During the first week of May 1986, while working on the tightly-budgeted Willie Nelson film Redheaded Stranger, which co-starred Morgan Fairchild and the legendary Royal Dano, Carlos got a call from Evelyn informing him that Tara was in the emergency room. Willie heard the news and arranged a flight for Carlos to be with his wife that same day.
Carlos arrived at the hospital and inquired about Tara at the nurses’ station. “I’m here for Tara Shaman, what room is she in, please?” Carlos asked, as he carried a bouquet of flowers in hand.
The nurses behind the counter all jumped up at once, all wearing smiles.
“Ah, you’re the husband. I don’t think there’s room for these in her room anymore,” said the head nurse pointing at the flowers.
Carlos thought she had a very small room.
“Why is the room that small?” Carlos asked.
The nurse made her way around the counter leading him toward the room.
“Ha ha, it is now,” said the upbeat nurse.
They entered the room and it was then clear to Carlos what the nurse had meant. Flower arrangements filled the room. Tara was still unconscious and resting from having undergone an emergency C-section and life-saving abortion because she had a tubal pregnancy.
The nurse whispered, “She should be waking up soon.”
Puzzled, Carlos read off some of the cards attached to some of the magnificent flower arrangements.
One read, “Get well soon, our prayers are with you, Morgan Fairchild.”
“Wishing you well and a speedy recovery, Willie Nelson,” read another.
“They’ve been coming in one after another all day,” the nurse explained.
The movie set location was a Western town nicknamed Willie Ville, which was few hundred yards across from Nelson’s golf course and recording studio, thirty miles west of Austin, Texas.
The cast and crew enjoyed the amenities of the golf course on the weekends, and Carlos enjoyed meeting some of Willie’s friends, like Julio Iglesias, who recorded a hit duet with Willie titled “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” and played few rounds of golf with the famed Dallas Cowboy’s legendary coach, Tom Landry, who often golfed with Willie.
Back on the set, and a month later, on his kitchen truck, Carlos looked busy, preparing the day’s meal to feed the cast and crew.
Suddenly, his assistant Tony bolted out of the truck’s back door screaming, “Snake! Snake!”
Carlos fixed his eyes on the seven-foot diamond back coiled in the middle of the truck’s walkway. He had a sharp stainless steel spatula in hand. The snake’s tongue flickered, and then it leapt at him.
Carlos swiftly struck its neck with the spatula, severing its head.
He breathed a sigh of relief, only to be confronted by another snake that was hanging off a shelf. Again, to the delight of the onlookers, Carlos swung at it with the spatula with the precision backhand of a professional tennis player, splitting its head in two.
The cast and crew clapped loudly when Willie’s personal driver jumped into the driver’s seat of the running truck and put it into gear, pulling away and jarring items off the shelves.
“I think you were parked over their den, you lucky dog,” said the driver, as he stopped the truck.
“Say, I’d like to have these, if you don’t mind,” said the driver, pointing at the dead snakes.
“You can have them, but would you mind taking pictures for me? No one is going to believe this,” Carlos said.
The next day, Willie’s driver brought the snakes back skinned and cleaned.
“Willie would like you to cook these for lunch today,” the driver said.
“Really?” Carlos asked with surprise, as he’d never cooked snakes before.
“Honest,” the driver stated.
Carlos researched the best cooking process for the snakes and served them at lunch. He later found out that the driver had made Willie a belt and a cowboy hat bandana out of the skins.
That night, Carlos lay in the bathtub of his hotel room replaying the unusual events of the day and recalling another that took place while he was catering for Pale Rider with Clint Eastwood.
Eastwood had an avid taste for fish and other seafood, Carlos learned from the small fresh-fish house in Ketchum, Idaho, that supplied Clint Eastwood’s ranch, which was nearby. Clint fancied shark meat, but had not found a chef who could prepare it well. So, Carlos special ordered a blue shark, and got a six-footer. He knew that shark meat was heavy with mercury and needed to be cured.
To cure it, he bought a trough and placed it in the bathtub of the hotel room where he was staying, as there was nowhere else to put it. He filled the trough with white wine and lemon juice, and submerged the whole shark to cure the meat overnight. In the morning, he cleaned it, marinated it with garlic and spices, and placed it on an eight-foot barbeque, wrapped in foil to cook slowly.
After a long, hard day of shooting, Eastwood was delighted to see the shark perched over the barbeque with its mouth open, fully cooked, smelling and looking good.
Later, Carlos cleaned the shark’s jaw and gave it to Clint. Eastwood, impressed, would call upon Carlos’ services on many future projects.
A knock at the door awakened Carlos from his daydreaming; he wrapped a towel around his waist and answered the door, thinking it was his assistant.
“Do you always answer your door naked?” Willie Nelson’s daughter, Lana Nelson, asked, as she presented Carlos with an envelope with money in it.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m a very happily married man. You even sent my wife flowers, remember?” Carlos said.
“Well, isn’t that just too bad. Anyway, that’s the money to cover the Wrap party,” Lana said, teasing him.
“Ah, thanks,” Carlos replied, embarrassed.