TexMex Americano Sandlapper

Here's another submission I wrote for that El Paso Times writer search in April:

Mutts?

Like many of you raised here in El Paso, I was born of different ethnicities. My mother, a typist in the Steno pool at Biggs, my father, an Air Force clerk who saw her and was at once smitten. He was a handsome gavacho hayseed, with no power to resist the sultry beauty of her mysterious, dark Spanish eyes. Okay, maybe it was her Latin thighs that captured his imagination, but I’ll not venture further speculation there. My point, if there is one, is that I’m a half-breed. You ‘member, Cher sang a little bit about it back in 1973. It was a song I could embrace.

I was raised on Lucha Libre and HeeHaw. My parents came from less-fortunate families who struggled to make ends meet. Poor Southerners and poor Mexicans--Mexican Hillbilly, one in the same? Pintos or black-eyed peas, cornbread or tortillas de masa, hominy grits or posole, green beans slow-cooked with a hunk of fatback and pintos refritos cooked up in lard. I’ve eaten fried green tomatoes, tripitas, collards and bunuelos all in the same day.



I love drinking a glass of buttermilk while trying to replicate Grandma Nell’s biscuits. Her gentle mixing and patting, then buttering each one immediately after baking to allow the tiny delicacies an extra succulent burst of flavor. Grandma Tommy made my favorite tortillas de masa when I would visit. Lovingly buttering each one as it came off the comal, serving me one after the other, until I could eat no more. Migas y frijoles for breakfast one day, and buttermilk biscuits with sausage pan-gravy the next. I learned that buttered grits alongside huevos con chorizo is a filling treat, seriously! Mama would drop pig knuckles into the menudo. Daddy was partial to pickled pigs feet. Yuck to both of them, but I witnessed my older brother eating them with greasy abandon.

My favorite story of theirs: she never forgave him for not getting her home from picnicking at McKelligon Canyon in time to see the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan show. Or was it Elvis? My pet peeve: those forms asking about our ethnicity. I always claim “other”, because I cannot be forced to choose one heritage over the other. I can see the look of consternation on those government official’s faces, as they wonder if I’m Scandinavian/Inuit or Mexican/Italian. Other, no clarification, that’s me.

Old-school etymology would have nobody speaking these derogatory words: Half-Breed, Mezclado, Mestizo. This nation has been renowned for it’s very nature of the “melting pot” and a large majority of us have blurred the lines of heritage as our forebears hooked up and spawned such awesome creatures. Derogatory? I beg to differ. Irreverent? Well, yes, I have been told that I speak my mind with a little too much recklessness, but I find myself in the company of our esteemed President on this matter of race, and I aim to chocolate-milk that for all it is worth. I rejoice in it.

Mixteados unite!