When my family and I owned our restaurant, we had a staff that became a beautiful extended family.
Lunchtime. Dad at the stove, me in "the front of the house" and Wilson at the sink.
I need to state emphatically........I love Central American people. Guatemalans in particular. They are a kind, peace loving, race. Hard working, honest, loyal and true.
Which is why I can't for the life of me understand why so many Guatemalan dishwasher's parents seemed to name the males after American presidents. OBSCURE American presidents.
We had Wilson, Nixon (not obscure, but really weird, no?), Harrison, and Cleveland. Sixteen years of business, and I learned more about American leaders, by the guys we had at the sink, than I ever did in school. Cleveland. REALLY? I thought he was a baseball player.
And mind you, these were mountain people. No televisions. No public libraries. Just tiny poor villages with healers that literally rubbed dirt on wounds when someone took a tumble. Wilson, by the way, was the hero of his "willage" because he killed the giant snake that ate two babies in the night. Seriously.
The guys from Guatemala City, who were better educated, actually worked the line with Mom, Dad and my Sissy. They read, they learned English, they tried new recipes. They were Sergio, Ceasar, Roberto, Jorge.
But the presidents? They washed dishes like lathered up tornadoes.
So I lay here asking myself. Is there some connection, some true, gleaming answer, in this vast sprawling universe, regarding the American President named Guatemalan mountain man, excellent, committed, dishwasher moniker, trend? I'm ready to accept any theories.
See this is why I suck at this blogging shit. What in God's name does the above post add to the world as we know it. Fuck if I know.
