Growing up, the Walmart near Northwest Expressway and MacArthur in Warr Acres was a weekly sojourn for my family, stopping by after Saturday Mass at St. Charles Borromeo to buy whatever people used to buy at pre-supersized Walmarts (I honestly can’t remember) before heading next-door to Pancho’s Mexican Buffett for a few plates of all-you-can eat deliciously low-rent flautas and enchiladas.
Having only recently returned to the Metro after a decade-long stint in Fort Collins, Colorado, I had a small list of places that I wistfully revisited to see how much OKC has or has not changed. One of the first places that I checked-up on was that Pancho’s, and, like so many of my childhood hopes and dreams, was completely gone, converted into possibly a Mediterranean eatery.
My heart sunk, knowing that no face-stuffingly sub-par Tex-Mex would be had today and, even worse, that never again would I be able to purchase their patented collector’s glass filled with a lime Jell-O parfait to replace the one a former lover had thrown at my head in a fit of well-deserved rage.
But, what was even more intriguing during that trip, was that the Walmart was also gone, replaced by another City Church and, oddly enough, something called GattiTown. “What the Hell is a GattiTown?” I thought aloud to no one in particular. Housed in a still quite large façade, I figured that it had to be an indoor amusement park of sorts, possibly with a Dave & Buster’s rip-off with latter-era Martin Scorsese theme. Seemed legit at the time, but it was also quickly forgotten, no longer having any need to venture into Warr Acres for any reason whatsoever.
My interest was recently re-piqued however when the postal service, during one of their Family Circus sponsored canned food drives, left me a coupon for GattiTown, advertising a $3.99 “all you care to eat” buffet special. That was even cheaper than the wasteland of urban poverty that is CiCi’s Pizza. I wondered aloud, to especially no one in particular, if they would have that macaroni and cheese pizza there as well.