US Army Vietnam - Signal Directorate

Moreno's Tortillas

Moreno from Kingsville was just as Mexican as myself, but he longed for his Mexican cuisine more so than I did. We were assigned to US Army Vietnam Signal Directorate at Tent City B in Tan Son Nhut on the outskirts of Saigon. Whenever we had free time, we would catch a military bus to downtown Saigon where we would scour the city looking for Mexican restaurants. We would ask taxi drivers and those who spoke English would tell us there were none. We never found one, so we resorted to buying canned Mexican beans, chile con carne and canned rice from one or another PX in the area. We never found tortillas.

“Do you think there’s a way Ma can send me tortillas, Ojeda?” he once asked.  “Chingao, yo quero tortillas, Ojeda!"¹

I assured my friend there was just no way to ship tortillas and have them arrive in edible condition since it took from seven to ten days for our mail to reach us.  Moreno and I both checked for Mexican restaurants whenever we went to downtown Saigon or Cholon.  We never found any, but some fellow soldiers returning back from R&R in Thailand told us of a Mexican restaurant in Bangkok.  Moreno began plotting his R&R to Bangkok.

We once found canned tamales at the Post Exchange in downtown Saigon.  We each bought several cans and feasted on them for days.  Still, Moreno talked about his mother’s tortillas and just could not get them out of his mind.

We walked over to the mailroom once.  I got about a week’s worth of my hometown Valley Morning Star newspaper that Mom had subscribed to for me.  Moreno got a care package from his Mom.  “Ojeda, I’ll bet you anything these are my tortillas!” Moreno excitedly said. We walked back to our hooch, and Moreno wasted no time opening his care package.  In the mix of some canned Mexican food, Mexican candy and chili-flavored Mexican peanuts was a pack of homemade tortillas.  They were moldy.  Moreno was crushed! He needed a tortilla fix, but his tortillas were overgrown with mold. 

“Ojeda, you think it’ll be okay if I just cut away the mold parts?” he asked.  I assured my friend he would get miserably sick if he put any part of those tortillas in his mouth.  With a sad and miserable heart, Moreno walked out to the trash barrel and disposed of his tortillas. I felt sorry for my friend.

A few weeks later, Moreno took his R&R² to Bangkok.  Upon his return, he spent countless hours telling me about Bangkok and especially the fine Mexican cuisine he found in the middle of Bangkok.  Most soldiers took their R&R to escape from the rigors of life in a combat environment.  Moreno went primarily for the Mexican cuisine.

Some six years later I was assigned to the US Embassy in Laos working on Project 404.  Every few weeks I would cross the river into Nong Khai, Thailand, and catch the overnight train to Bangkok or take the Army Attache’s plane when seats were available.  I searched for the Mexican restaurant which Moreno had frequented during his R&R to Bangkok.  Supposedly, there was only one Mexican restaurant in Bangkok during Moreno’s R&R.  I found what I knew to be Moreno’s restaurant since he had sufficiently described it and telling me of a midget with serape and Mexican hat sitting on a chair on the sidewalk by the restaurant’s entrance.  The midget’s mission was to use the few Mexican words someone had taught him inviting passersby  to “La comida Mexicana más buena en Bangkok".³  

Out of curiosity, I walked in and sat down to order late breakfast.  I was the only customer in the large restaurant.  After some twenty minutes and no waitress, I walked out to the sidewalk Mexican midget and asked him if it was open.  He sprung up from his chair and pushed me backwards inside following me then went into some back room.  I heard a toilet flush and an American guy probably approaching sixty or just over sixty came out, sauntered over to me with the sidewalk Mexican following.  He shook hands with me then offered me his copy of the Bangkok Post.⁴  

"Damn," I thought to myself. "I did not hear any water running after the flush. I do hope this guy is not the cook!" I declined his kind offer to read his paper telling him I had already read it.

Sidewalk Mexican went back to his post while the American sat down in the booth across from me.  We chatted for a few minutes, and I asked him if the restaurant was open. 

"Yes, of course.  We're open.  My wife will be here in a few minutes.  She just went down to the market to get some fresh fruits and some other shit."

"Oh, so your wife works here?" I asked.

"Yes, along with my stepson.  We own the place," he said.

He asked me if I wanted some American coffee then left to make some fresh coffee.  Again, I sat there alone for a long time reading every English and Spanish menu and sign before he showed back up with the coffee just when I thinking of ways to make an honorable exit from there.  Over coffee he told me his whole life story.  He had come to Bangkok on R&R several years earlier and fell in love with the culture.  "No one here ever hurries or pays homage to the clock the way Americans do," he said.  "I did some business on the black market in Saigon for a few years then decided to retire here and open up this Mexican Restaurant.

He told me he was in the process of opening up a club upstairs.  Apparently, there was just barely enough business with the Mexican restaurant, so the club was going to be his money maker.  He offered to show me the club.  I declined.  I was hungry.  I asked him how long before his cook would return. 

"Oh, the cook is here," he said.  "Just tell me what you want and I'll have her prepare it for you."

The tacos were not truly Mexican.  Both the corn and flour tortillas were brought in from States frozen and survived the shipping. The beans and Mexican rice were canned, but I would have expected that in half of the stateside Mexican restaurants outside of Texas.

As I left the restaurant, I noticed the sidewalk Mexican midget was no longer there.  His chair was empty.  I looked around the otherwise busy street seeing but a handful of Americans walking about with no particular direction.  I recalled Rudyard Kipling's comment "Only the devil and the English walk to and fro without reason" and its modified version in the song "Only mad dogs & Englishmen go out in the midday sun." As in Mexico, the Thais normally take their siesta during the hottest part of the day, so I surmised the sidewalk Mexican was perhaps on a break from the grueling Bangkok heat.

I walked down the same street still with no real direction or purpose.  Several blocks later and on that same street, I spotted the sidewalk Mexican midget.  My first thought was that I had somehow circled back to the same Mexican restaurant.  Upon checking it further, I realized it was not the same restaurant.

The same midget was again in his serape and Mexican hat and sitting on a sidewalk chair in front of yet another Mexican restaurant.  He showed me no indication that we met earlier that morning and greeted me in his best spoken Spanish intermixed with English and his Thai accent.  I declined his invitation to dine in his "brother's" Mexican restaurant. 

Being totally lost and disoriented, I caught a taxi to the American embassy and had a truly and traditional American meal. I thought of my friend Moreno.  The Bangkok restaurant served its purpose for him while away from home.  I can imagine Moreno will never again leave the comfort of his beloved Mexican cuisine.

Moreno started working for the US Postal Service after leaving military life.  Some thirteen years after last seeing Moreno, my then-wife got a call from him.  Moreno had been reading his friend's Warrant Officer monthly newspaper and found my name in the reassignments section upon my reassignment to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for a year-long Firefinder Target Acquisition Radar⁵ course.  Since he worked at the post office, he was able to get my home address and phone number in Lawton, Oklahoma. 

I was not at home when he called, so he talked to my ex-wife whom he had never met.  She assured him that it was indeed me that he had read about and filled him in on my goings-on since he had last seen me.  I returned Moreno's call that evening.  It was the closing of another of the many open loops in our lives.  We talked for less than ten minutes, ran out of things to talk about and assured each other that, "Oh, but of course.  We'll make plans and have a get-together sometime soon. Let's stay in touch." The intent was real, but plans never materialized.  Somehow, life keeps getting in the way.