We’re were all out the other day doing some grocery shopping, when we came upon the canned food isle.
“Hey, Daddy, did you have Del Monte when you were growing up?” Of course they said it as “Dayl MOAN-tay”
“What? Hmm…” I repeated it to myself as they had said it. There was something off, something wrong. In a flash there was an epiphany, a revelation. Del Monte, is Spanish for “of the hill.” It’s a brand as American as can be, and the name is Spanish for of the hill. My kids would see it and assume it was a local thing, something Hispanic maybe Puerto Rican but not necessarily American.
“Yes, we did have as we were growing up. It’s a popular American brand, but we say it; Dehl MAHN-te.”
“Eww,” they all said. That sounds terrible. “You really said it that way?”
“Yes, Del Monte said it that way in the commercials.” I paused letting the wrongness of the words sting my mouth. I realized in that moment that the Del Monte of my youth was gone. I turned to my children with a confession. “I never realized until this moment that the brand name is in Spanish.”
I left them scratching their heads as well, their minds perplexed by the idea of daddy not knowing “Del Monte” was actually del monte.
I’m not even going to go into all the Hispanic baseball players I grew up with but never realized were Hispanic on account of how the sportscasters pronounced their names.
Turns out that Del Monte was named for a brand of coffee in a hotel in Oakland, California. “Of the hill” is a good thing for coffee… not so much for peaches.