220104 Sentinel, Chilli

Chilli has always been one of my favorite meals.

My mother made a great pot of chilli as did Joyce. Now that I am living alone I have to make my own and trust me it’s not nearly as good as either of them made.

My first job was working for an old lady next door, pulling weeds out of her garden for 5 cents an hour, back when I was a young boy.
My second job was for a man named Kenny Addleman. He made his living selling chilli and tamales. I would go to his place of business and make up a batch in a 50 gallon stainless steel cooker once a week while he was out on the road selling his chilli to businesses around town.
This is similar, but not as big as the vat I cooked chilli in.

All of the fixings were in the store waiting for me. I put it all together and then cooked it. The only thing I did not do was mix up the spices. They were always put into a large bowl he left waiting for me. His spices were his secret he never shared with anyone. There were large containers of ground beef in the cooler and I would have to get them out and put them into the vat to cook. The containers were so heavy I could barely lift them into the cooker. He also went to bakeries and bought day old goods that were mixed into the chilli. I had to grind up them for the chilli and of course the good ones I had for my after school snack. Once the chilli was all cooked I would leave the vat on warm and go home. He would come in after his sales route and freeze it in 1 pound chubs. It was a very good chilli and he sold all of it every week. On Saturdays he made tamales and there would be several of us that would take the tamales as he ran them through an extruder and then we had to put the wraps on them. The wraps were put around around the tamale and then we twisted the ends and pushed the ends in with our thumbs. By the end of the day our thumbs were sore. The next week we did it all over again.

Later after I no longer worked for Kenny on Saturdays, in the winter time my dad and grandpa took us boys with them up to our clubhouse. Mom and the girls never went up there in winter because it was so cold and the outhouse was not heated. It would be so cold at the club that the water would be frozen. Dad and grandpa would break a section of ice by the shoreline and put their beer in there to cool it to perfection.
This was grandpa out on the icy water, beer in hand.

There would also be some sodas there for us boys. Mom would put a big batch of chilli on the stove and cooked it slowly all day long. When we walked into the house the aroma of chilli filled the house and we dove into that chilli like ravenous animals.

When Joyce and I were in the navy in San Diego the first time I would invite the guys I had been on Guam with to our apartment. We had all been transferred to San Diego. Joyce was never sure how many were going to be there, so she would whip up a big batch of chilli to feed everyone. There was never any left over after supper. Once that was out of the way, out came Joyce’s old record player. We would sit listening to her old 45 rpm rock and roll records and then some country music we had on albums bought on Guam. Joyce hated country music of that era, but we were all drinking beer by then and having a great time together. Sometimes Friday night rolled right into Saturday mornings. Good memories!