If I stop at Border Tacos at just the right time, it is magical. The right time is in the middle of a hot, sunny summer day. I'll step up to the window in the truck and feel the hot sun overhead. The sun's heat will combine with the heat emanating from the truck to give me an impression of heat that doesn't exist naturally as far north as I live. At that point, I'll start conversing in Spanish with whomever's working in the truck. I'll ask how business is going, and whoever's working in the truck will be curious as to how I learned Spanish (and as to how I developed a Mexican accent when I speak it). I feel heat comparable to that of a typical day in any of the places I've been in Latin America, I'm speaking Spanish, and I'm close enough to the truck that I can't see the city around me.
For a brief, brief moment, I feel as though I am in another country; none of my immediate physical experiences give me reason to believe otherwise. I am hit by strong memories of my times in Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia.
In that moment, I remember walking around in Juarez, finding a newspaper everyday so I could check up on what was happening in the NBA Finals, though I didn't know enough Spanish at that point to make complete sense of it. I walked around looking for a man named Lalo, telling him that Dwyane Wade won the game with two free throws in the closing seconds. I had pizza with him a year later and we talked about his separation from his wife; I felt a deep empathy for the first man outside the United States to whom I'd ever had any real connection. I remember visiting Quirino, the warm and humble man who made a living making piñatas in the stuffiest, hottest indoor work environment I'd ever seen.
I remember the orphanage in Atenas, Costa Rica, where I played with a little girl named Louchy. I would take her hands and spin around until she was flying, squealing with laughter. I remember the first moment I realized how much it would hurt her when I left, how often that must happen to those orphans and the bitterness I felt about it, not understanding that the love I could give in a short time outweighed that pain.
I remember Yolaida and Loida, the two women who cooked most of what I ate in Colombia, sitting down to rest for a few minutes after each meal. I'd pass them after cleaning my dishes, thanking them for the meal and talking up how great it was. I remember them sitting me down so they could pray for me before I left to take a boat to Cartagena so I could get on a plane back to the US. Theirs was the most regular and predictable interaction I had in the course of my five weeks in Colombia.
These and a thousand other memories compress into a flash of deep sentiment I feel while I wait the two or so minutes it takes to prepare my order. The way I feel in those two minutes lingers on into the rest of the day, and I'm happy and distant until I go to sleep that night.
I stopped at Border Tacos today. It wasn't like the experience I just described.
I walked up to the truck today and noticed that the menu signage was all new and different. In the past, the menu was displayed in the window of the truck and was quite clearly created by someone with a less-than-fluent understanding of English. This added to the character of the truck in a way that was very pleasing to me. This new menu signage was all very fluent and sensible English. That's no fun.
The real disappointment came when I was looking at the new menu and a woman stuck her head out the window and asked me, "are you ready to order?" She was way, way better at speaking English than I wanted her to be. So I interacted with her in English instead of Spanish. It wasn't hot, either. All of these physical factors that I associated with this experience were different, so it just didn't have the same mystique about it.
I stepped back a few feet from the booth while I waited for my food instead of sticking my head in and initiating conversation. I don't suppose it's fair to deprive someone of interest in her life because she speaks English well, but my line of thinking at that point was much less nuanced than any of that. I didn't get what I wanted so I just stood around.
And then three men walked up behind me. They were Mexicans. They stepped forward to place orders and then leaned against a nearby tree while we all waited. From them I got the conversation I was looking for, the little taste of my international experiences that make a day so, so much better for me. They were painters, doing a job near Grand Avenue. We talked very briefly about the food, about Latin America and my experiences, and about how I learned to speak Spanish. I didn't ask their names. They were on what I imagine to be a short break in the middle of a hard day's work, and I didn't see it necessary to take any more of their time than what was available while I waited for my food. This interaction completely made up for the disappointment I had experienced moments earlier.
In the short time we talked, I explained that I ordered food from the truck any time I could para escapar, in order to escape. One of them told me that he does it, too. Just another example of food existing to bring people together.
The food is very good, by the way. Today I ate some tacos al pastor, along with some tacos de lengua (tongue):
If you live in the Saint Paul area, you should stop by this truck when you see it. It's good, authentic Mexican. It's definitely worth the trip, even if you don't have somewhere else to escape to along the way.
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