Hot Peppers and Weenies

I am sitting here at the most popular southern style cuisine restaurant the farthest corners from where I grew up. The atmosphere is comfortable, energetic and the smells are strong of Cajun spices, heavy paprika, hot peppers, and freshly fried summer squash. On their specials menu I notice they have “Spicy, Pickled Peppers and Links”. 

Calling the waiter over with a wave of my hand I ask, “What is this like?” 

“It is our new idea for what to do with hot dogs, they are pickled in spicy hot sauce with hot peppers and pickling stuff I think”, he tells me with a juvenile enthusiasm that travels to the depths of his naivety of the dish. 

“What do you think of it?” I ask 

“It is very good, Ma’am. It sounds funny, but I would definitely recommend it. The recipe was something the head chef’s mom used to make, and he is from what he labels the ‘Deep South’. It does burn your socks off though!” he told me with a broad, pimply smile. 

Keeping a straight face, I ask him to bring me an order with whatever soda label they carry, it can be Pepsi, Coke, RC Cola, I do not mind. When I was growing up this canned treat was simply known as “Hot Peppers and Weenies” and our cellar pantry usually had a shelf dedicated to the dozens of cans from canning season. My family is from the south, and what the boy just described sounds oddly familiar. What I always wanted to be able to afford and have with this canned delight was a Coke, but my family was so poor we could not afford such treats more than once a year. 

The buoyant waiter brings me the plate that is professionally orchestrated with the simplest dish from my poor childhood. How someone can make a plate sing in an arrangement of hot dogs and hot peppers is beyond me, but this chef is a true artist. In the middle of the plate the chef alternated peppers with weenies, I mean links. There is a splattering of fresh cilantro and red chili flakes for a garnish with a drizzling of a chili sauce reduction in small star patterns along the rim. Waving my partially cupped hand over the plate, I pull some of the steam coming off the freshly warmed sauce towards my nose, sneezing as the spice hits the inside of my nasal passage. This smell is the smell of my childhood, thankfully it is missing the dirt, sweat, tears, and blood. 

Forgoing my usual knife and fork, I pick up one of the delicately cut “links” and place the bite sized piece on my tongue. The flavor of the morsel combined with the rich, spicy peppers and even spicier sauce, along with some of the garnish tastes like the hills back home during the summer months. The chef’s mom must have been related to my Gran, because this transported me back to the day I ate two jars of these things in the cellar beneath my parent’s home. Something that I was never allowed to do, these cans had to be shared with family not enjoyed on your own.

I had finished the first jar before heading out to the barn to check on my favorite of the horses, Whisper. I also helped care for a handful of goats, sheep, and a coop of chickens with one turkey reserved for Thanksgiving. Ma was usually happy I went up in the midday and got the eggs. She hated making her way up the windy uphill trip twice in one day to that red, pathetic barn. 

I would take my sweet time to walk up to the barn, probably busy playing with the animals and butterflies along the way. When I would get to the barn I would tend to the horses who I felt were my only friends, listen to the chickens cooing and cackling as a ginormous egg gets squeezed out from their backside, watch the goats and sheep bounce around the pasture, and enjoy the calm at the top of the hill overlooking the family property. Halfway between the barn and my house is a gate that separates the pasture from the garden. The garden swoops down the hill between the top where my home is and the bottom with my Gran’s home is. On the loop between our houses, furthest from the barn, is where my uncle lives. My Pa never moved far away from his Ma, and at this time I thought I would never leave either. They have tobacco fields on the hills further up the road from Pa’s home. 

There were four of us kids, Pa, and then Ma. We lived in a small two bedroom home. As I think of it now, that seems really small, but as a kid it never felt that way. We had a woodstove in the center that kept the home warm in the winters. Pa has a fancy bathroom in the home now, but I grew up having to go to the outhouse in the pitch dark of night. During the summers we basically just slept in the house, too hot to live in the house. I was always out with the animals or cooling off in the spring. I can still see this little valley of ours, green and lush. Dad was a great gardener. Ma was a drunk whore, but I didn’t find that out til later. Gran did her best to protect us from her youngest son’s malicious ways and Ma’s outbursts. Something that I now look back on and can’t believe was even real. 

Speaking of Gran, I loved it when Gran would deep fry squash and okra. She would serve fried okra along with a jar of hot peppers and weenies to us kids for a snack in the middle of the hot, humid summer afternoons when Pa would be enjoying his amber liquid between tending the tobacco. This summer was a bit different. Ma had a lot of this homemade stuff called Shine that Uncle made, and would often stay the night at men’s houses instead of at home with Pa. 

Pa would tell me she is having a sleepover with them and would be back in the morning. He would tell me that it was just like I would sleep over with my friend over the hill. Now I understand what was really going on, and the look in his eyes when he would tell me this as a kid makes more sense. 

As I was standing in the door of the barn this day, I heard a crash from my house. Crashes weren’t uncommon in my home and this didn’t cause me alarm at first. This crash was on another level than most of them though. I stopped daydreaming to listen. There came screaming, again not uncommon; however, this screaming sounded what my brain would have thought murder was. Knowing me as a kid, I did a double check on the animals and then I ran as fast as my 11 year old legs could take me down the rock ridden, dirt path towards the house. 

My feet were bare, we never could afford proper shoes during the summer. As I ran, Whisper trotted next to me. I flew with wings over the gate, ran past our spring, past the outhouse, and towards the home. I halted when I saw Pa come out the door with his back facing me. He took a tumble down the stairs. It was maybe two in the afternoon, I didn’t know precisely, we didn’t have watches. He was drunk. Yelling and cursing he got himself up onto his wibbling legs and he walked back into the house. I got a glimpse of Ma, she was wearing the dress she always wore when she had a friend pick her up. 

I don’t recall much, but I do remember they were yelling very loudly. It echoed through the valley. The usual green truck that Ma would get in came by down the road at Gran’s house. Gran and Uncle came to their porches to look towards our home, but they then went back inside. Most times they didn’t get involved. I hated them for this. 

I walked around the side of the square home, it slanted down a bit towards the road to make room for a small cellar door. I opened up the door, walked inside, and went towards the little room of canned goods from last season. I sat on a stack of potatoes and let out a sigh of relief. This fight didn’t seem as bad as most had. 

They were still upstairs, I heard destruction, and was pretty sure I would have to clean up the broken dishes again. I felt trapped. I hear Pa yelling, Ma screaming like a banshee, and I still can not recall the words they said. I felt that anger leaking through the floorboards into the cellar, my escape and place of safety. They were mad. It felt like two different types of mad. Pa’s felt more like he was a wounded animal on the road, and Ma’s as if she was a predator that got wounded by its prey. 

I stood up, went to the canned shelving, and pulled down another jar of “Hot Peppers and Weenies ‘71”. I wedged open that can and devoured the contents inside. Ma would be angry if she caught me, but she was preoccupied. By the time she got done with Pa and went away with her friend for the night she would not have noticed. Something shattered above me and then all was quiet. I left my retreat underneath the violence and walked the small distance to the spring to wash both jars out. 

This is when all hell broke loose in our valley sanctuary. I felt time slowed but also went so fast. A crash larger than had ever been heard by these two fighting humans came emanating from the small, mustard yellow home. It sounded like two wild animals had been suddenly trapped in the home and were breaking everything, even the unbreakables, in the home. 

I stood up, dropping what I was holding, and turned around to see my Pa yet again flying out of the door. This time the door was not opened, he came crashing through it and landed very solidly onto the gravel that was our driveway. When he stood I could see his pants were ripped, his shirt in his hands, face was covered in blood, and one of his eyes was not able to open. He was attempting to pull his shirt back on, but I could see some distorted coloration on his ribcage. 

I bolted back towards the house but stopped just five paces away from Pa when Ma stood in the doorway with a skillet in one hand, ax in another, and blood all over her dress. I would have assumed Pa was dead by the look of her, but thankfully he was already standing. Her eyes were fierce, in a rage, and she flew down the steps swinging her cast iron pan towards Pa’s head with intent. 

As a child, I was stunned in my spot. I had never seen this behavior. To be frank, I was scared and may have even peed myself a little. She was a demon that day, she was the devil in the body of my Ma. She looked like the evil things in the night, and the sin the preacher man warned me of in Sunday School. This confused me more because Ma loved to spend lots of time with the preacher man. 

Pa fled backwards on his legs and arms as he stumbled back like one of those crabs we would see at the beach when we took family vacations. Ma kept running towards him, arms swinging. She slammed him on his knee with the skillet, he howled in pain, stood up and attempted to run. 

I don’t recall who hit who or what happened after that. I was screaming at this point. I’m sure I was screaming words, but does an 11 year old really know what to scream when they’re afraid one of their parents is about to be brutally murdered in front of them. Ma was out to end Pa, blood lust was in her eyes. 

After a lot of fuzzy memories, I recall a gunshot made my body rattle. Silence fell. Birds squaked. Horses whinnied. We all looked over to see Gran standing there with her favorite shotgun. Ma jumped back from the shock, her wild eyes still glowing with passion, anger, and this focussed on me. I did not know why, I still don’t know why to this day. Gran only wanted to scare Ma, it worked, but it also scared everyone else at the same time. I don’t know where my siblings are, this I just realized. She only used her shotgun for scaring away unwanted guests and those men in suits, I suppose they were also unwanted. Ma glared at me. Gran glared at her. Pa was drunk and didn’t know how to focus on anything. 

Ma stood taller, turned to the left a bit, blocking Pa a bit, axe still in hand but the skillet on the ground. Her gaze turned away from me towards Gran. Gran looked at me, nodded, and raised her trusty shotgun up to Ma’s chest. 

“Get off my land you …..”, Gran sternly said, that last word I do not remember but I assume it was a bad word. Maybe it rhymed with switch, maybe with punt, not sure. But it worked whatever Gran said. 

My Ma walked off down the road, one of the men friends she stayed with had been parked down there waiting for her, and I didn’t see her for twenty years after that day. She lived within a mile of my house til I got my degree and moved away. That was the last day I ate Hot Peppers and Weenies, until today. I thought Pa would die that day. He still died, not physically, but the alcohol took him in and killed our family in a crueler way.

I sit here, further from that hell than I ever hoped I would be, tasting the flavors of that cellar. I will choose to remember the happy afternoons with my Gran, the times I sat with my younger siblings in that cellar and we ate from the different jars of pickled vegetables while fights happened overhead, and the moments when the family would stay out in the night and watch the fireflies because indoors was too hot. My life is littered with bad memories, but in this moment I choose the positive ones and the moments that love did envelope us. We weren’t always afraid, we had each other, and for that I am grateful for those memories of Hot Peppers and Weenies in the cellar.