TheBanyanTree: GIve-away 4 - Tabasco

[auntie sash]

It's hard to guess if anyone will even read these stories at the
giveaway, but it feels like part of the ceremony to create them.  Thank
you for being my 'audience'.

In case you haven't been playing along, these are little stories to help
flesh out the significance of gifts I've chosen for a give away that
will happen Sunday following the end of a wanagi yuhapi - Lakota "keeping
of the soul" ceremony.

- sash
 -------------------------

Grocery shopping in Montana in the 70's was not about variety.  You could

buy white bread or "Roman Meal".  Navel oranges were a novelty – an

upgrade from the pale, yellowy "innies".



Unless you were buying beer, options were limited.  Not all the grocery
stores

even stocked Tabasco Sauce.  The big Albertsons that opened where Skagg's
Drugs

used to be, they always had a bottle or two – sometimes already turning a
little

bit brown.  It wasn't an item that rotated through quickly.  And why should
it?

Even a big Tabasco fan like my mother would only use a drop or two.  It
takes

quite a while to use a whole bottle just one drop at a time.



You never saw Tabasco on the table at a café but, if you asked the waitress,


about half the time she would bring it to you.  Enough people would want

a drop on their eggs or in their clam chowder so they had one bottle.

Sometimes the one bottle would go missing – already out at a table or tucked


behind a row of ketchup bottles or A-1 steak sauce.



I think it was at Ruby's café – just opposite the new bank building – that
mom

first saw the big bottle of Tabasco sauce.  Unable to locate the regular
bottle,

the cook sent out his bottle from the kitchen.  She was delighted!  "Would

you just *look* at that bottle!"  She saw one again at Skipper's Fish and
Chip

Chowder House.  We were in Spokane (Missoula didn't yet rate its own

tilted anchor) and they had several of the big chef-sized bottles on the

counter between the tartar sauce, malt vinegar, and lemon wedges.

Mother tried unsuccessfully to purchase one of those bottles right there on

the spot – to the total confusion of the hair net sporting teen behind the
counter.



As soon as we returned home, mother dragged out the onion skin stationery,

the carbon paper, and the typewriter (manual.  She typed too fast for the

early model electric typewriters.  They would always jam up.)



Using a magnifying glass, she found company information on the side of her

puny bottle of Tabasco.



Dear Sir or Madam,

I have recently seen…  Please advise where I can purchase… Very truly yours…



Away it went – a singular fan letter sent, not to Sean Cassidy, Mick Jagger,
or John

Lennon, but instead to McIlhenny Corporation, Avery Island, LA 70513.



Weeks later, a package appeared, addressed to mother with the familiar red,
white,

and green diamond Tabasco insignia in the return address.



Dear Mrs. Schmidt,

Thank you for your letter… Please accept with our compliments… If you

are ever in Louisiana… Head of Marketing, Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce.



Enclosed with the letter was a chef-sized bottle of Tabasco Sauce, a quart
of

their newest product – Tabasco brand Bloody Mary Mix, several coupons for
the

purchase of more Tabasco and Bloody Mary Mix, and one little, teeny, tiny,

adorable bottle of Tabasco, with a hang tag that read "Never face a meal

without original Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce!"



For years – OK – Decades actually – the letter, coupons (worth so much

more as mementoes than their value in savings), the Bloody Mary Mix

bottle (empty) and the tiny Tabasco bottle (never opened) sat in our kitchen


window – a sort of shrine to the spicy liquid.



Now mother was still with it enough to see her beloved Tabasco become

standard on diner counters everywhere and to buy a 'huge' chef-sized bottle

right off the grocer's shelf.  Sadly, she never knew about the bounty we

have now.  If she had, her window would have held a bottle of each

variety – green, garlic, chipotle, and soy sauce - along with empty packets

of Tabasco flavored potato chips, Tabasco spiced crackers, and Tabasco
pepper jelly.



Enjoy these little bottles.  Laissez les bons temps roulez!  Feel her

delight and "*Never* Face a Meal without original Tabasco Brand Pepper
Sauce!"



- sarahanne april 2008

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My mother had a great deal of trouble with me but I think she enjoyed it.
- Mark Twain