E
very November, in a town next
to Nowhere, thousands of peo-
ple converge for not one, but
two Championship Chili Cook-offs.
Otherwise known as “a bowl of red,”
the saying goes that chili is only real if
it’s prepared by a Texan. Fifty years
ago, two gentlemen, one a Texan and
one from New York, decided to take
this statement to the dusty streets of
Terlingua, Texas, and settle it once
and for all.
H. Allen Smith was a columnist for
Holiday, a midcentury magazine that,
in its prime, brought glamorous locales
to the readers across post-war America
when the days of glorious travel were
in their infancy. The magazine spared
no expense and boasted such writers as
Jack Kerouac, Ian Fleming, Truman
Capote, Joan Didion and Arthur C.
Clarke, as well as Faulkner, Steinbeck
and Hemingway, not to mention stun-
ning photography and art.
In 1967, Smith wrote an essay in
Holiday entitled “Nobody Knows More
About Chili Than I Do.” Frank X.
Tolbert, a columnist for The Dallas
Morning News and author of A Bowl of
Red and his columnist buddy, Wick
Fowler, read the article. Possibly in a
smoky bar over a longneck or a
Manhattan. (The two gentlemen and a
group of their friends – who were the
original founders of the Chili
Appreciation Society – considered
Fowler’s chili to be one of the best
around.) A portion of the verbose cata-
lyst by Smith read:
“Let it be understood that I am well dis-
posed toward Texans and enjoy visiting their
state; I’m tolerant of all their idiotic posturing,
of every one of their failings, save only this
arrant acclaim of superiority in the composing
of chili. Mr. Tolbert of Dallas … declares
that acceptable chili should contain no toma-
toes, no onions, and no beans. This is a thing
that passeth all understanding going full speed.
It offends my sensibility and violates my mind.
Mr. Tolbert criticizes Lyndon Johnson’s chili
recipe because it leaves out beef suet and
includes tomatoes and onions. Yet the
President’s chili contains no beans. To create
chili without beans, either added to the pot or
served on the side, is to flout one of the basic
laws of nature. I’ve been told that when I was
a baby and it came time to wean me, I was fed
Eagle Brand Milk with navy beans frapped
into it.”
In Wild West form, Tolbert chal-
lenged Smith to a chili duel against
Fowler later that month. (Note: Smith
was second choice as a duelist – their
first choice became ill – but he was a
natural one due to his inciting words.)
They chose Terlingua, Texas as the
location because their friend Carroll
Shelby (of Shelby Mustang fame) and a
Dallas attorney, Dave Witts, had prop-
erty there which they were trying to
sell. They made a side bet to see if they
could draw a crowd in the double-digit
town. It may have also been men-
tioned that if the event were to be a
screw-up and a mess, no one would
notice – all of Terlingua was a mess
anyway, so they thought.
There were no actual winners of the
cook-off the first two years. The first
year was declared a draw between
Smith and Fowler. The second year,
legend has it that a masked bandit with
a rifle grabbed the ballot box and
threw it down a mineshaft.
The cook-off gained popularity due
to the many articles written about it in
high-profile magazines as well as its
infamy in regards to the amount of
alcohol consumed and the antics of
showmanship present.
The seventies marked a turning
point for the cook-off. Although the
first few years were “Men Only,” in
1974 a woman became the World’s
Champion for the first time. That was
the last year that the cook-off, under
the International Chili Society banner,
was held in Terlingua. (Tolbert,
Shelby and C.V. Wood organized the
ICS in 1970.) In 1974, Frank X.
Tolbert resigned from the ICS board.
Carroll Shelby took the ICS designa-
tion to California, leaving the
Terlingua event under the Chili
Appreciation Society International, or
CASI, umbrella. In 1977, chili became
the official dish of Texas as per the
Texas Legislature (although it’s
unclear if that’s with beans or without).
Charles Maxwell, a local Alpine res-
ident, was farming in Redford in the
beginning years of the cook-off and
attended a couple times when it was
held at the Terlingua Ghost Town. “It
wasn’t my total cup of tea,” he said.
Later, however, the cook-off moved to
the property of Glen Pepper, at an old
mining project he bought and named
“Villa de la Mina.” There were a few
structures in place at the Villa when
Pepper purchased the property and
Maxwell started caretaking the Villa.
He expanded the space for RVs and
built on to the music stage and conces-
sion area, clearing and leveling out old
goat pens. Pepper brought in rocks and
dirt to terrace the arroyo so there
would be a level area for RVs to park.
In Terlingua, on the first weekend
in November, there’s an equal chance
of the weather being hot or cold, wet
or dry. One year five inches of rain fell
in a short time, as sometimes happens
in the volatile desert. The voluminous
rain caused the RVs to sink into the
freshly cleared slop… “Down, down,
down into the goat shit. We laughed
and laughed,” Maxwell remembers.
The cook-off continued to grow
because chili eating and beer drinking
go together like peas and carrots. Beer
trucks came and parked to serve the
thousands of people who heartily
drank beer for days. “The paving on
the dance floor was hundreds of
smashed beer cans,” Maxwell recalled.
Different classes of people drink dif-
ferently, and according to Maxwell,
“The best drinkers are the motorcy-
clists. They’re used to drinking and
have been in trouble enough to know
how to stay out of it. Then you have
the chili cooks who sometimes get pissy
and obnoxious. They’re ‘king of the
hill’ at the cook-offs, and sometimes
this notoriety heats up their heads. The
worst drinkers are the college students;
inexperienced and irresponsible,
they’re the ones who need the most
coddling.”
At the front gate where the money is
taken, three or four people always
worked as money takers to accommo-
date the lines of motorcycles, cars, and
RVs waiting to get into the cook-off.
One year back in the day, Maxwell
said, a drunken college guy decided to
play cowboy and proceeded to prac-
tice his tie-down roping on one of the
money takers. As Joe College started
dragging the money taker with his
rope, the son of the money taker
jumped to the rescue. The son threw
Joe College onto the hood of the next
car in line where two older ladies wait-
ed to pay. As he pounded the face of
Joe College, the son smiled at the
ladies inside the car and said in that
friendly Texas way, “That will be ten
dollars apiece, please.”
The eighties marked another
change, when CASI split off from the
original Tolbert-Fowler group, taking
the rights to the CASI name with the
help of a water-pistol toting judge.
Kathleen Tolbert, the daughter of
founder Frank Tolbert, has served as
director of the Official Terlingua
International Championship Chili
Cook-off, the OTICCC, for the last 12
years. (This cook-off is also known as
the “Behind the Store” cook-off.) Now
in her sixties, Kathleen used to be
known as the baby of the event,
although she didn’t start attending
until she was 18 years old.
Tolbert doesn’t like to revisit the
viciousness of the split from CASI, but
for almost three decades there have
been two cook-offs on the same week-
end. “This makes it harder to do
because CASI is bigger,” Tolbert said,
“but we do have help from the ALS
Association (Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis), which is our designated
charity.”
Both cook-offs raise money for their
designated charities as well as for
Terlingua schools. “I just like to think
now that my dad helped start the first
cook-off ever. It all goes to help the
community of Terlingua,” Tolbert
said.
Hallie Stillwell – one of the original
judges and a local legend – was always
the Chili Queen. Tolbert’s brother
made Stillwell’s crown every year. She
was like a grandmother to all the
youngsters. Stillwell would get up on
stage and wish everyone good luck
until she was well into her nineties.
Sometimes things get a little too
crazy (even for people who like crazy),
especially in Krazy Flats on the CASI
side. The Chili weekend’s rowdy repu-
tation causes many local Terlingua res-
idents to cut out of town beforehand.
Wet T-shirt contests, reports of things
burning that shouldn’t be on fire, and
other spring break-like events don’t
appeal to everyone; many long-time
residents of the tri-county area have
never even been to a cook-off.
“CASI has a wild aspect,” Tolbert
said. “We don’t have that. It’s more of
a family thing.” They only hire one
off-duty sheriff, Tolbert said, where the
CASI one needs multiple sheriffs and a
jail.
Sometimes the biggest dangers to
the participants are themselves. One
year, someone ran up to Maxwell and
his gang yelling, “Someone’s fallen in
the mine shaft!” Although the shafts
were fenced off to keep goats from
falling in, an unfortunate, crocked soul
wandered over the fence. Everyone
sprinted to the pit prepared for the
worst. A voice drifted up from the
darkness …”Help – I’ve fallen and I
can’t reach my beer.” He’d landed on
old mattresses that were discarded in
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Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2016
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