Mom always had a staple in our cabinet that I never actually saw her use: Tabasco sauce. I don’t know if it was a requirement for a proper kitchen pantry or if it was gifted to her in times past and she couldn’t bring herself to toss it. It was there for years and never opened. Then, one gathering at my grandmother’s house explained why.
If you’ve never tasted Tabasco sauce, you haven’t really lived (or so some of my relatives believe). I thought I was about to meet Jesus the first time I tried the spicy concoction. Tabasco sauce has its own unique flavor, unlike most hot sauces on the market today. It is also one of the oldest commercial sauces of its type, established in 1868. In 1870, McIlhenny secured a patent for the fiery liquid.
Of course, any good thing must be “improved” upon; now they offer varieties like Cayenne Garlic, Green Jalapeno, Habanero Pepper and Scorpion Sauce (which I wouldn’t try, even on a dare).
I don’t know if you have any relatives like mine – maybe they’re just special – but I remember some of my cousins standing in a circle, taking turns guzzling this stuff until one of them cried “uncle.” Usually, it meant one of them had to run and get a real uncle to help the kid make it to the car for the trip home, but sometimes they only made it behind the barn before they lost their sauce.
One sultry October day in southern Louisiana, my family visited the birthplace of Tabasco, Avery Island. I loved the Jungle Gardens, a 170-acre paradise along Bayou Petite Anse. It is a wonderland of azaleas, massive live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss and thousands of birds. My favorite memory was while under the canopy of gigantic live oaks, I came upon a tunnel of trees which looked very much like the road that Frodo Baggins and his friends were on when they had to take refuge from the Black Riders. I almost expected to see some Hobbits climbing up over the bank at the far end of that eerie tunnel.
We had to tour the McIlhenny Tabasco Factory, during which you can see the greenhouses where they grow samples of their pepper plants and see how they start the seeds they send to Central and South America to mature. You also learn more about the McIlhenny family and how they built their company at the Tabasco Museum. They even have the original handwritten recipe for their hot sauce.
We saw the barrel warehouse where they keep the vats in which they blend the mash and store and age the hot pepper mash that eventually becomes the popular sauce. This is also where you get a free sinus cleansing. Whew! That stuff is potent. I couldn’t help but wish my cousins were there to appreciate all the work and expertise that went into their youthful challenge. I wonder how many bottles of that stuff they wasted over the years. Bet they wouldn’t do a rematch now; most of them would be out in round one. And there’s no more uncles to save them from themselves. Like my Uncle Bozie used to say, “You gonna be dumb, you better be tough.”
When I think about it, we all do a lot of “dumb stuff” when we are young. I suppose that’s part of the glory of youth – defying the rules of good sense and living to tell the tale. Whether it was swinging across the creek on a mostly rotten rope, racing our horses through a gopher-pocked field, jumping off the roof to see who could land on their feet or downing an entire bottle of Tabasco, I guess those adventures made us into tougher adults – or at least I’d like to think so.
Remembering our own foolishness can also help us to connect with our kids and grandkids today, giving them a little more grace when they do things we may not approve of or think wise. Maybe by sharing some of our stories, they can see us as not “just old folks” but people like them … a little bit nutty, not perfect, and maybe even fun.
