Chili Fans Converge On Allen

I was 20 years old before I enjoyed my first bowl of chili. It just wasn’t on the menu in the Carroll’s New Jersey household. Pasta was as ethnically diverse as our dinner menu became although we did experiment with cans of LaChoy Chop Suey on occasion.

My first experience with Mexican food came on a Thanksgiving trip to visit a friend named Billy Lees in Fort Collins. I had hitched a ride from Murray, Kentucky to Colorado and now found myself in a small café looking at the strange menu options.

“It’s kind of like Italian food but with a funny taste,” my New Jersey friend explained.
He proceeded to compare enchiladas to manicotti and chili con carne to pasta e fagioli so I cautiously tried both. His description of enchiladas was accurate but the chili really had no comparison. I had never tasted anything so spicy and despite the initial “discomfort,” I grew to enjoy the stuff.

Contrary to popular belief, chili con carne is not a Mexican dish. A writer from San Antonio once remarked that chili – as we know it in the U.S., cannot be found in Mexico. If it had come from there, it would still be there.

The International Chili Society (www. chilicookoff.com) explains that “if there is any doubt about what the Mexicans think about chili, the Diccionario de Mejicanismos, published in 1959, defines chili con carne as (roughly translated) “detestable food passing itself off as Mexican, sold in the U.S. from Texas to New York.”

Chili pepper and meat dishes have been in Latin America for hundreds of years but cooks on the early Texas cattle drives popularized it. Chili was a convenient way to flavor or hide the flavor of game caught along the trail. If beef wasn’t available, a pot of chili might include buffalo, armadillo, venison or even rattlesnake.

The chili website adds that cattle trail chili grew in popularity throughout the tiny Texas trail towns. Frank and Jesse James are said to have eaten a few bowls of "red" before pulling many of their bank jobs. Pat Garrett is supposed to have said of Billy the Kid: "Anybody that eats chili cant' be all bad."

As the weather slowly turns cool and the football season heats up, chili will be cooking in many Allen kitchens this weekend. Gallons and gallons of the stuff will also be simmering outside Dodie’s Sports Grill this Saturday as the Rotary Club of Allen kicks off the 1st Annual Allen Chili Cook-Off.

Sponsored by Dodie’s Place, the Courtyard Marriott, Miller Light and Visionary Marketing & Design, the cook-off is being held to raise funds for the Allen Rotary Club’s various community service projects.

Organizers are expecting about 20 entries from local restaurants, businesses and individuals including Davidson’s Auto Care – our team sponsor.

That’s right - using a lifetime minus 20 years of experience, I will be competing in this gastronomic Hiroshima along with local chili fans Keith Taylor and Barry Lanier.
Can a team of rookies compete? Can a guy from Jersey actually make a pot of chili without oregano?

All will be revealed this Saturday, October 25 in the parking lot between Dodie’s and the new Allen Event Center. The event is open for public tasting from 12 noon – 6 p.m. Visit www.allenchili.com for details.
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Two Dots and a Dash

Two dots and a dash were all we needed for entertainment during the Christmas of 1975.

My friend Tom Casey’s family had invested in a home version of the arcade game Pong and it was a big hit. Being the oldest brother, Tom had wrestled it away from his 7 siblings so we could get our first taste of home video games.

Watching my son play FIFA Soccer on a high definition television last night, I was reminded of that Christmas afternoon. The Casey kids and a few stragglers like me were sitting in front of that black and white television watching a dash chase two dots up and down the screen.

Pong actually wasn’t the first video game but it was the first game to be adapted for home use. Alan Alcorn, an engineer for Atari Incorporated, created the game in 1972 based on an electronic ping pong game included with the Magnavox Odyssey system.

Pong was first rolled out as an arcade game and later marketed in 1975 as Home Pong. The game was sold exclusively by Sears because no other merchandiser felt it had a future.

The future arrived in 1977 when the Atari 2600 game system was introduced. That was followed by the Odyssey 2 in 1978 and Mattel’s Intellivision system in 1980.

By 1980 I was a college graduate and married. I had written video games off as children’s toys and we didn’t have enough money for such luxuries anyway. That Christmas, we visited some old friends who had just bought Intellivision for themselves. They even owned a color television set!

They were hooked on Intellivision and had already built up quite a collection of games. We played football and baseball, raced horses and leapt over alligator infested ponds that night.

By today’s standards, the 8-bit graphics would be laughable but all we had for comparison was Pong.

It wasn’t long before we saved up and bought our own Intellivision. We bought the sports titles along with silly games like Frogger, Pitfall, Worm Whomper and Donkey Kong.

Our favorite though was a simple game called BurgerTime. The concept was simple enough. Chef Peter Pepper had to build a hamburger without being harmed by Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg.

In the days before children or pets, we found ourselves consumed with BurgerTime. It bordered on an obsession for both of us as we beat the game and played on and on.

BurgerTime was such a hit that its developers created versions for competing game systems like Atari and ColecoVision as well as video arcades.

We both eventually tired of the game and bought a fifty pound, top loading video recorder in its place. Today we could buy a rack of VCR’s for the price of that first one but it was quite a luxury in 1981.

Daydreaming about the old Intellivision system this past week led me to Ebay where all nostalgia lives on. Apparently an entire game system with a few odd games is running about $50. I could even pick up a stack of games for only $12.99 if I bid within the hour.

The prospect of repurchasing classics such as Frog Bog, Sea Battle and yes – BurgerTime tempted me. Then I walked into the game room and heard the roar of that high definition virtual soccer crowd and I forget all about Intellivision again.

I do wonder what Burgertime would look like in high definition though.

Front Yard Sports Comlex

As I was mowing the grass last week I concluded that either my yard is shrinking or my trees are growing. I know because I spend much more time ducking branches and circling trees than I used to.

There was a time when mowing wasn’t necessary. The grass was trampled by endless games of soccer and football and baseball on the fields of the Carroll Multisports Complex.

As the head groundskeeper at the complex, I was able to quickly convert the playing surface from a soccer stadium to a Frisbee golf course in just minutes. Trim a few branches and we were ready for football or wiffle ball depending upon the season.

The Carroll Multisports Complex included a little less than Olympic-size pool for swimming competitions and of course pool basketball. Unfortunately the pool consumed our backyard so other field sports were moved out front.

Using the trees as imaginary defenders or mid fielders, we were able to simulate Super Bowls and World Cups right in my front yard. The crowds were much smaller but the parking was free.

Adapting sports to the landscape is nothing new for kids. Baseball fields have been cut into corn fields and shaped around abandoned city lots. Soccer is played by kids around the world in just about any space and surface that can hold a ball – if there is a ball at all. Regardless of the location, the rules are basically the same with a few considerations for local hazards.

I learned to catch a baseball and dodge cars the same year. We had no yard so we played catch in the city street outside our house. The stream of moving cars was only one of many challenges. Parked cars could be just as dangerous and so could their owners if balls landed on them. Sewers and fenced yards simply increased the odds that an extra game ball might be needed.

In the days before PlayStation, we spent almost all of our outdoor time playing sports. In the fall we played touch football in the street. On short winter days we even played “under the lights” although the best passes often flew over the lights and reappeared halfway down the street.

Basketball season was re-enacted on my friend’s driveway with clotheslines and curbs officially out of bounds.

Once the baseball season rolled around, we alternated between playing running bases in the street and stickball in the schoolyard down the block.

No matter what sport, the distance between two telephone poles was just about the right distance. A “football field” would extend the length of three telephone polls and manhole covers made great home plates in baseball. Trees or cars served as first and third base while second base was anything that wouldn’t blow away.

The Carroll Multisports Complex saw a lot of action in its early years. There was ASA soccer practice and that game where dad throws the ball at his kid’s baseball glove in the hope that it gets stuck there. We graduated to running football passing routes during halftime of Notre Dame games and later created a very tight Frisbee golf course.

These days the sports complex lies silent like Texas Stadium. My kids are more likely to drive 35 miles to Arlington than they are to play ball in our front yard. I’m not complaining though. At least the grass is growing again.

Fast Food Feeding Frenzy

Cruising along Route 46 in Little Falls, New Jersey last weekend, I came upon a strange sight. A string of cars were pulled over on the shoulder which was slowing traffic across the busy highway.
As I gradually came upon the source of the slowdown, I saw streamers leading to a giant Grand Opening sign. Police were directing traffic off the highway while several confused teenagers were funneling them into the new parking spaces. North Jersey was welcoming its first Sonic Drive-In.

The double-wide Sonic had opened that same day within sight of a New Jersey landmark – the Park West Diner. It was literally a fast food feeding frenzy as drivers waited along the highway (no access roads here) for tater tots and a shake.

The scene reminded me of the first McDonald’s Restaurant I ever visited. A friend’s mother drove us to nearby Belleville to check out a new hamburger stand. It was crowded and I had to scrape off the onions and pickles but those fries sure were good. My folks preferred the diners but we hit my friend’s mother up on several occasions for a trip to the golden arches. It wasn’t fast food, it was affordable food and we became regulars when McDonald’s finally came to our town.

Allen’s official hangout in the early 1970’s was The Royal Drive-In. Located at the corner of Allen Drive and Central Expressway on the east side, The Royal was the only hangout until Dairy Queen opened on Main Street in 1973.

“We called it the figure eight,” said Honey (Bankhead) Gray, a 1974 AHS graduate. “Kids would drive up to one, see who was there, and then circle back to the other restaurant. Then we’d congregate in the Dry Goods Store parking lot at the corner of Allen Drive and Main Street between the two restaurants.”

The Sonic on East Main Street opened near Allen High School (Lowery Center) about 5 years later and shortly after that came the McDonald’s Restaurant at the expressway and McDermott. Rounding out the first wave of fast food venues was Burger King, which opened in 1983 and Taco Bell (currently Bar-B-Cuties), which opened in the late 1980’s.

These restaurants are so familiar but they have only been around for about 50 years. Many know the story of how Ray Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to franchise their popular drive-in in 1954 but did you know that many other chains were already selling franchises by that time.

The first franchised food service chain was started by Allen and White in 1924 based around their unique root beer syrup. J. Willard Marriott opened an A&W franchise in 1927, changed the name to Hot Shoppes and began selling barbeque sandwiches. That led to today’s hotel empire.
Howard Johnson’s chain of restaurants were the first to spread across the country, mostly on the popularity of their ice cream. It was the creation of a machine that could turn liquid dairy mix into a continuous stream of soft ice cream in 1944 that started fast food’s golden years under the name Dairy Queen. One of Dairy Queen’s original partners, Harry Axene, then left to start the rival Tastee Freeze in 1950.

A chance meeting between two restaurant owners named Pete Harmon and Harlan Sanders led to the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain’s creation in 1952. Finally, a fellow named Dave Edgerton helped create the InstaBurger King chain in 1954.

For the record, Sonic was born as the Top Hat Drive-In in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1952. The name was later changed to Sonic because “service was delivered at the speed of sound.”
From what I could see, the new Sonic staff in Little Falls wasn’t exactly serving at the speed of sound but they had only opened that morning. Maybe I will drop them a note and recommend some roller skates.

Still Coo Coo For Cocoa Puffs

Cruising the store aisles to complete a grocery list is no problem for me but don’t ask me to pick out a box of cereal.

The cereal aisle of any grocery store has the power to stop me in my tracks. I know what peanut butter we buy and which tea is my wife’s favorite but I just can’t seem to make a decision in the cereal aisle.

I know I’m not alone because I often find myself working around others who suffer the same affliction.

Should I buy the Captain Crunch that’s on sale even though it has almost no nutritional value or should I pay double for some “adult” cereal that is supposedly better for me? Just this week I bought a box of Raisin Bran and Cocoa Puffs because they were on sale. I just couldn’t help myself but I was proud that I walked by the Frosted Flakes display without incident.
It has been years since we had Cocoa Puffs in the house but the box was almost half empty the next morning. The Raisin Bran remained fresh and unopened. Looks like the Carrolls are still coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.

I have a lot of practice cruising the cereal aisle. As a small kid in the A&P grocery store, my mother would turn me loose and say “go pick out a few boxes of cereal.” Mom didn’t allow those “sugar cereals” into our house so my choices were limited to products like Cheerios and Chex and Special K. I still jumped at the chance just so my mother wouldn’t buy Puffed Rice – the most tasteless cereal ever invented. It took two full tablespoons of sugar to bring a bowl of Puffed Rice to life.

I loved sleeping over at my friend’s houses because their parents bought those sugar cereals that I constantly saw advertised on television like Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms and many I no longer could name.

Searching the Internet for discontinued cereals this week, I was surprised how many I did remember – at least from the advertising.

Do you remember Quisp and Quake, Kaboom, Sugar Jets, Puffa Puffa Rice, Stars, Freakies, Fruit Brutes and Quickaroos for starters. How about Twinkles, the cereal with the book attached to the box?

Almost as memorable as the cereals were the characters who pitched them. There was Tony The Tiger (Frosted Flakes), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp), Linus the Lionhearted (Crispy Critters), Dig-Em Fog (Sugar Smacks), Snap, Crackle and Pop (Rice Crispies) and many others.
Cereals may come and go but three big companies still compete for shelf space: General Mills, Kelloggs, and Post. A 2008 survey showed that General Mills’ Cheerios is the most popular cereal in America with Kellogg’s Special K and Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats running in second and third place. The all-time favorites list shows Life, Cap ‘n Crunch and Frosted Flakes in the top three spots. Rounding out the top five were Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats.
Donkey Kong cereal does not appear on either list. Neither does Banana Frosted Flakes, Fruity Marshmallow Crispies, Mr. T’s, Strawberry Shortcakes or Urkle-O’s. Can you imagine what an unopened box of Urkle-O’s would be worth today? Neither can I.

Eating cereal became such a bedtime routine in my house that the only motivation I needed to take a bath as a kid was a bowl of Cheerios, A bowl of cereal with ice cold milk is still a late night treat in the Carroll household.

Come to think of it, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs sounds like fun if there if the box isn’t empty.

It's Getting Better All The Time

Do I really need to do this again? Do I really need to buy another copy of the Beatles album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band?

A logical response would be no since I already owned seven copies over the past 32 years. Our first copy became family property when my mother purchased it at E.J. Korvettes in the summer of 1967. Years later my brother laid claim to it as I headed off to college. I purchased a used copy from Cheap Charlie’s discount records and later upgraded to an unscratched version in honor of the album’s tenth anniversary.

The 8-track version I purchased in 1977 got stolen along with my under dash 8-track player which was not exactly a great loss. I upgraded to a cassette player for my car and promptly recorded Sgt. Peppers to a new Maxell UDXLII tape. The cassette later melted or was eaten by the tape player.

Ten years later my wish for a perfect copy of Sgt. Peppers came true when a release of the entire Beatles catalog on compact disc began. I gradually replaced every Beatles lp with a scratch-free, pop-free compact disc.

Those discs were eventually loaded onto numerous Mp3 players which brings me to the present day. I now have the ability to play Sgt. Peppers or any Beatles song ever made with the twirl of a finger on my IPOD.

So why would I consider buying Sgt. Peppers or any other Beatles album again?

Well, the engineers at Abbey Road Studios have digitally remastered the entire Beatles catalog and the results are worth the cost.

Digital remastering is a process that literally pulls the music apart, cleans it up and reassembles it in the way it was originally intended. The push to digitize music in the late 1980’s cleaned up the scratches but flattened the sound, according to critics. Most of us didn’t notice but there was a big difference between the early vinyl recordings and the new compact discs. New digital technology now allows engineers to recreate that original vinyl sound.

Imagine scanning an old photograph and digitally cleaning it up. The photo visually comes back to life as long lost color and details reappear. The audio remastering process yields similar results.

Reviewers are raving about the quality of the remastered albums, particularly the early mono recordings such as Please Please Me and Hard Days Night.

Apparently the album that shines the brightest is Abbey Road, the Beatles’ final studio effort that was first released 40 years ago.

Beatle fanatics can purchase the entire 14 album remastered set for $260 or grab a limited edition boxed set called The Beatles in Mono for $299. The 14 discs will also be available individually for about $19 each.

The series was released in conjunction with The Beatles Rock Band interactive video game on September 9. Together, the game and “new” discs have created a bigger Fab Four frenzy than we have seen in 40 years.

As for my personal collection, I will probably drop $19 to see what the excitement is about. The odds are good that I will get hooked once again and eventually repurchase the entire set. Anyone interested in a complete set of vintage Beatle compact discs?

First Day Sets The Stage For School Career

Can you remember the first time you didn’t “go back to school?”

The summer after high school or college ended and you just kept going. There was no back to school shopping or schedule pickup – just another day of work. Maybe it was a summer job that rolled into the fall or maybe you started that first “real job” and got so busy that you didn’t notice school was starting again.

Then, you found yourself driving through the familiar school zone waiting for the crossing guard’s signal to pass. Even if it was just for a moment, you probably wished you could walk right back through those school doors.

As a student, my two best days of the school year were always the first day and the last day. No research exists but I would imagine many teachers feel the same way. Not taking away from the great things that happen during the school year, but the first day is just the best.

There is something comforting about the start of a new school year. There’s the anticipation of a new teacher, the pride of new clothes and of course the smell of new school supplies. Is there anything better than cracking open a fresh box of Crayolas?

My very first school day may not have been my best but it was certainly memorable. I don’t remember the details but it involved bringing a note home from the principal. I never saw it but I’m sure the note read something like this…

“Dear Mrs. Carroll - your son Timothy and Nicholas Terrafranca were disciplined today for playing on the rectory steps. Father O’Connor brought this to my attention when he returned the playground ball that was left on the porch. I hope this is not the behavior we can expect from Timothy at Sacred Heart in the coming year.” - Sister Mary Agatha.

Actually it was exactly the behavior they came to expect. Luckily for me the nuns, like all teachers, were very good at forgiving and “helping me make good choices.”

It is a remarkable transformation that takes place over the summer. No matter how hectic the end of school is, teachers and kids return each fall refreshed and eager to start all over again. Many moms are celebrating for a different reason as they recapture their homes from the summer invaders.

One big exception are the kindergarten parents who hover and fuss as their kids are led away to class for the first time. Comforting PTA groups even offer “crying rooms” outfitted with coffee and Kleenix for distraught parents. Similar rooms should be made available for parents who watch their young ones drive away to college for the first time.

High school is a different story. Their first day is more of a social event and fashion parade interrupted by classes. It is all about who’s in my class and where do I sit at lunch this year. Still, it’s the first day and there’s a buzz in the air.

This Sunday marks the end of a long – a very long – summer. I hope every one of you has a great first day – whether you’re walking through the doors or just driving by. And parents – don’t be upset if your kindergartner comes home with a note from the principal. It will all work out in the end.