It had been a mediocre franchise restaurant, a long, low sandstone structured sprawled out along a broad street in Preston Center, where the residential charm of the Park Cities began to give way to urban Dallas. The interior packed all the Tex-Mex flavor of a gift hastily bought at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Near the back, a salsa bar with two types of mild salsa and great warming trays of tasteless, flaky chips waited ominously. Yet every Friday during my senior year I arrived with the same friends (Maddy, Mary and Jenn), ordered the same thing (the Grilled Chicken Quesadillas and a fountain drink) and ate it in the same booth (the one snuggled between the salsa bar and soda fountain). A few weeks ago I returned with my three old companions and found it had closed. There are at least a few times in a person’s life when they are smacked with the realization that things are overused and become trite for a reason. That I was in the middle of a scene cheesy enough to be featured in the finale of a major network sitcom did not lessen its impact on me. Our old conversations had settled deep into the creases of the pleated red booths like crumbs. The western decorations had been tacky voyeurs to the glory days of my senior year. That towering gooey mess of cheese, chicken, bacon, pico, and beans slapped between two white tortillas, that thing they called a quesadilla had been a staple food of my high school diet. And now the building was an empty space with a for rent sign in the window. Driving home, listening to desperate Bruce Springsteen ballads, I feel as ragged and sad as I ever have.
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