People my age can get offended by social media. Like when somebody asks on Facebook if anybody is ancient enough to remember the Circle Café in Natchitoches. You would think they were asking if any of the readers saw the Pyramids being built.
I still have a lot of memories and a little heartburn from the Circle Café. It was on Front Street where the Sports Hall of Fame is now and was a popular place for students in the 1950s and 1960s.
Guys would go to the night spots around Black Lake and end up at the Circle Café for some greasy chili. I say guys because not many girls went to the night spots or the Circle Café. They had early curfews at their dorms.
Chili was the main attraction at the Circle Café, but they had other things. If those of us in the athletic dorm had just gotten our $15 monthly laundry allowance, we might get a hamburger with our bowl of chili.
There was a laundry on campus in those days, and we got a little stipend to get our clothes cleaned there. Most of us washed our jeans in the shower, spread them on some bushes to dry and used the $15 for the night spots and the café.
Natchitoches had some other good places to eat even back then like the Towne House and Murphy’s Restaurant, but they were a little too pricey for most college kids.
Besides, there was always entertainment at the Circle Café. Farmers, ranchers, oil field workers and truck drivers headed to work in the early morning hours mixed and mingled with college guys just ending long nights out.
One of the truck drivers who was hauling beer had his rig and all of its cargo stolen one night while he was in the café. It was found a few days later with a good bit of beer missing on a back road near Black Lake.
A big bowl of Circle Café chili late at night made it hard to get to eight o’clock classes. Some days, we had to stop by the infirmary on the way to math or English. Mrs. Opal Gimbert, the nurse, knew about the Circle Café and gave us Pepto Bismol or Alka Seltzer.
My system was accustomed to chili attacks. My mother made it all the time. She changed it up a lot of different ways, and there were not many things my dad, brother and I liked any better.
One of my favorites was a casserole she made with chili and grits. She would put layers of chili, grits, cheese and onions and cover it with a thin red chili sauce. It was better than filet mignon.
My mother got that recipe from her mother, who owned a little café in Winnsboro. Her husband died young, and my grandmother opened the café to make a living. My mother and her sisters worked there as kids, and all of them learned to make good chili.
In my years of covering football games in old, rundown press boxes across the country, there was nothing I liked better than those concession stand hot dogs drowned with chili. Even if it was a can of Wolf brand.
Regina and I like to make chili when the weather’s cool. We use my mother’s recipe some and her mother’s at other times. I have it over rice, and she pours hers on Fritos.
Sometimes we try different recipes we see in books and on the internet. We avoid the recipes if they include things like cloves, ginger, cinnamon, chocolate or turkey, because we know they came from up north somewhere.
They have chili cooking contests here every so often, and it seems that Mickey Hennigan won more than his share of them all those years he worked at City Bank.
I talked Mickey into giving me his recipe that has things like hot sausage, jalapenos and cayenne pepper in it. The first time I made it and went right by the recipe, it ate a hole in my black iron pot.
We toned the recipe down and can eat it now without chasing it with Pepto Bismol and Alka Seltzer like Ms. Opal used to give us at the infirmary.
The weather is starting to cool off some, so Regina and I will be making chili soon. I will think of my mother and the Circle Café.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES