OK, let`s just get all the ”Thelma & Louise” jokes out of the way right now. Heaven knows my friend Phyllis and I have heard just about all of them, anyway.
I mean, just because we decided to eat our way through a portion of West Texas and southern New Mexico on a four-day road trip. We even stayed with my folks in Alamogordo, N.M., for gosh sakes, and we made sure we sped by any honky-tonks lest they lure us inside for margaritas because we all know what that leads to now, don`t we?
Oh, there was that one trucker between the Texas cities of Snyder and Gail whose truck kicked up a rock that cracked my windshield. But, even though we were armed with Mace, we didn`t go blow up his truck or steal his gimme cap or anything. Of course, we were feeling kind of mellow at that point because we`d stopped for lunch in Sweetwater, Texas, at Allen`s Fried Chicken, which is kind of like sitting down for noontime ”dinner” at your grandmother`s house.
For $6.50, you eat family style from a long table spread with a plastic tablecloth and unmatched plates, along with: fried chicken, cream gravy, brisket, buttered potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, potato salad, turnip greens, green beans, stewed summer squash, corn, English pea salad (the only thing that no one at our table touched, by the way), pinto beans, fruit salad (the kind with a fruit cocktail base), brown-and-serve rolls, peach cobbler and ice tea.
Sop up the juices
When you finish your meat and vegetables, you scrape any remaining gravy and juices over to the side-or sop them up with your roll-and serve yourself peach cobbler on the same plate. I`m sure the people at Allen`s would provide you a clean plate should you have the gall to ask. We didn`t. But it didn`t keep us from stuffing ourselves silly on the delicious home-style cooking, anyway.
This is a friendly place, too. One couple at our table was on their way from Midland, Texas, to Midlothian, Texas, for a wedding. A local businessman at our table told us we just had to try the pinto beans. And no one seemed bothered by constant requests up and down the table to please pass this or that.
That friendliness extends to co-owners Bill Allen and his son, Billy Allen, who told us Bill`s mother, Lizzie Allen, opened the restaurant 40 years ago.
We don`t know if Bill Allen has seen ”Thelma & Louise,” but he did express some concern about two women driving ”all the way” to Alamogordo, following us to the door with this warning: ”Y`all be real careful now. And watch out for the policeman at Hermleigh. He`ll sure getcha.”
Well, we did watch out and then watched as he got someone else, Mr. Allen. Thanks for the warning.
I won`t go into the details of the meal my mother had awaiting us when we arrived in Alamogordo, because it was so good that I know you, well-mannered though you are, would be tempted to drop in to eat sometime, and Mother`s just not up to that sort of thing anymore.
Don`t tell her I said that. Suffice it to say we climbed out of the car to the welcoming smell of fried chicken only like a mother can make and our choice of-or even better in my mother`s eyes, a little of each of-three desserts.
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Plotting the next meal
Cleaning the last crumbs from our plates, we plotted our next evening meal: enchiladas at Margo`s on White Sands Boulevard in Alamogordo, where the enchiladas come with freshly-made-every-day red or green chile, stacked or rolled, cheese and onion, beef or chicken, with or without a fried egg on top. The dilemma here is red chile or green. Twenty-some-odd years of eating both doesn`t help in the decision; they`re both delicious.
”Our red chile`s hotter tonight,” the waitress says. ”As it gets closer to fall, the green chile gets hotter because we get it from Hatch
(N.M.).”
We opt for red. Stacked. Onion and cheese. I get an egg. Phyllis doesn`t, but it`s OK because she never lived in New Mexico and doesn`t understand why stacked enchiladas have to have an egg on top because that`s the way it is.
They are better than I remembered. We stuff ourselves once more.
When we get home, Noy Shanks, my parents` Thai neighbor, has brought over homemade egg rolls. Mother has told me about Noy`s light, crispy egg rolls in terms usually reserved for extolling what she sees as my virtues to unsuspecting visitors. We decide to save the egg rolls for the next day. Then we have a slice of Italian cream cake.
On our way out to Alamogordo, Phyllis had noticed a sign in Lamesa, N.M., for The Green Hut restaurant. The sign was kind of interesting in and of itself in this scrappy oil and agriculture town, depicting a mustachioed French chef and a claim the restaurant`s been ”famous for 60 years.” We decided right then and there we would time our trip home to stop at The Green Hut for lunch.
First off, The Green Hut is a red brick building with a sign on it saying it`s The Plainsman Grill. And there`s nothing French about it, except maybe the dressing on the salad.
When the Dawson County deputy sheriff drove up, parked behind us and eyed our yuppie car with Texas plates complete with radar detector, it did give us pause. (Had he seen ”Thelma & Louise?”) But he just went on in, sat down on a stool at the counter, ordered a hamburger steak on the plate lunch and paid us no more mind.
Which left us to concentrate on lunch. For $4.25, we ate half-inch-thick chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, English peas, homemade rolls, corn bread sticks, cobbler and tea. All great. Our waitress Denise (I know from her tooled leather nametag) said she was disappointed we hadn`t ordered cabbage, because she never used to like it until she came to work here, but it smelled so good cooking, and you need to sprinkle lots of pepper sauce on it.
So I ordered some, and you know what? Denise didn`t even charge us for it.
We got in line behind the deputy sheriff as he paid his check, and Sharon, another waitress with a tooled leather nametag, said to him, ”I hope you find a tree on every corner this afternoon.” Well, he certainly left in a hurry. Then she grinned at us and said, ”I just kept on filling up his tea glass. Now wasn`t that mean?”
I wonder if Sharon`s ever seen ”Thelma & Louise?”