Sunday, April 1, 2007 was the 10th anniversary of my move to Scottsdale, Arizona to attend Culinary School. Moving is stressful enough on a realtionship. This one was particularly stressful in that neither Mary or myself had employment in Scottsdale, and I was nervous about attending school.

We had flown to Scottsdale a few weeks earlier and rented a house. Now it was time to take our belongings and Bubba the dog on the long drive from Denver to Scottsdale. All of our stuff was in storage, and we had packed the contents of our refigerator and freezer into a large Igloo cooler filled with ice. We had booked a big rental truck through a company whose name I won’t mention, but it rhymes with a city in South Dakota called Sioux Falls. On the day we were to pick up our truck, there was none available. I spent 8 hours on the phone that day talking with every corporate bonehead I could think of about where my truck was, and was never given a decent answer. I went through 2 days of this. I was promised that I would get the next truck, but that there were none coming into the Denver area. I ended up settling for a smaller truck, and pulling a trailer behind it. I had originally planned to pull Mary’s car behind the truck, and Mary would drive my truck to Scottsdale. Now we had to rent a car hauling trailer and Mary had to pull her car behind my truck on the move. BTW, I found out awhile later that overbooking trucks is common practice at “Sioux Falls”. They have your deposit so they know you won’t go anywhere else. It’s a scam and they still practice it to this day.

Finally, we’re on the road! It took 9 hours to drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico the first day. Found a hotel that accepts pets and checked in for the night. I’m a very light sleeper especially in strange beds. And y’all know what hotel pillows are like. Months earlier, Mary had found THE perfect pillows for our bed. I never slept so good. She had packed these pillows with her in the truck so that we could take them into the hotel with us on the road. We got up at 5am the morning of April 1st, 1997 to make the drive into Scottsdale. We also left the pillows in some hotel room in Albuquerque. I haven’t slept the same since…

Nine hours later, we pull up in front of our rented house in Scottsdale. We were both tired, cranky, and itching for a fight. It turned into a comedy of errors that day. All we wanted to do was get the mattress off the truck, find some sheets and go to bed. We’d unload the rest of the stuff the next day. But no, Mr Brilliant here had put the bed clear up at the front of the truck. We would have to unload EVERYTHING before we could get some rest! So we began the journey toward divorce court.. It was one of those days that no matter what she or I did, it was wrong. Everything she did p1ssed me off. We were yelling at each other, then we’d go for a half hour without speaking to each other. She would put every box in the wrong place, I wasn’t taking enough care with the fragile stuff. I hated her! She hated me! What was I thinking when I married this woman?

Finally, I’d had enough. We had already taken her car off the trailer. I told her; “there’s a grocery store down the street. Go and get us a bag of ice and something to drink.” You see, the rental house did not come with a refrigerator. We had to bring our own, so I knew nothing would be cold at that point. I just wanted her to get the hell out of my face for a bit. She said, “no, I’ll stay here so we can get this done. THEN i’ll go to the store.” Damn it! No peace for me. “But Mary, I’m dying of thirst right now.” And on it went for about 20 minutes….

I’m standing at the back of the moving truck in the hot Arizona sun looking at what I had left to do, when my lovely wife walks up to me and hands me a giant plastic tumbler full of ice water. God I love this woman! Maybe I won’t kill her after all…. Without looking, I take a big old pull of that cold, clear water and promptly spit it out on the ground! “What the #$%@ was that?”, I screamed! “Ice water”, she answered.

Turns out that Mary, in her tired and non-thinking state of mind, had found a plastic tumbler and dipped it into the igloo cooler that contained our food from the refrigerator. This contained, among other things several packages of raw ground beef that had partially thawed because of the extra two days spent trying to secure a rental truck. So my lovely wife, whom I’m reasonably certain did not do this on prupose, gave me a glass of raw meat juice to quench my thirst. That was a fitting topper to a day that I will not soon forget. We laugh about it now, but it wasn’t too funny back then….

So, what was I doing on the 10th anniversary of the meat juice story? Moving of course! Only across town, but moving nonetheless. Needless to say, I only drank beverages out of cans or sealed plastic bottles . I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid…..

Take care,
Al Menard
Executive Chef
Cowboy and the Rose Catering
Grand Junction, Colorado