Mustard Jalapeno Macaroni Salad

When I was young, our church used to have a picnic every summer. Everybody brought something, and there were usually six potato salads, three pans of baked beans, and at least one dish nobody could identify.

There was a married couple who came every year, Mr. and Mrs. Becker. He was German, and she was Mexican. I don't remember their first names because children called married people Mr. and Mrs. back then, and by the time I was old enough to ask, it would have seemed strange.

The Beckers were very nice people. Mrs. Becker always brought something with peppers in it, and Mr. Becker brought a folding chair that he didn't trust anybody else to unfold.

One year somebody brought a record player, and the Beckers started dancing on the grass. They were wonderful.

I don't know what kind of dancing it was. They moved around together and turned every so often, and Mr. Becker never once stepped on his wife's feet. I remember thinking that marriage must be a very nice thing if you could find somebody who knew where your feet were going.

My grandmother said they'd probably been dancing together for thirty years.

I thought that was a long time to remember the steps.

Anyway, I was watching one of those dancing competitions on television the other night. The one where famous people learn to dance with professionals. I don't recognize most of the famous people anymore, but I like watching them improve.

It got me thinking about the Beckers.

And that got me thinking about Germany and Mexico.

Which, naturally, got me thinking about macaroni salad.

I had some macaroni cooling in the colander, and I was trying to decide how much mustard to put in the dressing. I've always liked a good amount of yellow mustard in my macaroni salad. Some recipes barely use enough to change the color. I don't see the point of being shy about mustard.

I figured the mustard was the German part, and the jalapeños would be the Mexican part. Just like the Beckers.

Except I got curious and looked it up.

Yellow mustard, at least the bright yellow kind I use, isn't particularly German at all. French's was made in Rochester, New York, and introduced at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

The mustard, it turns out, is from Rochester, which is where my mother was from.

I don't know why that surprised me as much as it did. My mother put mustard on just about everything that would hold still long enough.

The jalapeños really are Mexican. They're named after Xalapa, a city in the state of Veracruz. I looked that up too, since I already had the encyclopedia open.

Well, the computer. I still call it looking something up in the encyclopedia sometimes.

So my German-Mexican macaroni salad turned out to be more of a Rochester-Mexican macaroni salad.

I suppose that's all right.

I thought about the Beckers again while I was washing the dishes. I wonder if they're still around. They'd be awfully old by now.

I hope they kept dancing.