theoldwolf | In praise of Tabasco Sauce

Leigh Callaway, wherever you are, I owe you dinner.

The year was 1965, I was 14, and it was my senior year at Camp Wildwood in Bridgton, Maine.¹

In this my 4th year at camp, the pinnacle of the year was, prophetically, travel. I sucked at team sports - still do - but loved traveling, camping, the woods and individual challenges; in short, I lived for tripping. Shut up. Not that kind.

My yearbook blurb quoted, "However unorganized his body of knowledge may be, he still is a source of many bits of information and despite his mere 85 lb. bulk, was one of our most energetic and determined trippers." By the dessicated skull of Mogg's grandfather, how prophetic was that?

After a 5-day canoe trip to Rangeley Lake early in the summer, six of us, accompanied by several counsellors, took another 5-day trip in canoes from Lobster Lake down the Penobscot River to Chesuncook Lake in Maine. It was a trip never to be forgotten.

What does all this have to do with Tabasco Sauce? Hush. We'll get to that.

The year, as I mentioned, was 1965, and inland Maine was still pretty untouched in most places. It was five days of canoeing, camping, 20 miles of river, camping, 4 miles of rapids, camping, portages, camping, woods, camping, absolutely glacial pools and waterfalls which we reveled in as a test of manhood, more camping, and breathtaking scenery.

Are you starting to see a pattern?

When you camp, you cook whatever you have along. That means a lot of dehydrated chicken soup and noodles carbonara and canned stuff and interesting stuff and things you might never fix at home.

One of the counsellors that accompanied us on this trip was a young man named Leigh Callaway.

Now to a 14-year-old, all our counsellors were ageless. If they were counsellors, they were adults - so I can't tell you how old he was at the time, but he was probably not much more than a kid himself. So all I can tell you about him was that he was extremely kind to me (huge points!) and had a BMW motorcycle (more huge points), and that I worshipped the ground he walked on. And he could cook.

One night, whether out of inventiveness or desperation, Leigh fried up a huge cast-iron skillet full of rice until the grains were golden brown, and then filled the pan with water. When the rice was cooked soft, he threw in a can of tuna or three, sauteed it up a bit longer, and then seasoned the whole thing with Tabasco™. Lots and lots of Tabasco™.

Now my mother, bless her soul, took me to many ethnic restaurants in New York while I was young, and one of our favorites was this little Aztec-Mexican hole in the wall called Xochitl.² They had a hot sauce there that would rival much of what Blair offers (certainly not their 16-million scoville pure capsaicin insanity, but highly effective nonetheless.) I remember that a tiny drop of this stuff on a toothpick, applied to the tongue, was enough to bring tears to the eyes. So I was no stranger to odd and savory foods. (Hm. How that I'm thinking of it, perhaps I should give Mom some credit at my Banquet from Hell.) That said, cooking at home was pretty basic meat-and-potatoes fare, and there wasn't a lot of exotic stuff around, so I had never used Tabasco™ before.

Well, anyway. When you've been paddling a canoe for 12 hours, and you're exhausted and starving, it doesn't matter much what's on the fire. I think if Leigh had fried up a beaver tail, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash. As it was, we had fried rice and tuna with Tabasco™ - and I tucked in like a trencherman. Mogg's teeth - it was so good. It would be easy to say that my enjoyment was born of famine, but given that I have prepared this concoction and many others like it many times in my life thereafter, I can discount that theory. Simply put, I was hooked on Tabasco™.

Now, I like Frank's Original Red Hot too - it's got a nice flavor, and I always keep a bottle of it handy, but there's something about Tabasco™ that just can't be matched.³ Yes, I'm well and truly addicted.

So Leigh, wherever you are, know that you made a huge impression on me that summer, and your influence is still being felt *mops brow* 44 years later.

And that's all I have to say about that.

PS - I still remember the taste of black coffee sweetened with maple syrup, too...

Footnotes

¹ Wildwood is a superb boys' camp run - at the time - by Leo Mayer and Ed Hartman, now presided over by Mark Meyer and his team.

² Another one was "La Fonda del Sol", a very upscale place which I loved eating at. Now gone. *snif*

³ In fact, as I sit here typing this, and thinking about a nice dish of fettucine with tuna and hot sauce, my ears are burning and I'm experiencing all the symptoms of a good solid capsaicin flush. Which confirms my theory, but that's another story.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

its amazing what Tabasco can do :) time to try the green stuff ;)

Wolf:

Fifteen years later (1980), I took my twelve year old son down the same river to Chesuncook Lake, then to Ripogenus dam. By that time, we had spent time in The Netherlands and graduated from Tobasco to sambal oelek - an Indoesian red pepper paste.

After he graduated from college, he went back to Maine working at Chewonki, guiding youngsters in the woods. Tobasco or sambal, the tradition carried on.

Regards,
Leigh Callaway

Great Mogg's tufted ears, Leigh - you don't come out of 50 years of history and not leave contact information!

On the other hand, you can't imagine how pleased I was to see your comment. I'd like nothing better than to be able to catch up. My wife's kids went to Chewonki, and she wondered when your son was there.

Thanks so much for your note!

-Chris

In praise of Tabasco Sauce

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Try Sambal

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