My family’s neighbor is a gruff woman. She’s a whole head taller than I am and wears Carharts head to toe. She can saddle a horse in a matter of seconds and collects eggs each morning from the chickens she keeps in the barn. There’s more Colorado in her than I’ll ever have–and I’m a native–but we manage to get along.
The other day I was kicking through a field of horse shit and yucca with her when the Bay Area came up in the conversation. I told her I went to Berkeley and the first thing she mentioned, before the Bomb, before the Free Speech movement, before Ginsberg or Didion or Judith Butler, was the food. Having spent most of her 20s in SF, my neighbor’s most salient memories of that decade were the meals, which, if it reveals a side of her that I overlooked, also speaks to the quality and draw of the Bay Area’s dining scene.
“I’ll never not miss that food,” she said as she half-tackled a haflinger trying to fit a bit in its mouth. That got me thinking, Shouldn’t I take advantage while I still can?
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