The Cisco Kid and Pancho at the Silvercup

Previous Episode: Eddie Ryan, leaving the crap game, had been seen heading toward the Queensborough Bridge, never to be heard from again.

It was Sunday morning about a week after the big crap game. When I dragged myself out of bed, the house was quiet. Laura and Mom had gone to early mass.

As I walked down the hall in my pajamas, I heard voices and tinkling glasses from the kitchen, where Dad and Uncle Johnny were sitting at the table, drinking beers, and eating Lupine, an Italian appetizer of fava beans soaked in brine. The Puerto Rican brothers, in from a night of salsa dancing, were doing what they’d learned from the Italian side of the family: biting off the tips of the skins and squeezing the insides into their mouths.

“So, Herman,” Uncle said. “What you heard from Eddie?”

“Nothing,”

Dad said, popping a lupine and washing it down with a swig of Rheingold. “Not one word. For all I know he’s got a broken arm and he’s lying low so Freddie will fagetabout ‘im.”

When I walked in, they both clammed up and Johnny said, “Ya goin’ ta see Cisco and Pancho today, Joey?”

Herman and Johnny reminded me of Cisco and Pancho, but without the horses and sombreros. When they were dressed for a night of dancing, they wore broadcollared, pinstriped suits—Dad’s navy blue, Johnny’s chocolate brown, their jetblack hair slicked straight back. My father was thin, handsome, streetwise, and crafty and he always wanted to be in charge. With his occasional pencil-thin mustache, he looked just like Cisco. Uncle Johnny was the sidekick. Stout with an even thicker mustache, he always flashed a fiendish smile. And he would wink at you and pump his eyebrows — just like Pancho—as if you were able to understand what he was gesturing about.

Still, just like Dad, Cisco and Pancho were my heroes.

When I heard that they were going to make a personal appearance at the Silvercup Bakery in Long Island City, Queens, I couldn’t think of anything else until the day I would see them ride up on their horses.

The Silvercup factory was a dingy old building under the Queensborough Bridge. Silvercup Bread was their sponsor, but Laura and I could never quite figure out what a fluffy, white bread had to do with two Mexican cowboys. Like Dad and Johnny, Cisco and Pancho never ate bread. Yet there they were — The Cisco Kid and Pancho, pushing a fluffy white bread at 1,000 multi-ethnic kids in Queens.

The only reason Mom let me go to the personal appearance without her was because Laura had agreed to take me, watch me, and never let me out of her sight. Had my mother ever anticipated how crazy it would get, she never would have let me go.

Laura and I arrived at the bakery along with a thousand screaming kids trying to squeeze themselves through the bakery’s huge roll-down doors, the same doors which each morning spewed forth an endless caravan of trucks on their way to deliver bread, muffins, and crumb cakes to local stores. The mob of hysterical kids was pulsating rhythmically like a giant serpent.

The minute we arrived, I wanted to be a part of the action. The magic of T.V. had imprinted on our minds an image of these two handsome caballeros in brightly embroidered outfits, their sombreros bouncing up and down as they rode. That day our heroes would be right in front of us, not just fuzzy images on a screen, nor a cluster of tiny black and white dots. Their skin, like Herman and Johnny’s, would have a romantic olive color instead of the lifeless gray of television. And they would speak to us . . . and sign autographs.

After we stood outside a few moments, Laura wanted to find the best way in, so she grabbed my hand real tight, looked me straight in the eye, and said:

“Joey, you wait here.” How many millions of times had I heard that?

Then she let go of my hand, turned away, and left.

By Joe Ortiz

There I was alone. What Mom feared most. Now I knew why. I stood there for what seemed like forever, not moving an inch — when suddenly I was caught up in the wave of delirious kids streaming into the big roll-down doors that looked like the mouth of a giant, hungry whale. In a moment, I was carried helplessly by this torrential wave of children—whose screaming delight only terrified me—my feet never touching the ground.

“Cisco Kid” page 9

Cream Pudding

Serves 4

When we got back from the Cisco and Pancho appearance at the Silvercup, Aunt Rose and cousins Rosemarie and Anthony were at the house. Even though Mom didn’t notice anything, Aunt Rose saw that I needed a treat. She always made this pudding to soothe our ills. It was a cheap peasant slurry of thickened egg yolks, milk, and sugar as far as I can tell. Maybe thickened with flour or cornstarch. You can serve it warm in bowls, refrigerated in cups (it gets a nice skin on top), or mixed with whipped cream to fill cream puffs.

2 cups whole milk (or half and half)

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cinnamon to taste

In a small casserole or saucepan, heat the milk until it’s just warm. Meanwhile, separate the yolks and place them in a bowl and beat with a wire whisk. Add the sugar and combine fully, using the whisk. Add the cornstarch and whisk one final time.

Slowly add the warm milk to the egg/sugar/cornstarch mixture and whisk to combine. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, cooking 10 to 15 minutes until it just starts to becomes thick, like heavy cream. The moment the mixture starts to thicken, remove it from heat and continue to whisk for several minutes.

Pour the Cream into four shallow soup bowls and serve warm with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. n

Joe Ortiz Memoir: Episodes & Recipes

Joe Ortiz’s memoir, Pastina — My Father’s Misfortune, My Mother’s Good Soup, became the framework for the musical Escaping Queens, which ran at Cabrillo Stage in 2012 and 2013.

Since 2022, the Capitola Soquel Times is the exclusive publication of various episodes from the book — including a recipe that helps shape each installment. You may have read one of the pieces in the Times a few months ago entitled, “Pastina, Food for the Soul — The Night Freddie the Bookie Showed Up with the Gun.”

The idea of weaving anecdotes about food with an ongoing narrative came to Joe after reading Heartburn by Nora Ephron.

“Using recipe descriptions to help tell a story seemed the perfect way to weave the angst of a father’s chaotic life with the salvation of a mother’s cooking,” Ortiz explains. “For me, the soothing aromas and descriptions of my mom’s food became the salve to assuage my father’s abusive actions, and the ironic humor of it all helped to dull the pain.” n