The Good Old Days

Last Tuesday was National Margarita Day.

I did not, however, celebrate the holiday. Truthfully, I’ve yet to find THE Mexican place here in Phoenix. You know the one: gaudy decorations, cheap food, even cheaper margaritas.

But there’s a Mexican restaurant at the corner of Charlotte and Whitebridge in Nashville, TN.

You may have heard of it.

It sports a lime green exterior and uncoordinated wall decor — think: a string of garlic cloves, a mountain oil canvas painting in the style of Bob Ross, and a paper Kenny Chesney beer banner from around 2005.

There’s a neon sign over the front-facing facade that reads simply: “Mexican Restaurant.” The white queso is exactly what your cheesy heart desires; sadly, I’m told there’s no such thing in Phoenix. There’s no way the margs aren’t a store-bought sweet-and-sour mix. But from Sunday - Tuesday, pitchers are $14.99. 

Although loyalty punch-out cards don't exist here, I am nothing if not LOYAL to Cinco de Mayo West Nashville. Ask me the drink specials for any day of the week, and I can tell you. I am a proper Cinco evangelist; I could preach the glories of this place from any pulpit.

It’s home.

Since my first margarita and taco in 2016, it has been my refuge. Reunions, breakups, birthdays, dates, reconciliations, confessions, New Year’s celebrations: Cinco has been the sight of it all. It’s not just a cheap Mexican restaurant, it’s a memory box of the years I spent as a floundering post-grad adult in Nashville. 

I miss it. 

I miss those first sunny spring days after a long, gray winter, when inevitably my roommate or I would text the other: “Cinco?”

I miss gathering with my best friends on a spontaneous Tuesday, spilling a pitcher into cactus-stemmed margarita glasses, regrouping from the week, sharing with each other what was really going on in our hearts. That’s the thing about Cinco — it pulls the truth out of you, somehow. (Or is that just the tequila?)

I once suggested we hold a Bible study in a corner booth; my friends declined. “I want my rehearsal dinner at Cinco,” I’ve said a time or two. I still stand by that.

My best New Year’s Eves were spent counting down the hours there, until it closed at 10pm and we were forced to celebrate elsewhere. My best New Year’s Days were spent splitting salsa for lunch.

Oh, and the laughter. God bless all other Cinco patrons who had to endure our high-volume dining.

My best friend formerly known as my roommate, Chelsey, is a songwriter; a line in one of her songs goes: “It’s not where I came from, but it’s where I grew up.” 

Those years in Nashville were my growing-up years, and Cinco is like the doorframe with pencil lines marking my growth.

These words are a memorial to my missing, yes, but they are not a wishing that I was there, in Nashville, instead of here, in Phoenix. No, Phoenix is home, as certainly as Cinco is home. Each mountain sunrise confirms my choice to stake my claim in this dusty desert city.

Coming here has been its own form of resurrection.

But there’s a startling pace to this whole “growing up” thing. Time moves quickly, without even asking for my approval (the audacity). All of a sudden, my twenties are nearly caput, and an entire season of my life is now simply a series of “remember when…” moments.

And a good majority of those “remember whens” share the setting of a cheap Mexican restaurant with orange walls and neon string lights.

“These are the years we’ll look back on,” Chelsey would often say as we picked apart the unexpected, unplanned-for stories we were living, a pitcher split between us.

In the finale of The Office, Andy says, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”

Luckily, we knew, thanks to Cinco.

I hope you know when you’re in the good old days, too.

---

---