“Comportarse, y no hablar grocerias”. Behave yourself, and do not curse. The little sign above the counter at Taqueria Las Americas always makes me smile. “Este es un lugar familiar”. It is a nice family place, at that.
This night there were little Mexican flags hanging from the sign, and prominently displayed all over the taqueria, in honor of Cinco de Mayo. The place looked sharp. The Rodriquez family has really put a lot of hard work into the business in the years I’ve been coming in for their exquisite steak burritos. It’s been kind of interesting, and comforting in a way, watching all the work and remodeling, changing the restaurant from kind of a dive to a pretty nice place where they really don’t need that sign anymore.
Con dos Burritos Norteno and a little spare green sauce I was on my way home then, north on Clark Street, through the heart of the Hispanic neighborhood that’s grown up north of Devon.
As always on the Cinco, the street was lined with groups of people holding and waving Mexican flags, yelling, honking car horns, talking and drinking and laughing, still out celebrating close to midnight. They’d still be there even later – they are every year. Cars full of people drove up and down Clark Street, large Mexican flags sprouting from the windows on both sides of the cars. The people in the cars smiled and honked and yelled at the ones on the corners, and those out front of their taquerias and carnicerias and pandarias and mercados smiled and hollered back.
A black man who was walking on the sidewalk with his friend had apparently had enough of the honking and waving, or celebrating, or something, and cursed a hearty “Shut the F**K up!” at one of the flagbearing cars, then threw his nearly empty beer bottle after it. It came up a bit short of the car with the flag, and crashed in the street about 50 feet in front of me, with a dull hollow pop.
The glass shards skittering and disintegrating over the asphalt briefly caught and reflected the light of the yellow Chicago street lamps, and scattered like the pieces of a thousand broken dreams.
Author/Copyright: Tiger, of tigerwhip.com fame Date written: 11/10/1996