by Flack » Tue Jul 19, 2011 8:18 pm
I moved in with Susan (now my wife) in the fall of 1993, ostensibly as "roommates" at first (haw haw, joke's on me). Her dad passed away shortly before that, so by the time she and I moved in together her mother-in-law (MIL) was already sitting on a life insurance payment of half a million dollars. Susan had been given a debit card to use "in case of emergencies", and when you're poor and broke college students it's amazing how many "emergencies" you can have. ("We need some pizza. It's an emergency!")
We only got busted once. Despite having access to a swimming pool full of cash, the account had an ATM withdrawal limit of $200/day. Susan's mom never checked the balance, but one time she tried to withdrawal money and couldn't because we had already siphoned out $200 that day. We apologized profusely, and after that we made a new nightly ritual of going up to 7-11 and taking out money at 11:55pm, so as not to get caught.
Unsurprisingly by the spring of 1994 the two of us were doing horribly in college. We were each working 40 hours a week at shitty jobs (to this day, the smell of Long John Silver's makes me queasy), and, as it turns out, we both liked drinking booze and partying a lot more than we liked going to class. So, and this is true, after (literally) flipping a coin, we decided to quit our jobs, drop out of school, make off with the debit card, and go on a road trip ... Hollywood style.
With the debit card, a road map (no GPS back then) and the sunroof open on Susan's Saturn SC2, we hit I-40 and started driving west. I think we were only gone a week, but it seems longer than that. We went to the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Meteor Crater ... a lot of the same places we just visited on our recent family vacation, in fact. We didn't really have any destinations in mind. At one point we called my mom to check in and told her we were in Phoenix. She recommended we go visit my Great Aunt Eva. I didn't know I had a Great Aunt Eva, but we looked her up and visited her and stayed with her a couple of nights.
A few days later (it was early April), Susan and I rolled out of bed in this horrible hotel. God, I have to describe this hotel. It was shaped like a castle and painted pink. It looked like an oversize obstacle at a mini-golf course. The balcony and upstairs sidewalk were so neglected that the concrete was falling off and you could see the internal metal structure. It was the first room I ever stayed in where you could actually hear the roaches scurrying around. Hungover, we rolled out of bed around 10:30am or so and decided to go eat breaklunch. We checked out of the hotel and found this Mexican place called Little Anita's, so we went there.
The two of us are standing around in the lobby of this restaurant waiting to be seated and I saw the headline on the newspaper and it said that Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. I remember getting really sick over the whole deal, but then again maybe that was just the tequila. Eventually we get seated and I'm kind of bummed/drunk and we order some food and the waitress is like, "did you want the green chile or the red chile?" And nobody had ever asked me that in life before, so I just said, "uh," and the waitress said, "why don't you try the green chile?"
So I did, and it was wonderful. Like, really, really good. I remember thinking I had never had anything that a Tecate really complimented before. Man, was that a good meal.
The meal was so good, in fact, that I've been talking about it for almost 20 years. Every time someone mentions Albuquerque I chime in with, "Maaaaaaan, there's this place called Little Anita's," and I tell that story. There's also a second story about that meal where ... well, I'll tell it later because it's not about green chile and I don't want to ruin the moment. But yeah, I've been talking about that single plate of food for 17 years now.
Two or three months ago when we took our "out west" vacation, we stopped in Albuquerque. And when we got off the Interstate I was like, "No, it can't be," but there it was: Little Anita's. We had actually just left the museum and were hitting the road and when we saw it I swerved across two lanes of traffic and announced, "we are eating dinner here, now." Who cares if it was only 4pm. Green chile waits for no man.
Turns out, in 17 years, the services has gone done at Little Anita's. I asked my friends about it and they confirmed that it doesn't have a great reputation for their service any more. But ... oooooooooh, Jesus ... I got to order the green chile tamales, and ... OH ... they were as good as I had remembered.
I should also mention that, as a gift, one of my friends gave us a loaf of green chile bread. The next morning at the hotel Mason brought the loaf with us to the hotel breakfast and we took turns stealing butter packets off the breakfast bar and eating chunks of green chile bread with our instant oatmeal and Frosted Flakes from the dispenser.
So there you go. I've had green chile 3 times in my life. All three times were in Albuquerque; twice in 2011, and once in 1994.
I moved in with Susan (now my wife) in the fall of 1993, ostensibly as "roommates" at first (haw haw, joke's on me). Her dad passed away shortly before that, so by the time she and I moved in together her mother-in-law (MIL) was already sitting on a life insurance payment of half a million dollars. Susan had been given a debit card to use "in case of emergencies", and when you're poor and broke college students it's amazing how many "emergencies" you can have. ("We need some pizza. [i]It's an emergency![/i]")
We only got busted once. Despite having access to a swimming pool full of cash, the account had an ATM withdrawal limit of $200/day. Susan's mom never checked the balance, but one time she tried to withdrawal money and couldn't because we had already siphoned out $200 that day. We apologized profusely, and after that we made a new nightly ritual of going up to 7-11 and taking out money at 11:55pm, so as not to get caught.
Unsurprisingly by the spring of 1994 the two of us were doing horribly in college. We were each working 40 hours a week at shitty jobs (to this day, the smell of Long John Silver's makes me queasy), and, as it turns out, we both liked drinking booze and partying a lot more than we liked going to class. So, and this is true, after (literally) flipping a coin, we decided to quit our jobs, drop out of school, make off with the debit card, and go on a road trip ... Hollywood style.
With the debit card, a road map (no GPS back then) and the sunroof open on Susan's Saturn SC2, we hit I-40 and started driving west. I think we were only gone a week, but it seems longer than that. We went to the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Meteor Crater ... a lot of the same places we just visited on our recent family vacation, in fact. We didn't really have any destinations in mind. At one point we called my mom to check in and told her we were in Phoenix. She recommended we go visit my Great Aunt Eva. I didn't know I had a Great Aunt Eva, but we looked her up and visited her and stayed with her a couple of nights.
A few days later (it was early April), Susan and I rolled out of bed in this horrible hotel. God, I have to describe this hotel. It was shaped like a castle and painted pink. It looked like an oversize obstacle at a mini-golf course. The balcony and upstairs sidewalk were so neglected that the concrete was falling off and you could see the internal metal structure. It was the first room I ever stayed in where you could actually hear the roaches scurrying around. Hungover, we rolled out of bed around 10:30am or so and decided to go eat breaklunch. We checked out of the hotel and found this Mexican place called Little Anita's, so we went there.
The two of us are standing around in the lobby of this restaurant waiting to be seated and I saw the headline on the newspaper and it said that Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. I remember getting really sick over the whole deal, but then again maybe that was just the tequila. Eventually we get seated and I'm kind of bummed/drunk and we order some food and the waitress is like, "did you want the green chile or the red chile?" And nobody had ever asked me that in life before, so I just said, "uh," and the waitress said, "why don't you try the green chile?"
So I did, and it was wonderful. Like, really, really good. I remember thinking I had never had anything that a Tecate really complimented before. Man, was that a good meal.
The meal was so good, in fact, that I've been talking about it for almost 20 years. Every time someone mentions Albuquerque I chime in with, "Maaaaaaan, there's this place called Little Anita's," and I tell that story. There's also a second story about that meal where ... well, I'll tell it later because it's not about green chile and I don't want to ruin the moment. But yeah, I've been talking about that single plate of food for 17 years now.
Two or three months ago when we took our "out west" vacation, we stopped in Albuquerque. And when we got off the Interstate I was like, "No, it can't be," but there it was: Little Anita's. We had actually just left the museum and were hitting the road and when we saw it I swerved across two lanes of traffic and announced, "we are eating dinner here, now." Who cares if it was only 4pm. Green chile waits for no man.
Turns out, in 17 years, the services has gone done at Little Anita's. I asked my friends about it and they confirmed that it doesn't have a great reputation for their service any more. But ... oooooooooh, Jesus ... I got to order the green chile tamales, and ... OH ... they were as good as I had remembered.
I should also mention that, as a gift, one of my friends gave us a loaf of green chile bread. The next morning at the hotel Mason brought the loaf with us to the hotel breakfast and we took turns stealing butter packets off the breakfast bar and eating chunks of green chile bread with our instant oatmeal and Frosted Flakes from the dispenser.
So there you go. I've had green chile 3 times in my life. All three times were in Albuquerque; twice in 2011, and once in 1994.