Brush With Local Greatness, Vol. 6 : Charo
Kim and I met Charo at the Dallas Museum of Art several years ago when she came there to hock some new salsa or something for Pace. They had a car outside decorated up by some artist or something and she spoke and played her guitar for a few minutes before a crowd of about one hundred people. Afterwards she took questions, of all things, doing that “Cuchi-cuchi” thing she says every once in awhile. It was goofy and surreal at the same time, knowing that this was that strange unintelligible Spanish woman I’d seen on The Love Boat when I was a kid.
Kim, never one to shirk from making a comment, had the guts to pipe up when she said that she lived on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
“We had our honeymoon there!”
It kind of threw Charo1 off, but hen became excited. She was bonding with the audience, you know. “Oh, did you love it? Where did you stay?”
“South side of the island at a B&B.”
“The B&B’s on Kauai are wonderful, aren’t they?”
“Yes!!!” Kim was so excited.
What was even cooler was she even took a picture with us. She was wearing a red sequined minidress and was completely falling out the thing. We were going to use the picture for our Christmas card (“Merry Christmas from Kim, Glenn and Charo”) but Kim was laughing when the picture was taken and her smile was Joker-esque, so we didn’t use it, but, you know, it’s still a great story.
- Yes, I know Charo does not live in Dallas, but she was there, and we talked to her. So there. [↩]