Food's a fine place to study Latino culture
says rural Alabama butcher
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Bill Asberry is a native of LA - Lower Alabama.
Hugo Arriola came from Michoacan, 24 hours south of here if you drive straight through, he said. They work together in the meat market at Rehkopf's Super Mercado.
Back in Lower Alabama, Bill remembers going to work at 15, starting out boning and grinding beef in Monroeville.
With the exception of a few years in school in Texas, Hugo can't remember when he didn't work.
"My grandfather's belief is that if you're old enough to walk, you're old enough to work," he said. Back in Mexico, his father was a tailor. Each day, with his mother and brothers, he remembers getting up and walking to his grandfather's ranch to tend cattle and chickens, to work in fields of corn and sugar cane - five miles to the ranch in the morning, five miles home at the end of the day. Home was a mud brick house in town. Light came from kerosene lanterns. His mother cooked on a wood burning stove.
He can't remember when his father first left for Texas, only that he came back periodically. Each time he returned to Texas, he would take another of his relatives.
That was Hugo's life until his seventh year, the year his father came for him, his mother, two more brothers and two uncles. They rode north a day and a night before beginning a trek across the desert.
"It was three days, and we walked only at night," Hugo remembers. Deep in the dark of the third night, they came to the river, hiding there, waiting for a pre-arranged signal. By the light of moon and stars, he remembers seeing people moving in the shadowy world across the river.
"Eventually, we saw the beam of a flashlight," he said. "That was the signal to cross."
They slept the next day. That night, the adults got into a car - Hugo and the two other children were loaded into the trunk.
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His grandfather had told him that he could have a better life in Texas. Hugo remembers fear, the sound of cars on the highway, the dark seclusion of the places they stopped to rest along the road.
Each day, until he left to resume his life as a tailor in Mexico, his father worked two shifts at a feed mill. He was a stern man without humor. Life was work and work was life.
Hugo struggled in school. None of his earliest teachers spoke Spanish. He spoke no English. Parents separating isn't unheard of, but it's an unusual thing in his culture.
When his father left, his mother moved the family to Mt. Pleasant where she found swing shift work at the poultry plant. By the time he was 9, Hugo was street savvy.
"I found out that the police couldn't really do anything to me because I was so young," he said. "I took advantage of that." At 15 he was kicked out of school. He was, by then, regularly hauled into court for one petty offense or another.
A judge's sober warning caused him to take stock of his life.
"He said if he saw me again, I'd be tried as an adult," Hugo said.
Oscar Strickland, former owner of the Super Mercado, gave him the chance to change.
"He gave me a job," Hugo said, "sacking groceries."
Hugo, said Bill, his associate from Lower Alabama, is a world class cook. Bill began incorporating new dishes into his home menu two years ago, when he went to work at the Super Mercado.
"These guys don't cook like us,"he said. "I can't speak for the rest of the world, but any country boy from LA is smart enough to know good food when he eats it."
Hugo Arriola's Carne de Puerco en Salsa Verde Four cups rice
2 lbs cubed pork steak
1 lb tomatillos
fresh jalapenos to taste
salt to taste
garlic to taste
Prepare rice, set aside. Boil pork until tender, set aside. Stem and seed peppers, peel husk from tomatillos. Boil with salt and garlic until soft. Puree in blender to create sauce served over pork and rice. Serves four.
Like Bill, food appeals to me as a good place to start exploring another culture and lately, I've noticed a lot of Latinos in my native Geezerplex, and I've adopted the term Latino. It's accurate. For example, Rehkopf's stocks for people from Central and South American countries as well as Mexicans.
"The yucca root," said produce manager Jose Gallardo. "This is for people from San Salvadore."
Another name for the store could be Rehkopf's Natural Foods. Want some goats milk? They have whole milk - it separates in the bottle, cream floating on top.
It could be Rehkopf's Natural Pharmacy.
Jose stocks salvia leaves - cut the 2-foot stalk into segments for topical treatment of cuts and bites.
Like Hugo, lots of the store customers hail from agrarian cultures where medical attention is based on folk lore.
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"I'll show you," said store manager Juan Cruz, leading the way to a 30-foot long rack of herbs. He started down the row - packets of 99-cent "tea leaves" to address anything from high blood pressure to impotence. Just a few of the names: Hierba de la Vivora, herb of the snake. There's Tilo Estrella, Tilo Star for those who can't sleep. Palo Azul looks like wood chunks because it is - blue stick, just the stuff for diabetes. Gordolobo, mullein leaves, relieve coughing and all of us could use a tart glass of Pasiflora - passion flower. In spite of the translation, they say it helps you calm down.
Does it work? The store manager smiles and shrugs.
"I see a lot of old people - people I'd guess to be 80 or more - shop here for those things," Juan said.
Juan was 8 when his family came to the states. They went to Idaho, then came to Texas. He went to school in Linden. Built like a Greek statue - he's a weight lifter - at 24 he's the store manager. Poised, polite, confident, genuine, easy to talk to, easy man to toss big questions to. I asked what strikes him as the biggest difference in our cultures. His answer was instant.
"In school, all the kids were in such a hurry to graduate and leave home - I still don't get it," he said. "It's a privilege to live with your parents." Standing beside him, Hugo nodded. "Parents want only the best for their children. You don't talk back to them - you listen and learn."
You could learn to make Epazote.
Jose Gallardo's Grandmother's Epazote
(You're going to have to wing it on quantities here.) Boil small shrimp (or substitute diced fish or octopus) until done. Soak in freshly squeezed key lime juice. Combine with finely-diced tomatoes, onions, avocado and a bit of ketchup. Let it stand at least until chilled in the refrigerator. Serve on saltine crackers.
Rehkopf's is a family-owned, Texarkana-based chain -- nine operating stores in Texas and Arkansas and a tenth under construction. Ron Rehkopf's experience goes back to growing up in a family store.
"As far as merchandising, our Mt. Pleasant store is different," he said. "We came in two years ago because we believed there was an under-served market and so an opportunity. But Mt. Pleasant is like all of our stores in that our mission is being neighborhood grocers."
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The store's location goes back nearly 50 years. In the 1960's it was Piggly Wiggly, the flagship grocer who battled our old A & P and saw Winn Dixie and Safeway come and go before gradually losing stature to Super 1 and Wal Mart. In the mid 90's, Pittsburg's Oscar Strickland made the location is second store catering to the Latino population before selling out to Rehkopf's.
At 47, the Alabama butcher is the store's elder statesman. He's learned things. He would no longer dare make tacos with greasy ground beef. He uses shredded beef or pork and makes more marinades.
He picks cheeses now like a man making wine selections.
While Bill's budding tastes for new dishes are an exotic adventure, for store customers, some traditional staples are on hand to take them back to the comfort of home cooking.
Nopalito cactus leaves are among some 200 produce selections on store inventory lists. They never have all 200 things at once, but all things in their season. The nopalito is a cactus that grows wild over most of Mexico, but thickest in the mountains to the south.
It's handy for stretching a meal. Scrape the thorns from your nopalito leaves, dice them and fry with any shredded meat or with pinto beans. The cactus has a texture something like okra.
The Poblano pepper is useful for those interested in an introduction to different cheeses. Slice open the pepper, remove the seeds, stuff with cheese and cooked meat of your choice - beef, pork or chicken. Dip the pepper in an egg and sear it in a hot skillet - chile relleno.
Sometimes, the cultural barrier at the door of his store rises up and confronts Juan Cruz.
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Realizing where he worked, one day a lady in the post office asked, "Can anybody shop there? Can everybody speak English?"
But he has an Anglo banker - a lady banker, who comes in for all of her meat.
"Bill custom cuts meat for many customers," Juan said. "It's expected."
Hugo Arriola, who rode into Texas in the trunk of a car, who got street wise at 9, expelled at 15 and went to work sacking groceries has been at the store eight years now. He no longer has trouble with the law. He hasn't stood before a magistrate in years. Whether it was his father's hard-working example, or his mother's determination to offer him a better way of life or the long ago admonition of a judge, Hugo changed himself. He's come to understand two worlds.
"In either place, Mexico or America, you can hope for a better life," he said. "But here, it's possible."
His works for that, and for Rita, his wife, and for Isabella, who will be 2 in July. In two more years, he will have finished paying for his first home. He's 23, and he cuts meat, and he dreams.