Welcome to the Mango Grove

I clearly remember my first encounter with the mango. I had been living in Mexico for a couple of months and would occasionally see a strange, rather gross-looking, stringy seed-pod thing in the gutters of Cholula. I didn't know what it was, but it looked pretty disgusting.

Walking down a street in Mexico City one day, I came by a street vendor selling mangos for ten pesos - about a dollar. I had not yet tasted one, but these looked so good. I handed over the money, and the guy took a fruit the size of a football and impaled it on a sharpened quarter-inch dowel. Using a machete, he quickly peeled away the green, yellow and red skin, exposing the creamy yellow pulp, and handed it to me.

I took a bite as I walked away. It was the first time my tongue had encountered anything like this, and I wasn't sure if I liked it. There was a moment when it could have gone either way - revulsion or ecstasy. My second bite put me clearly on the side of ecstasy. I sat on a curb and spent the better part of an hour completely immersed in the experience. Clearly, this was proof that God exists. From that second bite to the last scrape of my teeth through the hair on the pit, I was in a sublime trance.

When I came out of it, I looked at the carcass and realized this was the thing I had been seeing in the gutters. After that day, when I saw a mango pit on the street, I smiled, knowing that somebody had experienced a little bit of heaven.