A trip down memory lane

Yesterday we celebrated grandson Jack's second birthday at the Love Field Museum of Flight, but that's another post. This one centers on what happened afterward.

Needing to discuss Thanksgiving plans, we adjourned to a nearby Mexican restaurant, Cantina Laredo in Inwood Village. As my son was telling me the location, my mind was skittering back to my childhood and teen years. I knew the place, but by another name. I'd practically grown up there when it was an El Chico's, as my dad had had business in Dallas nearly every weeknight. It was cheaper to feed the family--and far more efficient as far as he was concerned--to go to Dallas and pick up the parts he needed for the next day's repairs than to wait for them to arrive via the bus or mail. My mother liked El Chico's.

We made friends with the other regular customers and had our favorite waitress. We even attended her wedding mass. I think she later divorced.

I was interested to see if any of the old was left to the place. I remembered it as being very very pink. And huge. There was an upstairs where we rarely ate as it would have been reserved for parties. There were two paintings, very large, on opposite side walls. One was of a beautiful young Mexican woman reclining in a garden and the other of an Aztec sacrifice, complete with stone altar and young maiden. What would remain?

Not the pink. No telling how long that had been gone. The ceiling was lowered, there was a bar down one side, where there had been booths (pink), and the place had shrunk. Hmmm. But the paintings were still there and they too seem smaller, but still too large for any wall in my home. The place wasn't as brightly lit either as I remember it. The ambiance was just different. The food was very good and the service great.

As far as that goes, there wasn't the $1.99 plate of enchiladas, either.

The times, they do change.