up a tiny table out front with a payment portal. She was wearing a mask and I put mine on out of courtesy, because there was a sign asking me to on the side of the truck.
After confirming that they were already open, I took the opportunity to chat with her a few minutes. I asked about the history of the truck. "They've been doing this since the Seventies," she said. It was a very old-school food truck.
Being confronted by the large selection, I further chatted about the best menu items. She suggested ordering a quesadilla. It turns out pretty much everything on the menu was a variation of a quesadilla, even though they looked different on the laminated cards. I only knew that because as she said the word quesadilla she motioned along the entire row of laminated cards on the side of the truck.
I could have ordered anything---I didn't really care, as I'm never picky about what I order and am content with whatever is palatable---but I asked her for further suggestions. But I had maxed out on tapping her knowledge. She balked at offering further suggestions. So I looked over the row. I was tempted to order the steak, as it looked the best in the photograph on the laminated card, and I told her I thought it looked good.
But then I saw the mushroom and cheese quesadilla on the end.
"Oh, I'm getting the mushroom," I said. And then I added. "It's Holy Week, after all." It was my tiny offering to the traditional Catholic and Orthodox practice of fasting from meat in Lent, something that few non-traditional Catholics do anymore (of course I'm not Catholic either).
When I said the line about it being Holy Week, the old woman did a curious tiny double-take, as if resetting her thoughts in recognition. It was as if it were the last thing she expected me to say.
While waiting for my food, I went around beside the truck (in front of it actually) and sat on the curb at a place where a small tree providing a bit of shade. Already the hints of the hot summer were arriving.
I sat there cross-legged, feeling at peace with the world. Within a few minutes a couple other people from the complex had arrived, including a couple in a neighboring building whom I recognized but have never spoken to (I've learned these introductions usually don't well).
The curious thing was that within twenty seconds of sitting down, a woman in car who was trying to loop around the circular drive back to where it meets the shopping center parking lot access stopped her car and spoke to me through the open window. She wanted to know how to drive around the truck. There were orange cones set up, but there was still room to drive around. I told her to carefully go around the cones and she could get where she wanted.
She spoke to me as if expecting I were some kind of authority figure on the subject of the orange cones, rather than just being a random guy sitting on the curb.
This kind of thing---being taken for an authority figure by a stranger---happens to me all the time. It's an odd feeling, as I'm not much of an authority on anything, but people want there to be authority figures and they will draft you into being one if you look the part, maybe the way flight attendants will bump well-dressed people from coach to first class on airplane if there are extra seats.
After a few minutes I heard the grey-haired woman call my name and I retrieved the aluminum tray that held my quesadilla. I went back to my place on the curb and after a blessing, I began eating the delicious mushroom and cheese quesadilla.
It was a serene experience. The afternoon air temperature was perfect and the trunk of the tree kept the sun from making it too hot. What I enjoyed most, however, was the comfortable being of eating around strangers in a public setting right in front of the complex. It made me wish the food truck would come every day, or at least once a week, so as to make a public place in front of the admin building that otherwise would not exist.
As I was eating, a car arrived on the circular drive that tried to access the the gate into the complex itself. It was apparently full of at least three teenagers. They were playing music in the car and talking with each other. They might have been trying to circle around as the other driver had done, but were confused and thought they had to go through the complex gate. After a few minutes they gave up and awkwardly turned the entire car around and drove the wrong way on the circular drive back to the four-way stop in the shopping center, which is about twenty feet away.
As they did so, a young man of high school age leaned out the window and spoke to me. He had hair that reminded me of an Eighties music video.
"You should eat at this other place," he said to me, pointing at the Koi Poke Bowl restaurant sits along the circular drive at the corner of the four-way stop. It was unclear if they and actually eater there, or if he was just being mischievous the way teenagers do.
I enjoyed the fact that he took delight in making whimsical conversation with me, an old man sitting on the curb in the shade of narrow tree eating a quesadilla.
I smiled back him, conveying my warmth at his interaction. "Not a chance kid," I thought to myself. The Koi Poke Bowl place isn't bad, but I'll take the food truck on this afternoon.
As they drove away, I thought about how the Pope has declared this to be a year dedicated to St. Joseph, whom God entrusted with the paternal care of the infant and juvenile Jesus, and to take care of his mother.
To me, St. Joseph is everything you wanted your own father to be, but was not, because no other man since him can be all of those things to you, that you would want from your own father.
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