been reserved several weeks in ad- 
vance. There aren’t really many other 
places to stay in the rest of Brewster 
County, the state’s largest, which at 
5,935 square miles is bigger than Con- 
necticut and very empty. 
A century ago, when its mines pro- 
vided 40 percent of the country’s cin- 
nabar, or mercury ore, Terlingua itself 
had 2,000 or so inhabitants. But for- 
eign competition closed the mines, and 
only four permanent inhabitants re- 
mained when CASI staged the first 
cookoff. By now, however, the word 
has spread worldwide. On cookoff 
weekend, Terlingua hosts hundreds of 
chili heads and camp followers who 
arrive with tents and vans for the row- 
diest weekend this side of Fort Lau- 
derdale. 
The contest site looked like a Hol- 
lywood mock-up of a Western town. 
But the real-life action was a bit more 
“adult” than the movie industry tends 
to allow. Dancers in Old West cos- 
tumes gyrated at the Ball Buster Bar. 
They were the show business aspect 
of the Ball Buster Chili team. The 
cookoff gives an award for the best 
variety act of the day, which explained 
the frontier revival church in full 
swing at one end of the patio. Brother 
Willie and Sister Lilly’s Salvation 
Chili team led the pagan hordes in 
a hymn sung to the tune of “Amazing 
Grace”: “Salvation chili came to me/ 
And saved my soul from grief./ It 
cured my pimples, healed my toe/ 
And put me on relief. . . .” 
The crowd was dressed in a variety 
of costumes, ranging from obscene T 
shirts to the height of urban cowboy 
dandyism — an all-rattlesnake-skin 
vest decorated with several huge rat- 
tles and fossilized shark’s-teeth all set 
about with turquoise and silver. The 
crowd, restless with anticipation and 
primed w'ith Texas beer, gathered to 
watch young women vie in a wet T- 
shirt contest and young men take their 
pants off for the “equal opportunity” 
hairy legs competition. At the height 
of the frenzy, a voice on the public 
address system announced: “Matt 
Butler lost his pistol. Nickel-plated. 
Whoever finds it, there’s a reward. 
If that’s necessary.” 
Meanwhile, at the edge of the fes- 
tivities, a motley collection of men 
and women were devoting themselves 
with solemnity to the preparation of 
chili. For them it was a serious day 
of judgment. 
Connecticut champ Jim Hibbits, 
wearing a frock coat and top hat, 
stirred and tasted his Ugly Butcher 
Chili. Wayland Walker of Ardmore, 
Oklahoma, told passers-by how he had 
turned to chili out of desperation, 
when a slaughterhouse miscut a whole 
beef he had purchased from the local 
sheriff. Some sixty contestants labored 
over their pet chilis all through the 
forenoon, hoping that greatness would 
be thrust upon them by the CASI 
judges. Most of the cooks used whole 
chili peppers, not prepared powder. 
And they followed CASI rules, which 
insist on beef and forbid all vegetables 
except onions. This not only eliminates 
exotic ingredients such as pineapple 
but also excludes beans. At Terlingua, 
beans are viewed with alarm, as a 
contaminant of what Texas governor 
Bill Clements hailed in an official 
proclamation as “unadulterated Texas 
chili.” 
My own random tasting of the 
chilis-in-progress reminded me how 
much variation there can be on an 
apparently simple culinary idea. Even 
with the CASI restrictions, no two 
chilis tasted alike. Recondite spice 
combinations and varying dosages pro- 
duced a wide spectrum of flavors, as 
well as levels of hotness ranging from 
mild to infernal. 
Judges assembled at lunchtime on 
a protected upper level and began 
their tongue-singeing task, clearing 
their palates with beer between tastes, 
doing their best to rate each entry 
on a ten-point scale based on five cri- 
teria: aroma, red color, consistency, 
taste, and aftertaste. 
No one disputed their final decision 
to award the world championship to 
Brother Willie and Sister Lilly’s Sal- 
vation Chili. But any objective by- 
stander who had not entirely suc- 
cumbed to the soporific powers of 
Texas sun and brew was left won- 
dering what it all meant. Was Ter- 
lingua merely a ribald exercise in 
boosterism and self-parody or did the 
cookoff really help to maintain the 
purity of one of the nation’s best 
known and most polymorphous re- 
gional dishes? 
At issue is the whole vexing notion 
of authenticity in food. CASI’s rules 
are a laudable attempt to codify and 
preserve what one of its members as- 
serted to me was an invention of the 
frontier, a simple beef stew seasoned 
with regionally abundant capsicum 
(chili) peppers and other spices (usu- 
ally cumin, oregano, and garlic) and 
onions (see recipes). Also, the Ter- 
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