A tale of two schools.

The Oscar statuettes have begun their stately walk to the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. On the evening of February 28, 2016, the best of the big pictures will vie for the coveted trophies whose official name is the Academy Award of Merit but who has been known as Oscar since 1931.

A tale of two schools will not be there.

“Together We’re Stronger” is a documentary film centered on an inner-city building in Kansas City, Missouri. That structure has housed two schools and been home to decades of students. It is not a big place, and the film is not a big picture. The movie is a surprising story of heart, hard work and unexpected joys.

If he knew, I think Oscar would take notice and smile.

* * *

The story begins in 1961.

Three high schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are consolidating. Two will be all girls. The third will be coed and house all the boys.

On the first day of classes, the young men converge on Lillis High School. They are a different mix. Many probably don’t care much for the move or their new classmates. Before, they had been separate with their own ways and their own teams. Now, they’ve been forced together.

At the first practice, the basketball coach sees something special. In the eyes of those young men, he sees fight. In their moves, he recognizes skill. And in their sighs, he understands their need for identity. He gives them everything he has.

Their first basketball game, the opposing team scores 49 points. The Lillis men score more and win. No opponent will do better that season. The Lillis High School Basketball Team wins every game, and Lillis High goes on to win the 1961 Missouri State Basketball Championship.

* * *

In 2015, the remaining players sit on the bleachers of the old gym.

The coach and their top scorer have died suddenly weeks before. (Death swings fairly, if unkindly.) As they reminisce and the camera runs, sadness wrinkles the corners of their eyes and softens their smiles. They each have had their successes and they are grateful. The missing star won an Olympic gold medal and played professionally. One speaks of the remembered loss of a close relative and they reach together to comfort their teammate.

They are a team, and they will always be unlikely friends who became family at the old school.

* * *

Back to 1979, Lillis High is shutting down.

A group approaches. They need a larger space for their school and they’re willing to renovate. The DeLaSalle Education Center, an alternative charter school for students without a school, makes the old building its new home.

Like the 1961 Lillis team, the DeLaSalle students are a different mix. At first, many probably don’t care much for their surroundings or their new classmates. Like the Lillis coach, the DeLaSalle teachers see the fight in their students’ eyes, the skill in their moves and the need in their sighs. They give those young people all they have.

The students of Lillis became what they couldn’t in the old school. The students of DeLaSalle become what they can’t in the new school. The old building is alive again with friends becoming family.

In time, the students will move out and into the world. With persistence and perseverance, they too will find the unexpected joys their hearts desire. It is the legacy of the two schools.

* * *

One day, a Mom and Dad with their two children will stop outside an empty building in Kansas City, Missouri.

The boy, the great-great-grandson of a Lillis basketball player, will look up and ask, “What is it, Daddy?” The girl, the great-granddaughter of a successful DeLaSalle graduate, will point and ask, “What happened there, Mommy?”

With a smile lightening the corners of their eyes, the parents will answer together, “There were champions, children. There were champions.”

* * *

“Together We’re Stronger” is dedicated to the old and new schools and for the support of The DeLaSalle Education Center. Take a look and enjoy the show. www.twsmovie.com I think I see Oscar smiling.

Grandpa Jim

The Movie that time forgot: The Revenant.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y[/embedyt]

A good yarn has a life of its own – even if few parts may be true.

There is a real story behind The Revenant.

In French, “revenant” is the word for a person who returns or is reborn.

In 1823, Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman on a fur trapping expedition up the Missouri River when he is attacked and mauled by a bear. Abandoned for dead by his companions, Glass crawls and floats many miles over many weeks to reach Fort Kiowa in present day South Dakota, USA.

Hugh Glass returns and is reborn as The Revenant, and his story is told, retold and grows into legend in paper, book and film since the days of its actual happening.

The most recent retelling is The Revenant movie that last evening at the Golden Globe Awards won Best Film Drama for director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio who plays Hugh Glass.

In real life, Hugh Glass sought out the two erstwhile companions who had taken his gear and left him for dead. History does not recount why he did so. Revenge may have been a factor, or maybe he just wanted his old rifle back. In any event, Hugh Glass cornered both parties on separate occasions and . . . he forgave both. He did not chase them with a hatchet or stab them with a knife. He forgave both men.

Hugh lived on in the Old West. He continued to hunt and fish and trap and have close-calls and real get-aways. The life of The Revenant was a life of true adventure.

Attributed to the Milwaukee Journal, I found this account of Hugh Glass’ final hour: “Old Glass with two companions had gone to Fort Cass to hunt bear on the Yellowstone, and as they were crossing the river on the ice, all three were shot and scalped by a war party of 30 Aricaras.”

In a sense, the bear was there at the story’s true ending.

Hollywood loves the exaggeration of retelling. Like Gollum in the cold pool at The Return of the King, they sink their teeth in the rawness that makes us cringe and turn away. With the pain of embellished experience, they would have us like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back hide in the warm carcass of the slain beast. Unlike Jimmie Braddock in Cinderella Man, we do not choose but are forced to endure the long slow crawl back to life – and the place we reach is not a cottage in New Jersey. With the sweep of Maria in The Sound of Music, these western hills are not just alive, they are overly alive with the clash of chase, fight and the bad business of mean men. We search for Mr. Peabody & Sherman and the validating historicity of the Wayback Machine to lend credence and meaning to a landscape run amok and find none. Yes, the scenery is beautiful, but disheveled and disassembled, in a tinted miasma of surreal season.

There is little to encourage in this retelling, and, at its heart, there is little hope.

At show’s end, I searched for the printed scroll to tell me the long struggle would not begin again for Hugh Glass. I found no such words crawling down the screen. To their finish, I watched to read but a brief paragraph on the new life of Hugh Glass. I waited not to see more red on white snow, but to view bridges built and crossed and the real story beyond show’s end.

I watched in vain, and for that we are both the lesser.

Grandpa Jim

Now we emerge to face the morrow.

Let the cameras begin to roll.

87 times to show.

This is the year of the 88^th Academy Awards ceremony to be held on February 28, 2016, in Hollywood, California. The best films of 2015 will be honored there and the Best Picture selected.

To date, there have been 87 Academy Award ceremonies and 87 Best Pictures selected and carefully place waiting on their shelves to be viewed again.

So starts “The Marathon of the 87 Best Pictures” and “EthnoSocioFamilyMovieOgraphy.”

Before we start, let’s visit the things that started the year.

One person defined a New Year’s resolution as a promise made at the beginning of the year and carefully kept for two weeks. The suggestion is that short-term resolutions are of small merit. Can this be true? The collective experience of the masses is that most resolutions are of a brief and passing nature – seldom reaching to year-end. Are those resolutions for their limited lives of little value?

In a past New Year, I resolved to eat more salads. After a brief period of time (let’s say two weeks to honor our humorous naysayer), my intent flagged and the green leaves wilted to brown on their plates. Was this from a failing commitment on my part? “Nay,” I say, “No!” I had in my weakened state experienced an epiphany, a revelation: I cared little for salad, and salad cared little for me.

Without the initial, if short-termed, resolution, there would have been no longer-term revelation. I would have been a lesser person lingering in continuing fear that lettuce was absolutely essential to my life. It is not.

The experience of my salad revolution birthed a revelation of personal understanding. I experienced a better appreciation of me. Resolution led to revelation. I now understood that lettuce was not as important as my own reasoned selection of foods. To eat less green was the wiser, happier and healthier personal choice.

In being broken, my New Year’s resolution had worked quite well!

We see then that what is important to the New Year is the honest experience of resolution, not blind commitment to a 365-day goal.

Some might say that this is just a rationale to justify broken resolutions. It is if you did not learn something about yourself in breaking the resolution. If you did learn more about you, it is not a rationale. If you learned the resolution is not compatible with you, it is a requirement to break that resolution.

Having said all of that, I am glad I did not make “The Marathon of 87 Best Pictures” a New Year’s resolution. It is not. It is a hope.

A “hope” is much more mysterious and less demanding than a “resolution.” Hope focuses beyond me to the future. Resolution focuses on me in the present.

I hope to watch all 87 Best Pictures in 2016. I am not resolved to learn anything about me in the process. I do hope to learn more about what those movies mean to friends and family who watch the shows with me.

That is the “EthnoSocioFamilyMovieOgraphy” part: “ethno” for people, “sociofamily” for the community of family and friends doing the watching, “movie” for the Best Pictures we will watch, and “ography” for my recording and tabulating the results.

We start this Friday by watching “Wings,” the first Best Picture, filmed in 1927 and winner at the 1^st Academy Awards held on May 16, 1929 in Los Angeles, California.

Reports will be posted, and I do hope we go the distance.

But I’m not making any resolutions.

Cheers,

Grandpa Jim

There is heartlessness in the Holidays that can drag down the spirit. Sometimes, the mean and hateful show through the kind and loving. Christmas will prevail. I know this. And I know when this happens, it helps to find a good movie.

People didn’t know it was. They weren’t sure what it was. That was thirty-eight (38) years ago. The first movie was Star Wars. It had another name, because it was the fourth in a series of nine stories. We knew little of those things or the future. We knew Star Wars, and it was the first and the best of the movies.

Thirty-two (32) years ago, the third movie was released. Return of the Jedi was the last of the first trilogy. It was a good movie — not as good as the first, but a commendable undertaking. With that third film, the actors of the first trilogy retired – or so we thought.

Now, 32 years later, those first characters are back in movie #7, The Force Awakens, which is playing in theaters around the world.

Actors usually age more slowly than their parts. This is not so this time. The stars are thirty-two years older in real time, and the story is set thirty-two years later in Star Wars time. It is a perfect fit. Little make-up is required.

With wrinkled brow and furrowed skin, Han Solo sports the same roguish smile. Chewbacca stands tall a mighty furball, but one who wounds more easily than in the past – even with the years, he is still the Best Fur in town. Princess Leia stops and stares with the same regal airs, but now she does so as General Leia. Luke Skywalker manages a face of graying stately hair that bears a remarkable resemblance to the beard of creator George Lucas. With laugh and action, it is good to have the old crew back with their new endearing looks.

They are not alone.

There are some young faces.

Rey is a tall girl in Dune garb who scavenges forgotten starships on the desert planet of Jakku. She is the new Luke Skywalker — though an actual physical lineage is never clearly delineated in this show. With tomboyish charm and a knack for fixing things, including the aged Millennium Falcon, Rey brings to the scenes a credible naivety that transcends the decades and is the glue that binds this show to the first. Rey’s character makes the film a true Star Wars.

There are others.

Maz Kanata is not young. She is short, bespectacled and over a 1,000 earth years old. She is the new Yoda, and the second new character after Rey I most look forward to seeing in the next show.

Kylo Ren, a big-haired dark knight of good lineage, is presented as the new Darth Vader. The core of the show begins to fade here. Ren is no Vader. As with the decline of evil in the first six shows, we find again the paucity of complex villainy needed to hold the tension and the audience. Ren’s boss, Supreme Leader Snoke (perhaps the old Emperor recovering after a bad fight in an alley), lacks the substance of a true bogeyman and needs a smaller chair. General Hux is a replay of the bad generals of the past.

Opposing this motley crew of hatchet men, there are some new good guys who may themselves be best remembered as forgotten action figures on the shelves of dusty storage units. Fin is a reformed sanitary engineer who presents a puzzling romantic relationship with Rey. He may be at his best not revived from the sick bed at show’s end. Resistance Pilot Poe is a punctuation mark. BB-8 is the new R2-D2, but he is not the droid R2-D2 was.

Do you see the problem? The supporting cast of The Force Awakens is not as good as it was for the first Star Wars. In addition to strong leads, great shows need great supporting characters and great actors filling those roles.

Rey is the new lead. The old Luke, the old Chewbacca and the old Leia join her. They are strong, but it is clear the old guard is passing. Beside Rey, Fin does not make it. Behind Rey, I see only Maz as strong support. Kylo Ren and the bad guys are a serious meltdown.

The Force Awakens has an intriguing ending. It is my second favorite Star Wars movie of all time. Unfortunately, there is the single Rey of new life in the lead and little supporting cast to build two more installments.

I am, with many I fear, worried for the future.

For the present, let’s finish with the meaning of the season and the Star Wars.

Those closest to you will hurt and help you most. It is one of the deep secrets of the universe. This is the true Star Wars and the real Christmas. It rings most true when the hurt is fresh and there seems nowhere to go.

At the end of the movie, young Rey stands facing Luke on a cold rocky cliff above breaking waves. There, over the chill waters, she reaches for a new hope. At the ending, we glimpse a new tomorrow and the beginning of the next. So it is at the ending and beginning of all things, and so it is at Christmas each year and at Star Wars each show.

A new hope and the glimpse of a new tomorrow.

May the force be with them and with us.

Help in need is help indeed.

Merry Christmas!

Grandpa Jim

Is this the year the Christmas cards stopped? I’m not complaining, but we do seem to receive fewer and fewer. I’m referring to the old fashioned mail-‘em-in-an-envelope-with-a-postage-stamp-affixed Christmas cards. I get e-cards and social media Holiday hi-and-hello’s. Certainly I am sent all of those, and they are fun and appreciated.

Still, I miss the cards. I guess they’re a little like “vinyl” records. Funny, I don’t remember calling the discs vinyls. They were just “records.” Before 8 tracks, cassette tapes and CD’s, there were records. Now, they’re vinyl’s, and they’re making a comeback. Not so the Christmas cards. I fear no comeback is in site for them.

They really aren’t that old. In 1843 in England, Sir Henry Cole sent the first Christmas cards of his own creation using the newly formed Public Post Office for delivery. The post office and the railroads made those Christmas cards possible. Before that, the handling and transportation were far too expensive for mailed missives of Holiday cheer.

In the United States, cards were not widely sent until 1875 when Louis Prang started printing the Holiday greetings in mass quantities. As costs dropped, popularity increased. Then, in 1915, John Hall and his two brothers started Hallmark Cards. With the new fanciful and fun designs, who didn’t want to send Grandma and Uncle Ned a card at Christmas? The mailboxes were flung open and the flood of Holiday cards began in earnest.

Up to two billion a year – at their peak. It was down to 1.4 billion a few years back. Now, the US Postal Service says most households are sending less than half the cards they sent just the other December. And, the numbers are dropping.

I remember the joys of a child’s Christmas. My brothers, sister and I would wait wide-eyed in our beds until Santa had finished his and her work. As the house quieted, we drifted in and out of sleep until the bravest slipped to floor, crawled to the door and peeked to nod for the others to follow. Down the hall we crept to the glowing tree and the wonders beneath.

A month before, the Christmas catalog had arrived. We poured through its pages. Each could pick one wish. We did, we waited and we hoped for that night.

I can still see the small rocket launcher waiting for me. My excitement was boundless. I loaded a rubber tipped dart, aimed and fired. One of my mother’s prized ornaments exploded into glistening fragments floating to the floor. It was a moment I will never forget, both from the joy of the moment and the admonitions that followed in the morning.

From frown, the questioning brow softened to smile as the Christmas tune played in the background. All things were forgiven on that day.

To this day, I find myself singing, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas” just about anywhere, everywhere and pretty much all year long. Judy Garland first sang the song in 1944. My parents played it on Christmas mornings. It’s sung each year by new artists with new smiles and new tears. There are both in Christmas. Like the Christmas search, the rocket launcher and the shattered ornament, the song is there to surprise and comfort.

Cards may be fewer and paper less used. Pictured memories and even the music may fade with time. Let your heart be light. Have a merry little Christmas now. And hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyW1A-S1lmY[/embedyt]

Faithful friends who are near to us,

Gather near to us.

GPA Jim

Life like the year is a journey — from beginning to end, season to season, rain to sun. Ours is waning. Cold frosts the tops of morning fences. Plants hide near the fading heat of soil.

Splashed by recent rains, Brave Snapdragon warms its fierce breath beneath the blanket of newborn day.

At its side, Tiny Viola wrinkles pansy arms, stretches and sighs to dance her turn.

Friendly Garden Elf laughs at the antics of plants.

Lady Gerber demurely hides a blush beneath the browned tips of her chilled leaves.

Heightened hope lightens Languishing Lavender to leap for the sky.

Saddened Marigold sees, sheds silver tears and mopes.

Fate has stamped her seal on Daisy Profusion. Tears shed, head bowed, she droops to send the seeds of next-year’s spring.

Butterflies southward bound and gone, Mother Abelia lifts her strawflower blooms to the light-studded eve.

Father Holly Berry blinks to focus an eye as the time approaches.

Far off, three chipped Kings of Ancient East with camels and gifts under the bright bulb of Christmas star advance toward the cardboard stable.

There a child rests, mother and father nearby, a plastic sheep at the tiny babe’s feet.

While in the sky, a Brave Young Angel takes wing.

With bright voice and song, the sweet smiling cherub makes loud the pronouncement: “It is the Season of the King!”

Grandpa Jim

A Story by Grandpa Jim

The Turkey was reading. More precisely, he’d Googled “turkey” on his iPad.

“I’m a large bird native to the forests of Mexico and North America,” he read aloud. He liked to read and talk on his perch. “Most people don’t even know I ‘perch.’ All they ever see is my frozen cousins in the grocery. Poor birds.” He scanned down the page with his beak. “So that’s where the name came from. The early settlers thought I was a guinea fowl from the country of Turkey. I’m not. I’m a completely separate and independent species. The cheek.” He cleared his snood, uttered an incensed gobble and read on. “They’re right about that one,” he cackled. “We’re older than these pesky homo sapiens. Over 20 million years and counting. All the way back to the Early Miocene.”

He lifted and shivered. Winter was approaching. More precisely, Thanksgiving was approaching. He shook his wattle at the thought.

“Squanto was behind it all. He and those Wampanoag committed that first fowl act of inviting his roasted ancestors to Thanksgiving in 1621.” A native American, he reconsidered the criticism. “It was the Presidents,” he huffed. “THEY declared a formal November Holiday. From Washington, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, those in Washington conspired to set the table for a feast on the fourth Thursday in November.” He could understand corn, potatoes and pumpkins – even eels (slimy things), but his friends? He lifted and strutted on the branch before roosting back with a sigh. It had been a struggle ever since.

He’d escaped years ago. More precisely, he was a free turkey – perhaps the last.

“’Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.’” He kee-kee’d the lyrics into the damp woods. “’Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon if it ain’t free, no no.’” He missed Janis Joplin and loved to listen to her on YouTube. In another life, he would have liked to play guitar in her band. Just to be her friend, not Bobby, just her friend, and help when she needed help. “’Hey, feelin’ good was good enough for me, mm-hmm.’” He sank a little lower on the branch. “I would have been her friend,” he whispered to the rain.

There would be no “Return of the Ape” movie for him and his kind. More precisely, their days were numbered, as they were each year.

The rain fell lightly across his feathers

It had been long since he’d had a true friend

His beak touched the iPad off

The games were fun and the media too

But there was more to life

He bowed his neck on the soggy branch

And hummed

“’And, feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when we sang the blues’”

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXV_QjenbDw[/embedyt]

Keith Urban is a very successful country music singer and songwriter. Keith was born October 26, 1967 in Whangarei, New Zealand. When he was 17, Keith lived with his parents in Caboolture, Queensland, Australia. His father owned a convenience store. One day, his dad placed an ad in the store window for a guitar teacher. The rest, we know, is musical history.

Thirty-five singles by Keith Urban have reached the US country music charts. Eighteen have gone #1. The young singer has three Grammy award singles.

On June 25, 2006, Keith Urban married American-born Australian actress Nicole Kidman. They have two daughters, Rose and Faith Margaret.

In June 2015, Keith released a new single to critical and fan-held acclaim. In part, the verses go: “I’m a 45 spinning on an old Victrola. . . . I’m Mark Twain on the Mississippi. . . . And I learned everything I need to know from John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16.”

John Cougar Mellencamp is a 64-year-old singer-songwriter. He is called a “roots rocker.” Mellencamp’s songs describe and document “the joys and struggles of ordinary people.” His rock ‘n roll “looks directly at the messiness of life as it’s actually lived.”

Cougar’s most successful hit single is “Jack & Dianne.” The song was released in 1982 and spent four weeks at #1. In its own words, the work is a “Little ditty about Jack and Dianne, Two American kids growin’ up in the heartland.” It is a sadly haunting piece, an aching after the lost days of small town youth, and a deep sigh for a past that echoes ever in your head. “Oh yeah, life goes on, Long after the thrill of livin’ is gone.” That refrain is its own lament to the fading glory of two young people lost in the heartland of their own souls.

Since 1837, John Deere has been tractors — rough engine growls in the cold morning and the endless checkerboard of plowed fields at day’s end. I grew up with the green and yellow of the leaping deer, the company’s mascot for the past 135 years. My Dad worked in their engine works, my relatives ran their equipment, and Uncle Joe favors the Deere on his lands. “Nothing Runs Like a Deere” is the proud slogan of the company and the pure country it serves.

The 1993 film “Pure Country” was not a particularly successful movie, but it was George Strait’s most successful country music album. A theatrical bombshell, it was nonetheless a musical blockbuster; and it contained the #1 song, “Heartland,” with these memorable lyrics: “Sing a song about the heartland . . . Where they still know wrong from right . . . Where simple people living side by side, Still wave to their neighbor when they’re drivin’ by.” The joys of the heartland were there for George Strait; and from his film and music, they continue there for us today.

Keith Urban saw the heartland in the music of his trade and in the equipment that works the land.

The heartland.

The heartland is the Bible Belt, and John 3:16 is the centerpiece of that book. “For God so loved the world” is the start and the heart of the verse. Those words remain to echo long after the thrill of life is gone. They are still running long after the Deere has stopped. They are the singer’s vision that follows the beat of the music and the throb of the land. They are the heartland.

The heartland.

John Cougar, John Deere and John 3:16.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdu8M2val_w[/embedyt]

Oh, the weather outside is chilly

But the chili is so delightful

Let us Eat! Let us Eat! Let us Eat!

It’s that time of year. CHILI TIME!

The temperatures have dropped as the monsoons have approached. It’s wet and soggy, it’s soup time in Texas, and that means chili.

Long before now, the Spanish landed in Mexico and discovered the native peppers. “Chili” is the Aztec word for a chili pepper, and for an Aztec to fast was to abstain from salt and chilies. The variety of chilies is mystifying, but all chilies have two things in common: they are tasty and they are hot. A man who lost his taste buds to peppers invented the Scoville Scale to measure the degree of heat in a chili: Hmmm, better, hot, hotter, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. The Spanish saw it, tasted it, liked it and invented the chili brick for their travels.

The first chili was a brick. You took dried beef, salt, suet (fat) and a generous portion of dried chilies (of your choice – the hotter the better, it may be a long trip). Next, you pounded the ingredients together into a pulverized mass of pepper and beef. Then, you shaped the mound into the form of a brick, set it out in the sun to dry, and waited to begin your journey.

The next expedition was to Texas. The bricks of Aztec chili were ready. History was about to be made.

But wait, let’s fast forward and go back to the future. We’ll circle around and come back to those Spanish travelers and their bricks, but first the grand unveiling.

* * *

It was 1893 and the Chicago Word’s Fair was in full swing. Let’s say the day is October 9, 1893, the day the fair set a record for outdoor event attendance: 751,026 people. You’re in the crowd. Someone points. There. Over there. In the food court. Do you see it? The “San Antonio Chili Stand.” (This is where Old Dave and Ciddy got the idea to introduce the world to the Texas hamburger at the St. Louis World’s Fair coming up in 1904 — see the blog post of August 28, 2012). San Antonio used the Chicago World’s Fair to introduce the  rest of us to Texas Chili. I mean the fair goers stood in long lines for a good hot bowl of Texas Red, and the planet has not been the same since.

The chili race was on. Everyone reached for the stove. Chili parlors opened everywhere. Why, over in Cincinnati, they put cinnamon in their chili and served it over spaghetti. The peoples of our globe could not contain themselves in the rush to make Tex-Mex the cuisine of choice and chili the king of the kitchen.

* * *

It was 1895. Back in Texas after the fair, rancher Lyman Davis of Corsicana was so excited he developed a new lean mean chili, named it after his pet wolf, and started selling pots and bricks of “Wolf Brand Chili” to local cafes and neighbors down the way.

The brick was back and the world loved it.

Why, just the other day, I spied a can of Wolf Brand Chili on Uncle Joe’s pantry shelf.

It’s really hard to argue with chili success.

* * *

Now, let’s return to those first Spanish expeditionaries to Texas.

They were tired and worn. It had been a long trek across the Chihuahuan desert. They’d forded the Rio Grande near the Big Bend and found shade and friendly folk in a place called Terlingua. The cook had big pots of water boiling over a couple of fires. Everyone was watching. Cookie threw bricks of that Aztec chili into each pot and started stirring. The locals smelled and smiled and got their own ideas. One group ran and picked armfuls of tomatoes. Another raced for beans. This one grabbed the local spices. Another reached for fresh meats hanging from the morning hunt.

They returned to their pots and threw in their offerings: beans here, tomatoes there, some extra meat for sure, and spices flying through the air. It was a competition. They laughed, stirred, sampled, shared, sat back and enjoyed a good hot bowl of Texas chili.

That was the first Terlingua Chili Cookoff, and the participants were all happy and relaxed winners that year. Tex-Mex chili was invented, discovered and had found its true place on the planet.

The world would have to wait until 1893, but Texas was right at home with the official dish of the State of Texas.

* * *

Visit the Terlingua Cookoff this year?

It’s down Big Bend way and that is a farther piece.

Dollars to donuts, you’re sure to find every Texas chili imaginable.

And a whole fine mess of the most friendliest folk,

Stirring up an adventure in every bite!!

Now, can you take the heat?

I bet you can.

Adio,

And Yippee,

Bring on the Brick!

It’s CHILI TIME IN TEXAS.

Grandpa Jim

“What’s that?” she asked, as we pulled out onto the road.

“A Corvette,” I responded, looking closer at the car ahead. “More precisely, a 1963 Sting Ray.” The driver accelerated in a cloud of smoke. “The best Vette ever.” I smiled, sinking back into the seat.

It was 1963, the third season of the “Route 66” TV series. Two young men without funds are driving Route 66 in a convertible Corvette taking odd jobs to pay for gas. Each episode was filmed at a new stop with a new cast of supporting actors and a new story. In 1963, the two are seated in a brand new green Sting Ray Corvette. You can’t tell the car is green, because the show was filmed in black and white; and you have no idea how two vagabonds with almost no luggage or apparent means of support managed a new Vette; but they did, and you pulled closer to the set as the adventure unfolded before you. It was the early days of TV, every automobile in that show was a Chevrolet, and credibility was not a concern to a good story with a great car.

I squinted as the Vette disappeared over a hill. “Those were the days,” I sighed. “On Route 66.”

“That’s an old highway. Right?” she asked. “It’s not around any more.”

“It’s not.” I breathed deeply.

The road disappeared in 1985, replaced by the new Intestate Highway System — everything all nice and straight, east and west, north and south . . . not wandering around from town to town, gas station to motel, stop to stop. It was the old Will Rogers Highway from Chicago, Illinois the Santa Monica, California. Established in 1926, the lanes ran for 2,448 miles through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

On TV, they drove its hills and turns in that Corvette.

“A good road for a Vette,” I murmured.

“Why?” she asked, looking over.

I laughed. “The Corvette is the quintessential American sports car. There are newer sports cars, fancier sports cars, maybe even faster sports cars — though I’m not conceding that, but there is no more American sports car. Sports cars love the feel and turn of a good road, and the Corvette is most at home on an old fashioned American highway, close to the hard surface of the pavement and the good folks who live along its length. That’s where a Vette belongs, and that was Route 66.”

“You sound like a song.”

“I know a good one.”

“Really,” she said.

I fumbled with the CDs in the center compartment.

“For your musical entertainment. A bit of Austin sound from a group that’s never ‘Asleep at the Wheel.’”

I slid the disc into the player.

“Rhythm, rhyme and ride along Route 66.”

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vifUaZQL8pc[/embedyt]