Gibber-gabber
Would you buy tamales from a pickup truck?
beingzoe 2008-09-15 17:30:03 UTC

The other day I was working in the studio at my house (formerly known as a garage) and I hear a man calling from the street.

“Hello! Hello!,” in a heavy Spanish accent bellows up the drive.

“Hello?,” I return stepping from my desk to the curtains shading the open garage door.

“Hello. Tamales amigo? Very fresh tamales.”

As some strange twist of fate I had just been saying to my friend, who is also currently using the studio as her video editing station, I was hungry. At no point did I think, how strange, a man selling tamales at my house. “How much?”

“12 for $10.”

“What kinds do you have.” This was really for my house mates who are mostly vegetarian and I knew I wasn’t going to, or at least shouldn’t, eat 12 tamales by myself.

“Beef, chicken, y potato.”

I was sold. “Chicken and Potato,” I declare triumphantly as if I had just solved world hunger.

“Si,” and off the older Mexican man went back to the street.

I turned to get some money from my desk and proceeded to meet him on the street at his truck which turned out to be dilapidated rusted old red pickup truck that by all appearances was also used for landscaping jobs during the week. Committed to the purchase I was unphased by the conditions the tamales were being stored, in giant metal pots strapped with bungie cords to the side of the pickup bed.

I waved at my neighbor across the street rolling her recycling container from the street. She called out in a strange tone, “Need some tamales, huh?”

Obviously he had approached her first, and from the tone in her voice she had declined, but the question was why? Maybe she didn’t like tamales. Or was it the questionable cleanliness of the tamale storage transport.

Who knows. I bought my tamales and their were great.

So the question is: Would you buy tamales from a pickup truck? Why or why not?

Eduardo’s tamales – best tamales… image used under a
Creative Commons License
courtesy of SanFranAnnie at Flickr