The Chili Man

Living in a semi-urban environment gives one the opportunity to meet the most unforgettable characters, both good and bad. This is not to say that small towns lack their share of eccentrics; the most certainly have them, but in a much lighter density (per square mile) than one finds in the city. I grew up on the outskirts of a small town and remember well a number of people whose lives and overall impact on the traditional quietude of life were more colorful than a highway strewn with dead clowns (which is one of the reasons maximum occupancy laws now exist for those teeny cars they drive).

One of the most eccentric individuals from my youth was known only as The Purple Lady. She was an elderly woman who presumably lived alone in the then-rural northern part of the city. No one ever saw her, so she was this great mystery. She got her reputation not by who she was (of which we knew nothing), but by what she did. As her "name" implies, she was quite fond of the color purple. Her little clapboard house set back off the road behind a field was painted purple, as were the tree trunks in her yard. Even her mailbox was purple. And she didn't stop there. All down the road on both sides of the house she painted the telephone poles to match as high as she could reach, which couldn't have been more than five or six feet high. She must have done this in the dark of night as no one ever caught her in the act, which would have made the front page of the local paper had someone done so. But with the passage of time, her little house fell into disrepair and became overgrown and the purple on the mailbox and telephone poles faded. Eventually, the land was sold to a developer and a subdivision now stands where the Purple Lady once lived. All traces of her handiwork long since disappeared until one day not long ago when one telephone pole near where she used to live was painted a familiar color no more than five or six feet high.

And Im not making this up!

While Norfolk certainly isn't New York, or even Washington, DC for that matter, it is large enough to harbor the eccentric characters one finds in larger cities. To the list of occasional goths, punks, The Crying Lady, The Dirty Old Fool, and What The Hell Is That, I have to add The Chili Man.

On the way home from work the other afternoon, I stopped by a convenience store. As I was waiting in the ridiculously long line (which kind of took the whole notion of "convenience" from the stop) I noticed a gnarled, gnome of a man standing by the cheese/chili machine at the back counter. Ragged, filthy clothes, unkempt beard, and hair that probably hasn't been washed since the Reagan Administration, the poor old chap was evidently homeless. Or had had a really long day. He stood there looking around the store, at the clerks, at the customers, all the while with his hands wrapped tightly around a 40 ounce Colt 45 (the beer, not a gun). I felt sorry for him and wondered why he would take what little money he had to buy beer instead of food, which he obviously needed.

I soon had my answer.

He inched closer to the chili and cheese machine and set his beer down on the counter. Suddenly he began pressing the button that dispenses the chili which oozed out into a mound in the palm of his left hand which he then shoveled through his beard into his mouth. He did this several times, shovelling it in like a man possessed. Like a ten time champion at one of those pie eating contests at a county fair defending his title. I was shocked. Convenience store chili couln't be that good. Finally he licked his hand clean, then ran it all over the catch plate and nozzle of the machine to clean up all the residue, eventually leaving the machine covered in smeared chili and whatever else may have been on his hand. By the time he took his place in line, someone *ahem* had notified the manager of the situation who went over to clean things up. The Chili Man assumed an air of angelic innocence that was spectacularly betrayed by the orange/red chili residue all over his beard and mouth and hand wrapped tightly again around the beer bottle.

Before I get any hate mail from my one reader (Mildred in Utah), I do hasten to add that I'm not trying to find amusement at The Chili Man's expense though it may seem that way on a superficial level. I guess what I'm trying to do it get at the basic elements of human nature, the choices we make when faced with untenable circumstances.