Chapter 29 - Tacos

According to Boy: Certainly this is another topic that Evie came up with—I like tacos, but I do not much have much of an emotional attachment to them. Notwithstanding that fact, here goes.

Some things about tacos I am pretty sure of, others not so much. For one thing, I do not remember ever having bought one at a restaurant in New York during the years we lived there. I do, however, recall helping Evie make tacos. The hard shells were available at some stores, but there was a real dearth of Mexican restaurants in the Village at that time. In fact, I am sure we never went to a Mexican restaurant in New York during those years. We went to Italian restaurants fairly often, and to French and Asian, but I do not recall there even being a Mexican restaurant accessible to us. I have read that there was one just a block off Washington Square in the late 1960s, but I never noticed it.

I believe we might have had tacos in Michigan, prior to or during our New York era, and that we started making them occasionally.

I do remember that there was little available at the stores, aside from the shells. Eventually the pre-packaged "taco kits" hit the shelves, but early on all we could buy were the shells, hot sauce, cheese, ground beef, and vegetables (tomatoes and lettuce).

Enchiladas and tortillas are another story—we tried what we could buy in the stores in the 1960s, and we both hated them. Neither of us even heard of burritos until the mid 1970s.

I think one of the reasons why we developed such a taste for tacos during our early years was that they were relatively easy to make, and they went down so well with a cold drink.