Ain't That America

                  

                                 WHAT I LEARNED FROM CHILI ABOUT PC

                                  Teeth placed before the tongue give good advice.

                                                                                Italian Proverb

Ever give anyone advice about a restaurant?

If you brag it up, they go; and it sucks. Or you mutter something mundane like, “It’s a restaurant!” They go there, love the place and you have no taste.

 It’s usually one of those either-way things. Forget all that win-win nonsense; this is a lose-loser. That’s why I stopped giving out advice about restaurants years ago when a friend of mine came back from one of my favorite beaneries we’ll call Chili Chad’s.

 Alas! Chili Chad’s is no more. And for chili lovers that’s like saying hold the onions. Chili Chad’s was one of those joints that couldn’t pass a good health food inspection on a bet. But the chili was delicious. It was one those little hole-in-the wall mom-and-poppers on the back roads of my youth growing up in the Midwest. The restaurant sat on a corner in a nondescript storefront in a blue collar neighborhood where everyone almost knew everyone else and the Mr. and Mrs. resided in the rear.

On cold, wintry afternoons when the lunch bell at school sounded most of us would dart over to Chili Chad’s to suck up a bowl of the best chili I ever ate. And judging from the daily crowds I was hardly alone. School day in and school day out during those long winter months the money that was suppose to go to the cafeteria for its healthy plate lunches with lots of  beets and carrots and pot roast went to Chili Chad’s. And incidentally, those plate lunches always included a small carton of whole milk.

But my God! who with any real taste buds would ever eat and drink that stuff when one could devour a hamburger, a bowl of chili at Chad’s, wash it all down with 12-ounces of RC cola in a real glass bottle and still manage to get in 15 minutes on the playground before the bell sounded to go back to class?

During the summer months Chad and the Mrs. usually closed up shop and went off somewhere. One of the neatest things about the chili at Chad’s was the grease you could always see floating around the surface and the steam that came wafting up from the piping hot bowl. In real estate it may be about location, but with food it’s the aroma, Jake! And the chili at Chad’s was the best-smelling I’ve ever sunk a big spoon into. You could always smell it outside in the cold, dreary lunch-time air nearly half a block away. The aroma was kind of a free advertisement to the entire neighborhood: Chad and Mrs. Chad were back cooking chili again.

Though I often tried I never did get Chad or his Mrs. to fully divulge their secrets. The chili had gobs of beans, ground beef, onions and tomatoes for sure, but it also had something else that surprises people when I tell them, potatoes, lots of potatoes, fresh and all neatly chopped in tiny little cubes.

Over its existence I don’t have a clue how many people enjoyed chili at Chad’s. They closed the school down nearly a generation ago and I heard some years later that Chad and Mrs. Chad had, like all of us will someday, moved on to that big beanery in the sky. In today’s PC world places like Chili Chad’s are about as rare as vending machines selling sweets at middle schools. Some folks no doubt will call that progress.   

Chad and the Mrs. made chili, the best I ever had. That much is still crystal clear. And after all these years what they didn’t do remains just as clear: they never tried to please everyone, a bona fide prescription for mediocrity, not to mention a mediocre bowl of chili.
j.z. plato