Airplanes are everything mediocrity is not, to even dream of flying you cannot be timid, lazy, insecure or harbor doubt. You push the engines to 11 and hang on to your seat. Flying, while we tend to take it for granted, is, as comic tk reminded the world a few years ago, absolutely amazing. You are in a chair *in the sky*. You're also contributing to the ecological demise of the planet, but I didn't understand that at 10. Mediocrity is, I think, why I loved both the airplanes and the burritos. it's also the fear that's been nipping at my heals for forty four years. those were not tacos. California only stopped being Mexican a little over 100 years ago, not long enough for us to collectively forget what a taco was and a taco does not have a hard shell. It was rarely crowded, it had the two window set up of all fast food, a window to order, a window where your food was slid out on a tray, an orange tray with a piece of paper. We always got burritos and fries. I'm old enough that in this story there is no Deluxe Del Beef Burrito nor does the Del Beef Supreme exist to clutter the simplicity of the three menu placards. I guess meat and cheese in a tortilla seemed like enough to most of us back then. Occasionally my father would get tacos, but neither of us really liked hard shell tacos. --- --- Costa Mesa is notable for being wealthy, overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly mediocre. It's easy to turn it into the poster child for everything that's wrong in the world. Even in 1982, even those of us benefiting, unwittingly or otherwise, from all the things that Costa Mesa is, even those of us who were only 10 suspected that something was not quite right at the Circle K. "Mediocrity cannot ever be destroyed. What can be addressed is one’s attitude toward it. It is true that, where that attitude is borne of mediocrity itself, this might appear something of a contradiction but in practice the two are easily distinguishable. And the differentiation is important, for the one is a consequence of the other and, if the source can be extinguished, its effects will be quelled in turn." Like so many things from childhood I unconsciously retain this habit. To this day I tell strangers I'm from Los Angeles when in fact, I am not. It used to be Thanks to countless television shows, Costa Mesa is pretty recognizable and certainly everyone knows where Orange County is, and not, unfortunately, because of Arrested Development. Being born in Los Angeles is like being born in a airport. First of all, no one really is, even me, and second of all what a fucked up place to be born. Watching airplanes take off now seems about as thrilling as, well, the thought of a Del Taco burrito, which is to say neither obsession stayed with me. I was there last year around the holidays. My family and I live in a 1969 RV and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it broke down and left us stranged in Southern Californai. These days I try to fly as little as possible. I had a six year run where I didn't I have not been on that many planes at this time in my life. I do not like being on planes, These days a burrito feels like far too much. I also now live in Mexico and burritos turn out to be scarce, except where tourists will be expectings them. Just before we moved down here I came across in Del Taco in the suburbs of Oklahoma City. I thought hey, I've been trying to write that eater piece for ages now, might as well go see how the burritos really were, objectively speaking. But there is no objectivity, and I'm past the age where nostalgia is appealing and not yet to the next age where nostalgia will become appealing so I found myself at the counter, in the totally differnet sort of restuarant than I remember, feeling lost and then later found myself holding a burrito I wasn't hungry for, didn't want. I threw it in the trash and walked out without taking a bite. i To this day more of California's history is under Mexican rule than the United States. Governments change much faster than cultures. When I was a child the hard shell tacos of fast food restaurants were not taco. Those were not tacos. Mexico had only been driven out a little over 100 years ago, not long enough for us to collectively forget what a taco was and a taco does not have a hard shell. and the airport. Airports are liminal zones "In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rites, when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete"kkk Where I grew up a lot of kids loved soccer, baseball, basketball. I loved to eat a Del Beef burrito and watch 727s hurl themselves into the sky. This love was born of a few simple realities: Del Taco was right by the airport and flying seemed like a great way to escape the mediocrity of my home town. Del Taco did not age nearly so well. The tacos were always mediocre at best, but the engines that got you there and ones that constantly flew over while you were there made the food mostly irrelevant. I wanted it to roar. What ten year old doesn't want things to roar? So my dad always made sure it roared. Especially on cold days, not that there are many of those in southern California, but every now and then. Now that I'm older, and live in 1969 RV, which also has a manual choke, I know it's the nature of the device -- you can open the carburetor vent as much as it goes but still, you always have to give it some extra gas to get it going. Well if you want it to roar you do, and The engine roars when it starts up, it's the nature of a manual choke, you can open it up as far as it goes but still, you always have to give it gas. Well, you have to if you want it to roar and I want it to roar, what five year old doesn't want things to roar? So my dad makes sure it roars. You have to give it gas after all. Especially on cold days, not that there are many of those in southern California, but every now and then... It roars. It roars like the planes that lift off over our house tk times a day. Now it's tk flights a day, when I was five it was only tk. Later I would find them annoying like everyone in our neighborhood already did, but when you're five, they just roar. That is all. And I wanted to get closer to them. That wasn't hard. The airport itself was a mere five miles down the road. It was a tiny thing back then. A terminal with four, maybe five gates if I remember right. You walked out, across the tarmac to your plane and climbed the ladder like Kennedy. I only flew from there a few times. I always wanted to wave when I got the top of the ladder car, but I never did. Or if I did I don't remember. Today the idea of walking across the tarmac, even just having access to the tarmac at an American airport sounds crazy. We never went to the terminal. Though we could have, there was no security, anyone could walk back to the gates because there were no gates, just a long row of two story high windows looking out at a couple of small parked jets disgorging luggage and passengers, loading food trays, stewardesses in smart uniforms with heel clicking on the formica floors. There was no roar, we went to the far side of the airport where there was some parking spots and small grassy field that led right up the runway. We would go up to chain link fence and watch from there, the roar of the engines deafening as even the small private jets raced down the runway and leaped into the sky. new: Del Taco started with the engine. More than anything I remember the sound of the truck engine warming up as my father and I sat in the cab, waiting. As the engine warmed he would push in the choke, a mysterious black and silver knob that I was not allowed to touch. When the engine was sufficiently warm and the choke knob all the way in against the dash, my father would back out of the driveway and we'd wind our way down the street, past the peeling bark of Eucalytus trees, and out into the open expanses of the upper marsh. The road traced the serpentine edge of what we called "the back bay", an expanse of lowland marsh, artificially dredge nearly a century before I was born. Dry scrub hills gave way to reeds and cattails as you neared the water. Despite the best efforts of my father and many others -- very unpopular others in a place where real estate was the primary source of extravagant wealth -- houses lined the bluffs around the bay like a legion poised to attack the last expanse of open space for miles.