I remember my Jefita hunched over a table with her rolling pin making tortillas for my Pops and us kids on a wood-burning stove back in the days of my youth in the Simons Brickyard. She kept making tortillas for many years after we had moved to Pico, but now on a gas-burning stove, hey! We had moved up in the world!! So then, one day, she went to the local market and saw some machine-made tortillas.
Pops sat down for dinner; a basket with warm tortillas was on the table waiting for him. But o Pops surprise, they were not mom's tortillas "hey, what is this? These tortillas are not your homemade tortillas," my Pops asked mom "I bought these tortillas at the market, and from now on if you want tortillas; this is what you're getting," mom told Pops. Pops kept getting the store-bought tortillas for the rest of his life; he was not a happy camper, to say the least!... Soon after mom stopped making him tortillas, he asked Connie, "Connie, do you still make tortillas for kiki every day?" Connie told him that, yes, she was still making tortillas every day after getting home from work. "Connie, you don't need to do that anymore; just buy him tortillas from the store" "good idea," said Connie. So now I am lucky to get homemade tortillas once every six months.
One day I told pops, "pops, you ruined a good thing for me when you told Connie to buy the tortillas instead of making them" he put his arm around my shoulders, and with a twinkle in his eyes, he said to me, "well Mijo, if I can't have homemade tortillas, neither can you" Ay pops!! How I loved that man!!
No comments:
Post a Comment