Four Stories About The Future - And The Past

In 1965 these first-generation Americans opened a restaurant in Washington State's Skagit Valley. 

From the original two people who had come from Mexico and started in Colorado they had become a family of 13 who had set permanent roots in that Valley.

Most of them worked in the fields of that vast agricultural expanse.

From their website:

"The ones that worked in the fields were able to help my parents save enough money to open a restaurant in 1965.

" We were the only Mexican restaurant in the valley at that time. 

"Our best customers were the farmers who had employed my family in the past."

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Today that restaurant is a Mt. Vernon institution of consequence.

It is also one of the best Mexican restaurants in America.

And it employs lots of people of various heritages.

I learned about this restaurant sitting in the Bar of The Galley on Lopez Island one evening.

I was talking to a couple who were on the stools to my right.

The subject of Mexican restaurants came up and they asked me if I had been to The Mexico Cafe in Mt Vernon.

I hadn't.

They assured me that I needed to go there for the best Mexican food around.

I did and they were right.

As an aside the woman had worked for the restaurant for a time and could not say enough about how wonderful were the owners, her previous employers.

Among other things causing her to say that they had helped her out, during her employment, a couple of times from some serious cash flow crunches.

She looked upon them as family.

donnie doesn't know about things like that - he's a narcissistic sociopath so he sees things more darkly. 

Too bad for America.

America is mired in sadness, hate and defeatism.

America's president finds money to be made in selling that to us.

In spite of that America is awash in tiny whirlpools of hope, love and excitement.

This is about one of them.

Noel McKeehan: Adventures and Opinions: 98118 Is The Future Of America

Sometimes a single immigrant is impossible to ignore, discount or malign.

donnie tries his worst, but he can't make it stick.

Noel McKeehan: Adventures and Opinions: The Immigrants

And, after 406 years, here are some thoughts about our longest-term immigrants who have probably, as a group, and as individuals, made the broadest and deepest contribution to America.

Noel McKeehan: Adventures and Opinions: The Beauty Of Our Future