Day Two - Lunch
Hermosa isn’t much of a town, but it is clean and the people are friendly. A grocery and small deli counter with a pizza oven share a building along the main - the only - road. The grocer/deli in turn shares a strip of dirt that passes for a parking lot with a gas station and a liquor store.
A small sign on the highway advertises a cafe and ice-cold beer and it is that sign that has led us here. That, and the dozen or so fish we pulled in the creek from which the town draws its enterprise and name.
The cafe turns out to be the deli at the front of the grocery. No matter, we are starving and thirsty. I order two slices with pepperoni and black olives. There is much to be said about the perfection of pizza when pepperoni and black olives are added, but here it is an inappropriate digression. There are subjects on which, reader, you must trust my authority. D orders an abomination of mushrooms, bacon, sausage, onions and green peppers.
We ask the girl behind the counter what beer, ice-cold as promised on the highway, is available and she replies, “Root.” I gasp, D hangs his head. “But if you want to walk down to the liquor store, feel free to use our picnic table out back. I’ll bring your slices around in a bit.”
Six-pack in hand, we head to the picnic table in back. An apple tree provides some shade to a patch of grass in the distance while the table sits among brown weeds. The sun is scorching in the late afternoon but the beer is as cold as promised. I take off my creek-soaked socks and stretch my legs. Our slices arrive as we crack a second can of beer and recall the fish that braved our rods this day. A stray dog sniffs at the grocer’s dumpster then looks to us for scraps. It is a perfect lunch.
