Cheese dick!

11.3.2014

It was the summer of 1990 that I became enamored of food trucks.  I was driving a forklift at a plastic laminate warehouse for a summer job my dad set me up with.  The fellas I worked with were salt-of-the-earth Chicago boys.  Beer guts, foul language, Bears T-shirts and moustaches.  I was the college boy with a summer job and this was these guys' careers.  I knew it and made sure they knew I respected them.  I knew they respected me when I shot down a huge moth with a pneumatic staple gun at 25 feet.

The food truck (they called it the Roach Coach or the Crud Truck - I called it the Twinkie Barge) came to the warehouse at 9:35 for lunch.  Our shift started at 4:45, so that was about right for lunch.  The food truck was typical of that era:  Hostess products, Cokes, shitty coffee, shitty premade coldcut and tuna sandys, chips, chips and chips. This one was the smaller type which was a pickup with a special camper-like deal with ice-filled panels that opened on both sides of the rig.  You know the kind.

I encountered a food truck the other day while at the garage getting my Jeep serviced.  This truck wasn't one with a cute name and a $14 eggroll.  It was the truck that filled the gap between the sandwichs and Twinkies on ice mentioned above and the "Me So Hungry" Asian food truck and the "Fist of Flour" pizza wagon and the no-nonsense "Philly Cheesesteak Truck."  This truck was the Mexican Food Truck.  They would certainly have the breakfast burrito I didn't know I needed.

They did!  It was in the very small "American Food" section.  I wondered why, for a second, and in hindsight, should have wondered longer.  I ordered the breakfast burrito and got it in a bag, "to go."  Ha.

When I got it home (I walked home from the garage - hey!  I ain't from LA!), I dug in.  Eggs, yep.  Beans, yum.  Onion, nice.  Meat ...   uh ... Meat ... what was that mystery meat?  I ate a little more until I found another chunk of meat.  It was about an inch long, curved and had a cut side and what looked like a skin of some kind--  Oh duh!  It's "hot dog."

Yes, it was an All American Breakfast Burrito with sliced hot dog.  Yum yum.  I mean Yuck yuck.  I like a good hot dog, but not with egg and bean in a burrito.  I chucked it and didn't feel at all bad about wasting money, because this was from a normal food truck.  It cost $3.50.

Tonight - Persian Aub Zam Zam


bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!