Guns and Mexican Food - Part I: Reflections Two Years After Leaving the States

Tuesday morning: on the shuttle between the hotel and airport. The shuttle driver is feeling talkative and I am too. So I drop the word “Ireland.”

I have lived in Ireland for the last two years, am back to the States for a book tour.

Ireland and book tour - I throw out two potential topics. He chooses the first.

“What’s the biggest difference between the US and Ireland?”

I pause to consider. The answer comes immediately. But these days. . . who am I talking to? What will happen when I drop the word? I take a chance.

“Guns.”

I elaborate. “There are guns in Ireland, but nobody goes to the grocery store packing.”

He gets it. “They use them for hunting.”

That was what guns meant when I was a child, growing up in Colorado where everybody had guns. Hunting. Or target practice with tin cans. I attended gun safety classes taught by the local policeman. I shot at tin cans. Guns were for hunting and shooting at tin cans.

Yep, that is the biggest difference between Ireland and the United States. I no longer scan the grocery store so I can avoid the aisle where an angry man is packing, looking for a bad guy to shoot. Me, I would just be looking for the salsa. And the exit.

The next question was more fun.

“What is the one thing in the United States that, if it came to Ireland, your life would be better?”

I talk my way toward the answer, “Oh, it would have to be food. There’s a Facebook group for Americans in Ireland. A third of the posts are about where to find Cheetos or ranch dressing.”

My answer: “Mexican food. Real Mexican food.”

That’s when the person sitting behind me pipes in. “I just returned from two years in New Zealand. Same answer: guns and Mexican food.”

I make a mental note. When I get to Sisters, Oregon, I’ll go to that gas station with the little take-out spot on the side and get some tamales. My mouth is watering as I type.

So with that exchange, I began to pay attention to the differences. Earlier that morning, at the hotel’s complementary breakfast bar, I ate my breakfast burrito (not real Mexican) and listened to the local Fox station talking about the heat wave.

Denver had the worst air quality in the nation the day before. Fires in the mountains. I was struck by the tone of morning news broadcasters. Cheerful, bland, not a hint of awareness of what that heat wave and those fires and that purple air quality reading meant.

The night before, I told the Ethiopian cab driver that we used to be able to see the Rockies from Denver when I was a child. A century earlier, pioneers could see them from Nebraska.

The cab driver said that in Europe, the government won’t accept climate change. I thought about the EU. Their regulations are hard on Irish dairy farmers. But Europeans, even the dairy farmers, recognize that climate change is an existential issue. And that the sacrifice is worth it.

We spent our first year in Ireland checking the weather app every morning, marveling at the air quality in the green zone. Every morning.

But I do miss Mexican food.

Anyway - I got to the airport. I’ll post more reflections in the coming weeks.

Are you an immigrant, an expat, a tourist? How would you answer those questions: the biggest difference and the thing from the US you would like to bring to where you live now?

The photo of the Rockies by James St. John is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

I took that photo of the chile relleno. I couldn’t manage to take the photo before I sampled it.