Let's Eat Mexican!

 

Should you happen to be in San Antonio, Texas, here are ten of my favourite Mexican diners and restaurants in no particular order. The hungry traveller should probably keep in mind that when I find something I like on a menu, I rarely eat anything else in whichever establishment I happen to be in, so the following reviews are by no means comprehensive.

Guajillo's, 1001 Northwest Loop 410, TX 78213.
Guajillo's bills itself as the shortcut to Mexico, and the mole poblano is possibly the best I've eaten outside of Mexico. Mole poblano is one of those things which most places get wrong, having mistaken its characteristic heat for the whole point of the thing, which shouldn't be the case if you're prioritising flavour over recognition by the Guinness Book of Records as most stupid cunt to have eaten the hottest chili pepper known to gastronomic science. Mole poblano is the one with the sauce combining chocolate, chili, and sesame seeds, amongst other things. The key to getting it right seems to be that it should be just a little hotter than you might like, but not by much so you are at least able to appreciate what you're eating. They get it exactly right at Guajillo's, and their rice is also amazing - and quite unlike the usual Texan variation on Mexican rice. A visit to Guajillo's does actually sort of feel a little like dining out in Mexico City, and I wouldn't swear that they haven't got some sort of elaborate underground pipeline in operation pumping the stuff north direct from the source. I've also had other items from their menu, and most of it seems to be to roughly the same high standard. Bess said she'd had better churros, but they tasted pretty great to me.

Sonia's, 10447 Nacogdoches Rd, TX 78217.
I've only ever had breakfast at Sonia's but they've never let me down.  So far as Mexican diners go, if the building is some colour so bright that it hurts your eyes and there's a happy cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window, then the food is usually going to be pretty good. We seem to have about a million places fitting this description in San Antonio, mostly following what is essentially the same menu, and yet strangely no two of them seem to be quite alike. I tend to go for either the huevos rancheros or a migas plate at Sonia's, and both are always wonderful and in reasonable servings rather than those Texas gutbucket specials you tend to get at a few places. Also, there's something about Sonia's which makes the place feel like you're actually in Mexico, somehow. I'm not sure if it's the folksy décor (the real deal rather than some beardy white guy idea of the same), the all-year Christmas tree, or the food - but it works for me, whatever it is. Great service too.

El Chapparal, 15103 Bandera Rd, Helotes, TX 78023.
This one's a bit out of the way but it's worth making the trip. The food is unambiguously Tex-Mex, which is Mexican but with greater emphasis on cheese, amongst other things. I've occasionally encountered a certain snobbery regarding Tex-Mex, almost always from tourists with some cultural bee in the bonnet. One of them once set me right on facebook, opining, actually I think you'll find you're eating Tex-Mex rather than Mexican cuisine if you live in San Antonio. I pointed out that I'd spent plenty of time in Mexico and was therefore fully aware of what I was eating, thank you very much. He was from New York - typically - because if you want to know about Mexican food, obviously you're going to ask some cracker from la Manzana Grande. Anyway, culinary habits vary from one region to another all across Mexico, just as they do in any country, and Tex-Mex happens to be the variation local to this part of what used to be Mexico, and still is Mexico so far as I'm concerned. Just because George W. Bush used to be governor, it doesn't mean that Tex-Mex gets disqualified, pendejo. Anyway, if you're going to eat Tex-Mex in San Antonio, then you may as well climb all the way to the top of the tree, which is approximately where you'll find el Chapparal. The décor is a little over the top and the parking lot is always rammed with trucks full of fat people, but the food is fantastic. The salsa is so fresh that you'll actually notice and their mole poblano is the best I've had outside of Guajillo's.

Siete Leguas, 2470 Harry Wurzbach Rd, TX 78209.
This diner is less than a minute's walk from my house, but wouldn't make the list were the food not up to scratch. It was called Papagayos this time last year, then appeared to shut down a couple of months into the pandemic so we all assumed that was that until they reopened as Siete Leguas a couple of months ago. I'm still not quite sure what happened but it's the same people and the same menu. Siete Leguas was the name of Pancho Villa's favourite horse and is also the name of a popular brand of tequila, beyond which, I have no idea. To be brutally frank, it wasn't a massive surprise when they closed down as the service had been a bit intermittent during the final days of Papagayos, and to be honest it wasn't amazing just now - seemingly down to understaffing from what I could tell. There are a few fairly harsh online reviews of this place including one which claims that a specific waitress had an unpleasant fishy smell. For what it's worth, while the food has sometimes seemed a little slow in coming, it's always been great and I've never noticed any particularly fishy service. The migas plate probably isn't quite up to the Los Dos Laredos version, but it's good, and I'm really glad they're back.

Los Dos Laredos, 1264 Austin Highway, TX 78209.
We discovered Los Dos Laredos when Bandera Jalisco went a little off the boil, relatively speaking. We'd been past Los Dos Laredos a million times because it's quite near to our home, but had assumed it was just one of a million of its kind - bright orange and with an anthropomorphic chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window. Upon close inspection it actually turns out to be more or less the greatest Mexican diner in human history. It does everything the others do but gets it right, and back at the beginning of the pandemic when everything was turning to shit, their takeaway was about the only one which really came anywhere near as close to what you would be served when dining in. I tend to have the migas plate - which is, by the way, easily the best migas I've eaten - but everything else at Los Dos Laredos seems to be equally great. My wife and myself have become such regulars that the waitresses usually know what we're going to order before we've sat down, and I really can't overemphasise how wonderful this place is.

Sabor Cocinabar, 4331 McCullough Ave, TX 78212.
Sabor Cocinabar seems to be fairly unique in being, from what I can tell, a gourmet version of Mexican food brought together by a culinary visionary; which may sound off-putting and pretentious, and is doubtless why the place is so popular with the Alamo Heights set, but the fact is that the food is, quite frankly, fucking amazing. My wife heard about the place a couple of years ago, so we went along one Thursday evening just to try it out, then went back on a more or less weekly basis for the next six months. It's Mexican food and nothing in the spirit of Heston Blumenthal, but done really, really well, and with a twist which distinguishes it as a fairly unique variation to the norm. It's actually difficult to define what the difference is but it's pronounced. The owner seems to be from Michoacan, so maybe that's a factor. Anyway, their greatest dish - in my view - is the Enchildas Aztecas which entails fried potatoes alongside the usual stuff and has a faint suggestion of caramelisation; it's actually a variation on the more familiar enchiladas norteñas but knocks the basic formula well and truly out of the park, as we say in Americaland, probably. Another plus is that we became such regulars for a while that we're on first name terms with half of the staff, who are a fantastic bunch - particularly Pedro who even remembered that it was our wedding anniversary.

Bandera Jalisco, 14320 Nacogdoches Rd, TX 78247.
This was probably the first bright orange diner with a cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window for which I developed a near religious devotion, and I seem to remember a year during which we ate there at least once a week. We originally discovered Bandera Jalisco* through driving past on the way to some other place and figuring we'd give them a shot. I had the mixed plate which comprises shrimp and skirt steak grilled on the same skillet, allowing for the flavours to entwine - along with the usual salad, salsa, Mexican rice and so on - and it was fucking phenomenal. Inevitably we eventually got burned out and took to experimenting with other diners - which is probably where Los Dos Laredos came in. The owners expanded, doubling the size of the restaurant and fancifying things a little, and the skirt steak seemed a little chewier for a while. We return maybe every couple of months these days, like visiting a former girlfriend (or boyfriend in my wife's case, I guess) and while I'm not sure it's ever quite recaptured the magic of our first year - some of which may have occurred in my head, in any case - Bandera Jalisco is still pretty damn great.

La Fonda, 8633 Crownhill Blvd, TX 78209.
If the restaurant was never quite responsible for the greatest thing you've ever eaten, La Fonda was pretty decent back when it was situated on Sunset Ridge; but it changed somewhat when they were bought out by Jim Hasslocher's Frontier Enterprises and relocated to a lot opposite the company headquarters. I've got a lot of love for Jim's - as is the name of their principal chain of diners - but Mexican food was never quite their forté, and La Fonda is now, roughly speaking, the Mexican restaurant for people who don't actually like Mexican food that much - which is difficult to state without it seeming like a criticism, although it sort of is, but the bottom line is that you probably won't need to worry about anything on the menu being too hot. That said, the food is nevertheless decent of its type - that being Mexican food for white people - and I've never had anything bad there, plus their fish tacos are pretty great. Should someone from New York who knows everything ever tell you actually I think you'll find you're eating Tex-Mex rather than Mexican cuisine if you live in San Antonio, they probably mean La Fonda.

Tomatillos, 3210 Broadway, TX 78209.
...or Ptomaintillos as my wife rather uncharitably calls it, in reference to some food poisoning incident occurring way back in the fourteenth century and which I'm sure wouldn't happen these days. Nevertheless, this is one place where we've been shown to a seat, then walked out after ten minutes of being sat there like wankers without so much as a sniff of anyone bringing us a menu or drinkies; so it's never quite been a first choice. The food on the other hand, when and if it arrives, is mostly decent, and usually enough so as to justify your having gone there in the first place. Tomatillos might be deemed the Mexican restaurant for people who don't actually like Mexican food that much but who like it at least a little more than they do at La Fonda, so I suppose you could say it's La Fonda without the fear of chilli peppers. It has been said that it's hard to get fajitas wrong, and Tomatillos fajitas are accordingly great, but their stuffed peppers are also generally wonderful, if that's any indication. Also, you'll generally hear more Spanish spoken amongst the clientele than at La Fonda, so that's probably another indication. Let's just say that Tomatillos is a great restaurant which occasionally has a bad day and leave it at that.

Blanco Cafe, 1720 Blanco Rd, TX 78212.
When I looked the place up on the internet for the sake of the street address, I discovered there to be two other Blanco cafes in San Antonio and they're both called the Original Blanco Cafe, which seems logistically debatable. Anyway, the Blanco Cafe to which I'm referring here is the only one which is actually on the Blanco Road, has been patronised by at least three generations of my wife's family, and I've never even heard of the other two, wonderful though I'm sure they are. I gather the real Blanco Cafe has a reputation extending far beyond the city limits. My friend and former tutor Dave accordingly made a point of eating there when he and his wife were travelling around the States a few years back, although I'm not sure how he heard about the place. In terms of food, it's approximately in the bright orange diner with a cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero painted on the window category - despite being neither orange nor decorated with anthropomorphic peppers - and yet, as with many such diners, is more or less its own thing with its own distinctive culinary style. No-one else even comes close to Blanco's chicken flautas, which therefore represent their signature dish for me, and which negates any possible grumbling about how they don't bring you the customary chips while you wait. That said, I've never had anything from their menu which wasn't great, and it all tastes unusually fresh, and so much so as to work as an effective restorative if you're feeling a little under the weather.

*: Discovered in the sense of Christopher Colombus discovering America, obviously.

Letters Never Sent IV

 

To recap, as of 21st August, 2014, I adopted the practice of saying exactly what I felt needed to be said when engaging with others through social media, and then not saying it, deleting the words I'd written in the comment box, the email or whatever, having copied them to a notebook document on my word processor. This, I find, has saved a lot of arguments because it gets it out of my system without my having to point out that the person with whom I am attempting communication is full of shit. It also leaves the other party free to continue subscribing to whatever bollocks inspired my response. I've taken great pleasure in composing some of the responses which follow and find many of them entertaining in their own right. You may disagree. Too bad. It's been a quiet week. You'll read it and be thankful.

I didn't like the Tory party when they were shitting directly into my open mouth and then sending me a bill for it, and I don't like the fuckers now.

***

Hooray. The two sappiest things I loathe more than anything else once again combined into a twinkly Kinkade-esque whole by holding a flashlight beneath ones chin whilst listening to a Cure record (and not the good one either, which was Faith, by the way). This could only be improved by the addition of a soundtrack by Murray Gold.

***

Clearly I had my wires crossed, for which I apologise. In the event of my detecting a slightly defensive tone here, I might remind you of occasionally sweeping statements you have yourself made about Americans with guns, with particular emphasis on Texas (as I recall, you told me I was misinformed, despite my actually living here).

***

Yes I know Adolf has a lot of detractors but goddammit will you just look at what that no good Goebbels is doing for a second. The man described drinking bleach as an interesting idea, and I've watched the clip and no, he wasn't joking. He said it because he's a moron and was genuinely impressed at having had a thought, which was still a bad thing last time I looked - not simply a different state of mind. He's not qualified to look after an elementary class let alone a country because he's a moron. He doesn't understand basic stuff. I don't get what extenuating circumstances mean that this doesn't have to be the end of the argument. For what it's worth I don't really trust any of them, but having one who can at least tie his own shoelaces would seem preferable. Please pardon my admittedly indirect response.

***

Poot was the only one I liked, to be honest, and the only one which didn't feel like a Viz cash-in to me, and Jon Marks remains my all-time favourite cartoonist for that sort of thing, above even the Viz kids. If Viz was the Beano then Poot was Buttons. All I can remember of Brain Damage was Everard Headbutt or something like that.

***

I have no problem with the guy, just that one particular book because it's crap, lazy and features emo Time Lord teenagers just like Buffy on the telly, among other boringly obvious things, the sins of which may well have been down to Anghelides for all I know (although if they were, I guess Cole didn't see them as sins); and I probably tend to overreact due to all those years wasted on Gallifrey Base getting into arguments with idiots who can't tell the difference between writing and merely having a particular logo on the cover. Favourite example, in the Who books section a few years ago regarding Señor 105:

I'm curious, but aren't they a bit pulpy?

What the fuck? You mean as distinct from all those Schopenhauer-esque adventures of that mysterious traveller in time and space known only as blah blah blah? This is why I avoid anything describing itself as fandom, and particularly forums.

***

As a resident of Texas, I've been suffering from hero-overload for a while now. Sorry to hear it's happening over there too.

***

Most of the comments relating to the murder of George Floyd I've seen thus far this morning seem to be thoughts and prayers for the guy who owns Target, so I'm shutting up about it from this point on because it's clearly a waste of time. If you're sat there feeling upset about the welfare of millionaires, then there's no reason for us to know each other.

***

Ah yes, the bunch a certain self-important Who twat and professional north described as charming before flapping off to post about writing She Ra fan fiction and making it as gay as possible, apparently so as to teach me a lesson for describing Bronies as a bunch of arseholes due to my being a fully grown man.

***

Also, the logic of I'm now definitely going to vote for Trump because some libtards/snowflakes/lefties called me names on facebook suggests, Maria, that you probably shouldn't be left in care of animals or children, let alone anywhere near a voting booth. Perhaps if you make some effort to achieve cognitive abilities closer to those of an adult, you might find life not only easier but a lot less frustrating and be less inclined to lash out at strangers as you've done here. You're welcome.

***

I respectfully suggest there are many, many reasons why people dislike, even loathe Trump which, to dismiss as hatred or even media brainwashing is 1) somewhat insulting and 2) additionally suggests a fairly basic inability to understand either people as a whole or any findings which conflict with one's worldview.

***

I've never been wild about the north of England, I'm afraid - excepting a few stretches of breathtaking landscape. Every single day I've spent north of Birmingham has been characterised by people telling me how down to earth and friendly they are, over and over, and how much they hate everyone from the south (too fancy, unfriendly etc. etc.). It's the only place I've ever been where people introduce and then immediately volunteer information about themselves like characters in Chigley. My name is PC Scuffer and I like to arrest people and put them in jail.

***

I'm sceptical. Had they ever done so much as bought a Medway hamburger to share between the four of them I'm sure they would have been mentioned on every third page of that book about music in Medway, the one which mentions Tim Webster once and the Libertines about a million times.

***

I must admit I was sceptical of your statements here, Mike, but having looked at your page and seen the flags - the ISIS one in flames and the confederate thing, I realise that you're a man who thinks for himself, who looks beyond the headlines, and who follows no leader but the truth. What food for thought you have provided here today.

 

***

A lot of this seems difficult to predict, but these are as good as guesses as any, I'm sure. One element which I don't know whether you're really seeing over there, is the sheer level of contempt for Trump which seems very much out in the open and widespread in a way which it hasn't been during the last four years. Even Fox News has been giving him funny looks from time to time.

***

For fuck's sake, equating Stalinism with Marx is like equating Hitler with Darwin, even though I appreciate that it's nice because it fits the argument wherein Nazis somehow aren't the bad guys. Where in Das Kapital does Marx propose an upside down hierarchy? (and God how that sounds like something a nine-year old would come out with, see also reverse vampires). The idea is akin to Hitler cackling over how evil he's been. Books and angry nutters ranting on YouTube channels are not the same thing.

***

I know. That's why I'm not an advocate of everyone having guns just because, or even anyone necessarily having guns. You asked a question so I answered in conversational spirit. I didn't realise there would be homework too.

***

Nothing more Texas than being run off the road by a big beautiful pick-up because some yahoo just can't get from A to B without doing it in something that's fifteen foot wide resembling a super-inflated child's toy that should probably have a twenty foot bright green bunny sticking up from the rear to go with those cute fat tyres designed for off-roading but which mostly just take our boy down to the store for another case of fizzy kid's drink beer.

***

While being reluctant to stir anything up, I had a look at his page upon which 1) he's now crowing about having been unfriended, because apparently that means he was right, and 2) he gives his location as King's Lynn, Norfolk, which tells me everything else I need to know about the guy.

***

Someone once submitted my name in the fan art category of the Hugo Awards. I'm not sure I've actually spoken to him since.

Merry Christmas Again

He spent Christmas in rehab, a whole month on doctor's orders. This is because the doctor claimed that he almost died four times during treatment. The treatment began immediately following his having been flown back from Mexico. He went to Mexico for a week, on his own and apparently spent the entire time drinking. Given his recent medical history, it sounded a little like a suicide attempt on some level, going out in a blaze of boozy glory, that sort of thing.

He's not a bad guy but he's obviously an alcoholic. He's younger than me, and yet his eyes are going and he's had two hip replacements. His optic nerves were somehow not long enough and were being stretched to capacity within his skull, requiring expensive and complicated surgery, one at a time with the eyelid sewn shut so as to allow the eyeball to recover. Even without the inherited propensity for alcoholism, you can see why the man might drink.

So he was in rehab until after Christmas and we figured that at least we'll be spared the usual dog and pony show; but no. He's out, he's not drinking, he's attending AA, and he wants to do Christmas this Saturday even though it's January.

Well okay.

It will be just us - the boy and his three parents. I'm the stepfather in this picture.

He looks well, or at least better than last time, given that I don't have much contact with the man. He still seems a lot bigger than has been commemorated by my mental model, formed around ten years ago; but he's actually mobile, walking without crutches, and his face has returned to ordinary human complexion. Last time we met, he looked about ten years my senior but I guess rehab has done him some good. Nevertheless, his head seems big and round, almost like a puffer fish, and with that downturned mouth I can't help imagining fins sprouting from just below his ears and his head swimming away, glub-glub-glubbing up towards the ceiling like something from a nightmarish version of Finding Nemo.

Being heir to a fortune, he's never wanted for helpers and hangers on, and this once omnipresent entourage seem at least partially responsible for his drink problem. He's a social guy, an entertainer, kind of an arsehole but one that's very, very difficult to dislike no matter what he does because at the heart of it, he really does have the best of intentions. This is why he's big on Christmas and why we're having this belated version, because even before rehab he had a closet full of stuff he'd bought for people, for more or less anyone he ever said hello to; and the problem is that he wasn't around to wrap any of it so the wrapping was delegated to one of the entourage. She wrapped everything in the closet, including things he'd bought for himself but never got around to taking out of the box, things for the kitchen and so on; and with no clue as to who any of the legitimate presents had been intended for. We have a tree with a pile of boxes in wrapping paper at the base. He knows some of them by shape, but mostly it's a mystery. We're just going to have to open them all.

He really doesn't need to buy me anything - not least because I'm the guy who nicked his wife, for fuck's sake - but he always does, and it's usually something English because I'm from England. This year it's teabags - a gift set of artisan teabags, Earl Grey and all the usual suspects.

'You still drink tea, don't you?' he asks, concerned.

'Yes,' I smile broadly like Ralphie in A Christmas Story - probably twice a year but never mind.

He always buys my wife hot sauce and novelty corn holders. The novelty corn holders are in sets of eight - plastic things you stick on the ends of a corn cob while eating so as to circumnavigate the misery of greasy fingers. We have a garage full of the fucking things because, as with tea, we probably eat corn from the cob maybe twice a year. The hot sauce is usually of the kind consumed by idiots on YouTube who treat it as a competition. It's the kind of thing with which one might spice one's fajita if you have tattoos and don't really give a shit about flavour. I remember once trying a few drops from a bottle of something called Total Insanity and it rendered my taco fully inedible. It may as well have been bleach.

He always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce for a joke, the joke being that he always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce; but not this year.

We open books about animals and marine life - which turn out to be for the kid - no less than four life jackets, and a variety of blenders and kitchen utensils, none of which had actually been purchased as Christmas gifts. It has been a thoroughly bewildering morning, and less than a week later I can't remember what anyone got, aside from the teabags and books; but it was still better than the scheduled version, with neither hot sauce nor corn holders anywhere to be seen.

Frankly, we're all just glad that he's alive.

The Walk

A couple of years ago my wife and I went to a talk given by Danny Trejo. Amongst that which he shared with us was a piece of advice - if you have children, make the effort to peel the tablets, laptops and smartphones from their faces and go walking with them, just once a week. Make it a regular thing, a local park or out in the country or wherever so they will at least have something to look back on which didn't require an internet connection, now that the family evening meal is apparently a thing of the past.

It seemed like good advice. We tried it once or twice and then fell out of the habit, which was a shame because it had been fun.

We're now almost a year into the pandemic, which hasn't made a lot of difference to me, but working from home has made a big difference to my wife - specifically that she's not keen on it; and a huge difference to my stepson who, to put it diplomatically, is now a different shape to what he was this time last year due to his schooling having occured under the exact same conditions as everything else he does, and almost everything else he does is game related, punctuated with two or three daily trips to the kitchen for hot dogs, noodles or diet soda. Therefore, during one of my infrequent - or what I hope are infrequent - non-specific meltdowns brought on by the general crapness of whatever was bothering me that month - my customary and another thing coda focused on Junior, specifically on his recent Cyril Smithification, as I believe is the recognised medical term. I don't care what the weather is like, I probably fumed, every fucking Sunday like we said we'd do whether we feel like it or not, and no exceptions to the rule. This ends here.

I didn't actually say this ends here because it's something generic action heroes in shit films tend to say when their dialogue is written by someone with no actual talent, but had I done so, this would have referred to the kid's lack of exercise; and the maddening fact that he's clearly well aware of needing more exercise, or at least some exercise, or at least that his Cyril Smithification can hardly be viewed as a positive development, and yet he does nothing about it of his own volition; although to be fair that's probably because he's a kid and that's how they work. Anyway, the point is that it was clearly down to us to get things moving.

Our first few outings were to Salado Creek, and the very first one was to the wild stretch between Nacogdoches and Wetmore. The boy was taking part in some birdwatching exercise organised online by the local zoo, at which he volunteered back before the pandemic. Kids all over the city would be spending the day outside, then checking back with lists of all the birds they'd spotted, and our boy is particularly fond of lists and nature, so any chance to combine the two and he's first in the queue. We stopped off at Walmart to buy wellington boots so as to reduce the possibility of being killed by poisonous snakes while crashing around in the wilderness, then headed off for Ladybird Johnson trailhead. From there we walked the length of Morningstar Boardwalk - which is about a mile - then went off road, so to speak. Being a creek, the land is prone to intermittent flooding punctuated by spells sufficiently dry as to allow for everything to turn into meadows and woodland, albeit meadows and woodland of a wild and uneven composition. We spent about thirty minutes making slow progress through the long grass, doing our best to avoid potholes while spotting birds, by which point the kid said he was exhausted, with some justification, and so we came home.

More recently, now that it's become a regular feature of our Sunday afternoon, we've stuck to the boardwalk, adding a couple of hundred yards each time before we turn back, so we're nearly at Wetmore where the trail dips under both the highway and the railroad. I can write railroad without it being an affectation because I live in America. The boy has theorised that we'll eventually make it to the Canadian border before we turn back, although hopefully he'll have moved out by that point, even if only to a retirement home.

After a couple of trips to the boardwalk, working up to a distance of about three miles, we switched to the land bridge at Phil Hardberger Park, mainly because they'd just finished building the thing and we wanted to see what it was like. It's essentially a field built across the top of a highway so as to allow deer and other critters to cross from one bit of park to another. Unfortunately, half of San Antonio had the same idea so it felt a bit like a cinematic exodus of some description, as though we were all going to see where the saucer had landed. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park, some years before, was distinguished by our progress being momentarily halted by a massive snake crossing the path. It was about ten foot long, or something in the vicinity, and was taking its time. My wife still swears that it looked thoroughly inconvenienced by us, and I provisionally gave the snake the name of Snakey, for the sake of argument. Our first expedition to Phil Hardberger Park is therefore remembered as the time we met Snakey the snake, so this latest occasion was a bit underwhelming.

Last weekend we switched to Holbrook Road, which actual runs parallel to Salado Creek for a couple of miles. We parked by the Thai place on Rittiman, then walked down the feed road to Holbrook, mainly so we could look at the goats in the adjacent field. The male may be the biggest goat I've ever seen, and they were hanging out with a donkey on this occasion. Naturally this inspired the kid to one of his monologues - fun facts relating to goats, each one interspersed with a pause then let me see, what else is there? Most of it is stuff my wife and I already know on account of the fact that we both went to school, but occasionally he'll throw up something we hadn't heard before; plus it's nice that he's actually interested in something.

We pass the Black Swan Inn. 'Can you guess what happened there?' my wife asks.

I assume she's referring to the battle of Salado Creek which is commemorated and described by a stone memorial just on the other side of the inn's driveway, but I say nothing.

The kid doesn't know.

'That's where your dad and I got married.'

She means her first husband, obviously. I've seen the photos of the wedding, which occurred even before I owned a passport, let alone had any idea that I would end up living in Texas.

The kid mentions something about how swans are able to break a human arm.

'Here come the swan facts,' I say, but no-one hears me.

The boy tells us about swans for the next fifteen minutes. I don't really mind because the dispensation of information is what he enjoys most, even when we already knew what he's just told us; and I know he's begun to look forward to these Sunday outings, just as Danny Trejo promised; and because we know that one day we'll all be glad we did this, because we're glad that we're doing it right now.