Tamale is another day

A tragic tale of New Year’s Eve disappointment

John I. Carney

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Usernet123u, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the best things to come out of the pandemic here in Bedford County is the Catch The Wave-Shelbyville Food Mob Facebook group, started to promote locally-owned restaurants, food trucks and the like.

Not every post has to do with brick-and-mortar restaurants. Someone asked about tamales the other day, and a woman posted that she was taking orders for homemade tamales, to be picked up at 1 p.m. New Year’s Eve.

I love homemade tamales. I remember one of the first times my California-born sister-in-law was with us for the holidays, she made a big batch of tamales. I live in an apartment complex with a high percentage of Latino residents, and there used to occasionally be someone selling them door-to-door, and they were great. A couple of other times, I’ve found out about someone who sold tamales; I remember meeting someone in a CVS parking lot a year or two ago to make the handoff, and I felt like a drug dealer.

Anyway, I thought that some freshly-homemade tamales sounded like a nice celebratory meal for this odd New Year’s Eve, and I quickly direct-messaged the woman and placed my order. I also messaged a friend of mine who I knew also enjoyed homemade tamales. Pickup was to be at a hair salon.

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John I. Carney

Author of “Dislike: Faith and Dialogue in the Age of Social Media,” available at http://www.lakeneuron.com/dislike