So, where were you last week MishegasMaster was the most frequently asked question when nobody saw I had posted a blog in now what’s been close to nine days…well, I guess I didn’t bother to tell anyone, but the bottom dropped out from under me and I got sick as in food poisoning and an old friend came to visit me from New York City and it sort of went like that.These things do happen I told myself, but you know I am never supposed to believe it until it actually does and of course you never think it will happen to you until it actually does and sure enough it did.
A week ago Friday evening, I went out to hear my good friend Joe read a selection from the book “My Year Of Meats” by Ruth Ozeki, along with selected readings by other writers from Upton Sinclair’s classic book “The Jungle,” as part of a 100-year anniversary celebrating the book’s publication held at The Book Cellar in Chicago.
It was well-attended, a packed café to say the least and I did meet a few of Joe’s old friends from his New York college days, as well as got to see a few old friends of mine, including the man who organized the event, Lew Rosenbaum.
During the drive up to the reading or maybe it was afterwards, or maybe it was in between all of that, Joe’s girlfriend DiDi and I were casually chatting about where we going to go out for a bite to eat afterwards and I told her about this great restaurant called Garcia’s, a good cheap Mexican restaurant that stays open well past 1 am and makes damn good steak burritos to boot!
Sometime during the reading, DiDi passed me a message stating that if I was wrong about Garcia’s not being open past 1 a.m., she was going to bite me.
I welcomed the idea, more so to think how fun it would be to have someone bite me just because they were hungry…you know, a personal fantasy of mine is to live out that old joke that dates back to vaudevillian days, “a man walks up to another man and says, “I haven’t had a bite in three days.” So what does the other man do? He bites him!”
On the note I passed back to her, I reassured her that Garcia’s would not close past 1am. After the reading, we all decided to go out to eat, but not to Garcia’s. It was another Mexican restaurant not far from Garcia’s but the name escapes me for the moment. And for that spare moment, that place should consider themselves damned lucky!
It wasn’t that far a walk to the other location on Western Avenue, a slight half block south of Wilson Avenue. It looked clean, almost too clean and too new of a restaurant to even be considered a restaurant; maybe it was it a storefront for an illegal immigrant’s poker party, but then again, it probably was the real McCoy.
The food was good; almost too good. I had a steak burrito and some of the fresh guacamole. I don’t remember much more of the night other than Joe and his college friends were talking about sports, in particular baseball and basketball. Kind of felt like I was the odd man out, but it does happen on occasion.
It wasn’t more than 24 hours later when I began feeling sick to my stomach and chills; and I mean really sick and I mean really chilly. I couldn’t keep anything up or down within my throat or intestines. I sort of felt like shit; but that’s putting it mildly.
Every few hours it was trips to the bathroom; retching or clutching my stomach as nothing but colorless residue shot or flew from out of me on either crevice.
I’d never felt so fucking sick in all of my life, save for the stomach flu or a year ago when I lost my voice and couldn’t talk. I felt terrible. And then I went to work the next day…but of course,
I never slept the night before, as I had to drive out to the local Walgreen’s drug store and pick up a 24-count box of terrible-tasting mint chewable Imodium advanced formula tablets in order to quell the and conquer the poisoning.
Food poisoning; oh I’ve had bad chicken before and raw chicken and bad meat and moldy cheese and expired bread and sour milk and all sorts of other things before, but nothing ever like this from a restaurant.
Things settled down after a day or so, but it kept me from doing something that I mostly desired and that is write; I was too tired to write, let alone struggle without having to think how or when or were or what I was going to write about.
Sure I took mental and physical notes just as I do each and everyday, but this threw me for a loop and I just didn’t have any sort of strength to write.
About all I wanted to do was sleep. And that’s about all I did. And eventually the bad poison was flushed out of my system, but it fucked me up, because I couldn’t drink my tea I normally drank and instead all I could have was water and I didn’t eat for the next few days.
All I could think about eating was stuff that would bind me up inside; stuff like rice or noodles I couldn’t eat my one passion and that being of course, dead and lifeless flesh.
So, damn it all to hell and full speed ahead; I felt better in the days that followed and up until a few days ago, I was back to my regular eating habits. I can and will go back to eating Mexican food, just not the place I went to and be damned if I ever step foot in there again.
Ironically the night of the reading ran around the theme of meat, how good it was and the working conditions that surrounded it and what happens?
I get sick from someone who evidently cannot cook for squat and I paid for it by shitting my ass out and vomiting my guts up.
There are not enough stories written about restaurants that choose to cook and serve food in crappy conditions, i.e., not wear hair nets, gloves, proper clothing, roach and mouse infestations, dirty kitchens, not washing their hands frequently when returning from the toilet, etc., etc.
The only time the broadcast press seems to report these stories is during May/November sweeps when ratings mean everything and exploitation is $$$$ to the selected broadcast station itself.
On a related note, how is it in college towns that college newspapers almost never run stories about bad restaurant conditions? Well, that’s an easy answer; do that and the advertising revenue dries up almost immediately.
Being bad is good. It sells well. It gets a reputation and it stays put…like forever.
And with expectations like that, how can anyone say no?
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