The Birthday Loop

A long time ago there were four friends that worked in the same Young Women's organization at church.  (And a few other things.)   Hearken back to the early 1980's.   That's how long ago it was.  Once we decided to meet for somebody's birthday and go out to Matta's Restaurant on Main Street and spend our time eating, gossiping and laughing ourselves dead.  The good gossip though.  Not the bad.  Why. . . .  we would never do that.  :)

Matta's restaurant was THE  place to go in older Mesa.   It was the place to see everybody you knew and the food was real Mexican recipes.  It opened up in 1953 and was in business for 55 years.   For some ridiculous reason I'm sure, the third generation of Matta's decided to create a more casual restaurant and closed that marvelous building down and in 2002 built a "sorta/kinda" new Mattas on Higley Road that was more of a fast food kind of place.  Same recipes, but the charm of the old building was gone.   I've been out to the new one only once and I don't like it  much.  The fun of the old building was not only the food, but being able to sit down and enjoy the place and listen to the Mariachi Bands.   Now  - it's nothing to brag about and I believe they made a huge mistake.  Mattas never had an empty house.

But back to the lunches. 

The Luncheon Loop continued on and we have done that four times a year since we first started oh lo those many years ago.

I was the appointed birthday person yesterday and they all picked me up at 10:30 so we could catch a movie.   What a crazy bunch of nuts we all are.   We got to the movie.  Somebody had access to free food.   Before even going in, she got into her trunk and grabbed big plastic cups and handed them out.   Drinks were a buck with those cups in hand.  

Then she dug around and came out with a theatre t-shirt that was good for free popcorn.  We got our seats and then went back to the food place to get all we wanted.   Here's how it went.

Somebody wanted butter with their popcorn.  Somebody wanted only salt.  Somebody wanted salt and butter.   I didn't want butter at all.  And somebody wanted them to fill up the popcorn bag only half way because she wanted to take that over to the butter thingy and put the butter in herself and then come back and have the food guy fill up the sack to the top with popcorn and then she'd finish with the butter on the top herself.  Got it??  She didn't want them to put the butter on.  We all wanted diet cokes so that was easy.  We had that guy so confused it was sad.   When he brought everything back and we had to re-sort what he had filled because he mixed everything up (can you blame him???), and he'd forgotten the one that wanted the bag only half filled and he'd already filled up the sack and put the butter on  and   -----------   gaaaaasssssspppppp.

Anyway, we all got sat back down in the theatre and enjoyed the show.  It was Guilt Trip  with Barbara Streisand.   We all liked it.   There were some funny lines in it and I identified one part of it with my son and I.   

After that we went out for the standard Mexican food at a place I'd never been to before - Some Burros.   Pretty darn good food, too.

But not like Mattas.