dollar rib night
picture it…el paso, 1995…
i’ll do my best not to go full sophia petrillo on you, but suffice to say, i spend a lot of time looking back these days. i can’t help it.
i have a son about to be a senior in high school (sweet baby bundt cakes, how did this happen?) and i often compare his high school years to mine.
let’s be honest, for lots of reasons, mine were waaaaay better, (living the majority of your high school years in the middle of a global pandemic is a real buzzkill, no doubt) and i think one of the biggest reasons my senior year is better than his harkens back to a mythical event known back in 1995 as “dollar rib night.”
i feel for my kids growing up in a tiny little town (though there is a LOT to be said for it) because there aren’t as many places and spaces to meet other kids your age that don’t go to your school and show up in every other aspect of your life.
dollar rib night was like a giant mixer for a town with 14 high schools and 3 colleges.
rib hut was a bit of an el paso institution before my generation seized upon it, but when i say we seized upon it…we latched on to that dollar rib night institution like we invented it and co-opted it so that the regulars couldn’t find a table on wednesday nights between 5 and 10 p.m.
we swarmed. we packed in like locusts. anyone one between the ages of 17 and 22 in the 79912 and surrounding zipcodes who was anyone piled into those tables for a chance to see and be seen every week.
it was like our own barbecue version of speed dating, big brother house and love island wrapped in one. relationships, friendships and culinary masterpieces were made and broken on dollar rib night in a grand spectacle that i haven’t seen in the 26 years since.
i laugh about it now, but back then, dollar rib night was my very own “tale of two cities”—the best of times and the worst of times. i had a first date with a college football player at dollar rib night. i also realized we were not a thing four dollar rib nights later when i saw him out with another prettier, older girl in a very awkward case of ghosting and rib eating. i was heartbroken and covered in their secret house sauce all at the same time.
looking back at my 17 year old self from this grand old dame stage of life, i lament on all the time i spent looking around for cute boys or single boys or not-so-cute but still-there boys and all that time i wasted NOT eating those dollar ribs.
each time i push my middle-aged shopping cart full of oatmeal and yogurt past the market basket meat coolers and shudder at the price of beef ribs, i think back to that naïve girl i was and wish i could whisper some serious words of wisdom, words that i’ll pass on to my two girls as they age:
“less boys, more ribs.”