When dealing with the public, you get to meet all kinds…..

The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis is world renowned for it’s Native American and Western Art. It is a spectacular facility that used to host an annual chili cook-off as part of the fund raising efforts. I used to sponsor the ‘firefighter division’, encouraging area fire department teams to compete against other firehouse cooks for bragging rights to the best firehouse chili. I’d participate as well, though not in the competition, making an extract based chili that was simply done as a joke… and because it was expected of me. This stuff was not only incredibly hot, it was totally inedible and designed to be that way. You figure out the suspected heat level from some of the following ingredients. Keep in mind that this only went into a single four gallon pot of chili: one pound of finely diced habaneros, one pound of finely diced Red Savina®, one half pound of Tepin chiles, one quarter pound of Apple Smoked Red Savina®, one bottle of my Red Savina® Garlic Sauce, and two entire bottles of my ‘Stupid Hot’.

My chile was made this hot only because of popular demand. Over the years, oddly enough, I’d developed a reputation as having some incredibly hot chili. I seemed to attract the lunatic fringe and folks came back year after year wanting, no- demanding to know if I had made it hotter than the previous year. I was only giving the customers what they wanted. There would usually be a crowd of some fifty or sixty people hanging around at my booth, chanting at the timid folks in line- ‘do it, do it, do it’. Upon shooting down the small sample of chili, the crowd would cheer and roar and invite the person to come over and suffer through it with them, they being veterans of it and all. The crowd favorite one year was a teenager who started pulling up handfuls of turf and sticking them into his mouth, trying vainly for some relief.

It certainly wasn’t like there weren’t a plethora of warning signs either! Given the myriad of admonitions, I really didn’t have much sympathy for folks who wanted to complain that it was ‘hot’. The queue line was formed with alternating rows of ‘Fire Scene’ tape, ‘Hazardous Materials Scene’ tape, and ‘Crime Scene’ tape. I served the stuff up while wearing my full firefighting gear, including air pack. I would tell each person before they got their sample that they would be done tasting chile for at least the next twenty minutes or so. Signs posted along the queue warned that the stuff was ridiculously hot. I had hazardous materials warning placards- “Combustible Material”, “Corrosive Material”, “Radioactive”, and “Flammable” along the line. Other signs I made included ‘Don’t be Stupid- Don’t Eat This!’, ‘If Your IQ is Greater Than a Houseplant, Back Out Now!’ and ‘If you’re smart enough to read this sign, you’re smart enough not to try this stuff’. Of course, that last one might have been a bit optimistic.

It was getting on towards the end of the event, and a good time had been had by all. The alcohol was flowing freely, people were being lit up, eighty other teams were sampling chili out as well, the bands were playing, and it was a beautiful Autumn day. A guy comes up and I give him the standard warning- ‘you know this stuff is going to ruin you, don’t you?’. He is doing the ‘high speed wobbles’, obviously more than a bit intoxicated. He assures me that it can’t be that hot and I give him the next to last scrapings out of the bowl. As most everyone is out of chili at this time, several of the other firefighter teams have gathered around me. We’re shooting the breeze, talking about what a hoot it has been, and they’re thanking me for paying the booth fees for them- part of my sponsorship thing. All is right with the world. Free chili, the company of fellow firefighters, and free beer. It can’t get much better than that.

Into this idyllic mix, staggers that drunk to whom I’d just served the last of the chili. I’d say he made a bee-line for me, but it would have broken a snakes’ back trying to follow the several sideways lurches he made. He roars up, wanting to let me know that he didn’t appreciate being lit up like that. I point out all the warning signs and have him read them one at a time. I asked him if he thought that meant the stuff mightn’t be hot. ‘Yeah, but I didn’t know it’d be that hot’. I suggested that his problems were more congenital in nature at that point and he ought to take it up with his parents. He had a suspicion that was an insult but couldn’t quite make it out. “Wha’s that ‘sposed a’mean?” “Exactly” I said. He failed to understand the irony of the exchange. He crowded forward, flexing his ‘beer muscles’ until we were trading ‘Eskimo kisses’, nose on nose. Only problem for him was, I was wearing my ten pound leather firefighter helmet and used the bill of it to keep bopping him in the forehead to make him keep a bit of distance. He also failed to see that there were at least a half dozen firefighters starting to edge forward as well. They were feeling no pain either and were just waiting for the first twitch from this guy as an excuse to tear him to pieces. The drunk showed an amazing lack of ‘situational awareness’.

He finally settled for me eating some of the chile to show him that it wasn’t that hot (hell yes it was!) and that he was just being a wimp. Somehow satisfied by this, he staggered off again, much to the disappointment of the other firefighters.