While we waited for our enchiladas and chalupas to arrive, the waiter across the room caught my attention. His face was familiar. I leaned toward Trudy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that guy used to work at El Patio<\/a>,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n She looked at him and smiled. Let\u2019s just say that my reputation does not include great facilities of memory. Still, of all the things I forget (and there are many), faces is not one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s him, I know it\u2019s him.\u201d The shape of his mouth. His eyebrows. Something about his eyes.<\/p>\n It had to be him.<\/em><\/p>\n But years had passed. It\u2019s been a long time since I\u2019ve been there. (Why is that?) I could have been wrong. So I looked at him each time he walked by.<\/p>\n It had to be him. No maybe not. Yes, it just had to be him. <\/em><\/p>\n Finally, I couldn\u2019t stand it anymore. As he walked by our table, I reached out and touched him on the arm.<\/p>\n \u201cYes sir?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cExcuse me, but did you used to work at El Patio?”<\/p>\n His eyes lit up. \u201cJust from 1981 to 2005!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n We introduced ourselves and shook hands. His name was Filipe. He told us about his years there, before he came to work here at his sister\u2019s restaurant, Hecho En Mexico<\/a>\u00a0(in between long shifts doing microelectronics work).<\/p>\n He told us how he had started at El Patio washing dishes. And although he didn\u2019t say it, I knew the progression, because we had seen guys work their way thru the ranks, there. From putting silverware on the tables to bringing out chips and queso to bringing out the food and finally to the main waiters. The guys there were long time employees, which is one of the really amazing things about that place.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you make it to a red coat?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yes,\u201d he said. And then he explained how he had climbed as high as you could climb there, because the only other position was David Joseph, the owner. He laughed when he said that.<\/p>\n
![skyline on the lake<\/a> for proof. But sometimes, if you\u2019ve been here long enough, small town Austin still shines thru.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While we waited for our enchiladas and chalupas to arrive, the waiter across the room caught my attention. His face was familiar. I leaned toward Trudy. \u201cI think that guy used to work at El Patio,\u201d I said. She looked at him and smiled. Let\u2019s just say that my reputation does not include great facilities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3988"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3991,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/06\/AustinSkylineLouNeffPoint-2010-03-29-b.JPG\"){kind=link}