"This Needs More Chili"

Okay, I've already noted that one of the truly great moments of being a father, up there with the first time she said, "Daddy," or "You're the greatest Daddy in the world," or "Can you teach me to..." came recently when my daughter laughed hysterically at Night at the Opera, and thus fell in love with the Marx Brothers. But tonight, she said the words that I've waited seven years to hear: "This needs more chili."

I will explain in detail shortly, but this was a great moment!

Today will also mark my father's birthday, May 21. Had he lived he would have been 97 today. I can't conceive of him at that age, or at any age past his mid-60s when he died, but it always makes me remember him.

I believe I've mentioned Hard Times Cafe before. It's a local chili place Tam and I have gone to many times. In fact, we went to various Hard Times restaurants when dating, and on certain key moments in our life, including (though we didn't tell the relatives) our wedding night, when we took a cab (our car was hidden to avoid decorations). It was where we went after our miscarriage, but also one of the first if not the first places we took Sarah.

She's always liked it, but she always ate spaghetti with cheese, not chili. But she's been having some symptoms her doctor thinks may be lactose intolerance --a huge number of Asians develop lactose intolerance sometime in their life -- so she's off cheese, milk, and other dairy products (ice cream!) for two weeks at least. So tonight at Hard Times, she ordered a chiliburger, chili on the side. She loved it. When she said, "This needs more chili,"
I knew my daughter was growing up. Along with the Marx Brothers moment and, of course, her first use of an assault weapon, I really think this ranks as one of the transformative moments.

She was, of course, weaned on one of the great chili parlors of history, Fred & Red's in Joplin, Missouri. For background, see here, and here and especially here, with the unnerving news that it may be sold (though so far as I can determine this hasn't yet happened.) (Fred & Red's does not have a website. In fact, it does not currently even have a telephone. It's always full, and reservations are not required.) It was once famous enough that model railroaders even have created a model of it in its earlier form. Sarah is at least the third generation in my family to have gone there. The photo above, taken in 2005, doesn't, I think, give enough detail of Sarah's face to invade her privacy today.

I'm pretty sure it's the greatest chili parlor in the world, and makes the second greatest chili (mine is first), but of course I'm biased.

So you can see why, "This needs more chili!," makes me proud.

The place started downtown somewhere in 1923, and in 1943 -- already an institution -- moved to its present location in the 1700 block of Main Street. Fred Herring founded it and at one time he had a partner named Grover. In the 1950s Fred and Grover had split, and Grover started his own place with a similar if not identical secret recipe. Loyalists went with either Fred or Grover; my family was a Fred's family. So were enough to mean Grover went out of business. Red Wilcoxson joined with Fred and it became, sometime in the 50s I think, Fred & Red's. Though they put aluminum siding on around the white-painted cinder blocks sometime in the 50s or 60s, they never made other changes. (They did go from paper-cone chili bowls to plastic sometime after the 60s, apparently because the state insisted for health reasons.) They are still making tamales with a press Fred acquired in the 1920s.

Fred, who was white-haired even when I was a grade-schooler, died long ago. Red ran the place through much of my adolescence, but also died some years back, and his son has owned it since, but is getting out of the business. It is truly a classic chili parlor, remarkably unchanged. The menu is what it was when I was a kid: chili, hamburgers, hot dogs (steamed in the old days and perhaps still), "spaghetti red" (chili with spaghetti, what in Cincinnati is called "chili mac"), and my own favorite, the tamale spread (tamales with chili over them). Other than the prices (naturally) and the aforementioned abandonment of paper cones, it has changed not at all since my childhood, though the neighborhood has: most of the neighboring stores are closed; the Piggly Wiggly next door is now a thrift store, and the area is somewhat depressed. But at lunchtime, last time I was there, you still had to stand and wait for a stool to come free. (The sites I linked to say there are either 22 or 23 stools: Must count next time I'm there.)

That reminds me, though, of the famous legend that no one can count the stones at Stonehenge twice and get the same number (a variant is that you can't measure them twice and get the same measurements). Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary you still hear this legend. Is it possible the 23rd seat at Fred and Red's is impossible to count? Is it a phantom seat? Fred's? Or Red's? (Or Grover's?) There's some sci-fi image I'm thinking of right now but I can't figure out at the moment what it is. (Ray Bradbury maybe? Anybody, add a comment?)

I note too that Red's son is trying to sell the place through a guy named Bob Garvin, certainly a son or grandson of the Burl M. Garvin who was a big Joplin realtor in my youth. The 50s are still making themselves felt into the new millennium, but I'm worried about Fred and Red's. It may be the canary in the coal mine. When it's gone, something fundamental will be lost.

Because This needs more chili.

And is there any one of us, or anything, of which that cannot be said?

One question I've always had, especially since the rest of the block has become full of parking lots and remnant stores: why not expand the place? This place could even be franchised! But part of its charm is its unchangeability.

I want to be there right now. I ate at Hard Times tonight, but Fred's is better.