metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobby's Breakfast Burrito Lonely donkey is back! And, no longer lonely, he is now in the company of ... another donkey!! I no longer worry about him. I guess he didn't need my pity after all... I knew a man named Mike Teters. He was a small, sharp featured man, manic and excitable. His father was a big wig at the company where I worked, and I believe Mike had a job there by virtue of his father's position. I doubt Mike would have worked there, had it not been for his dad. It was a multinational company and Mike had traveled all over the world. When I met him, I was working at a container facility project in the Los Angeles Harbor. There was a little lunch truck (roach coach) that parked down by the tracks each morning and stayed through the lunch "rush" then disappeared to the Lunch Truck garage to be restocked for the following day. The guy who drove the truck was named Bobby and, in addition to making breakfast goodies also made book. Each morning Mike would go to Bobby's, make his bets, have a bite and a coffee and sit for just a little while with the others around the truck on the broken white plastic chairs and crates that served as the eating area. Everyone always gave Mike a hard time about eating off that roach coach and intimated that he might catch something or get salmonella or something, but Mike always took it in stride with his self effacing humor. One morning after the ritual ribbing was over and the others wandered off to do their respective jobs, I asked Mike if he really liked Bobby's food. This is what he said to me: "I used to take breakfast at a little place on the Via Veneto when I lived there for awhile. It was good, but not nearly as good as one of Bobby's breakfast burritos." And he smiled. He was a special person, and I bet he had no idea he had touched something inside me that day. Mike died less than a year later of a massive stroke. He was not quite 40 years old. I am such a romantic. I would have thought that breakfast on the Via Veneto! What could be better than that? But it isn't about that. It's about good company and good food and it can be better sitting on a crate in the Los Angeles harbor with some rowdy dockworkers eating a breakfast burrito than having a coffee on the Via Veneto. It's true. 2:59 p.m. - 2005-03-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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