And look what I found. The whole goddamn thing.

This internet shit, it’s the best.

Great Depression chili, the greasy red ambrosia that used to cost a dime a bowl with all the soda crackers you wanted. Dish of pinto beans on the side. Jar of jalapeno peppers on the table next to a bowl of chopped white onions. Not a trace of tomatoes or celery or any other foreign object that over the years have drifted into what people who don’t know better call chili. Chili was invented in South Texas as way to make tough, stringy beef taste good, and sold by vendors on the streets of San Antonio before the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. Chili is a serious matter to any native-born Texan old enough to remember when a ten-cent bowl of red would keep you feeling feisty all day.

I don’t know. Given the strong emotions evidenced here, it seems unlikely that Willie would tamper with tradition so severely as to give us a white chili, without even a hint of beef, stringy or otherwise. But, then, Willie is as well known for his playfulness as he is for his dedication to his Texas roots, so I hesitate to write it off entirely.

Either way, I need to find a good recipe for Texas red chili.

Here’s the recipe, taken from Food.com.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb white beans, rinsed
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon chicken base
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 6 -8 cloves garlic, minced
• 7 ounces diced green chilies
• 4 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 4 cups diced cooked chicken
• 1 cup sour cream
• 3 cups shredded monterey jack cheese
• sour cream, to serve
• chopped green onion, to serve
• chopped cilantro, to serve
• chopped tomato, to serve

Directions

1. Put the chicken stock base, broth, and beans in a large pot.
2. Simmer it for two hours, covered.
3. Saute the onions in the oil until they are gently browned.
4. Combine the onions with the spices, chicken, and other vegetables, and simmer for another hour or so.
5. Add the cheese and sour cream, cooking until the cheese melts in the chili.
6. Serve the chili with more sour cream, green onions, diced tomatoes, salsa, cilantro, and/or cheese.

Here’s a lousy picture of the result:

For the record, my piss-poor photography skills aside, it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

Update: Speaking of Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt — and I’m always speaking of Townes Van Zandt, no matter what else it might sound like I’m speaking of — I didn’t know this existed:

I’m thinking it had to have been recorded after Townes died? At least his vocal sounds an awful lot like it does on No Deeper Blue.

Update II: Some people have been nice enough to get in contact with me lately and tell me what they thought of Pike. Everybody talks about it being dark, which seems right objectively, but I always have trouble explaining that it didn’t seem dark when I wrote it.

It always makes me think of that moment in the Townes Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me when someone asks him why his songs are so sad.

“They’re not all sad,” he answers. “Some of ’em are hopeless.”

I’ve never put a whole lot of thought into marijuana rights, or whatever that branch of activism is called. I mean, as with anybody who’d like to consider themselves free in any tangible way, I support the right to do whatever the hell you want to do with your own body. Not to mention that prohibiting something as innocuous as pot makes about as much sense to me as prohibiting green tea. But it’s never been very high on my priority list, as causes go.

That said, marijuana laws are a pretty good indicator of everything that’s wrong with our legal system. They’re arbitrary, useless, and aimed barrel-first at poor people. And they’re a pretty big reason why this so-called land of the free has more people in prison than any other country in the history of the world.

Like most people I’ve known in my life, I smoke a little a pot. I’ve seen enough damage done by heavy drinking and hard drugs — including to myself — to try to avoid those, but I’ve just gotta have a way to get out of my own head here and there. Now, I can’t read or write while I’m even the slightest bit high, so my use is fairly limited. Still, it does me a hell of a lot of good just knowing that the option’s always there.

But, even though I ain’t much of an activist, there’s something about watching a 77-year-old musician get threatened with jail time by a fat, lying sack of shit who’s turned his entire neck of the woods into a TSA grope zone — and would like nothing more than to take his show on the road — that makes me want to start organizing NORML gun clubs for self defense.

Is there a way that we can just quietly opt out of all that these assholes are doing to save us from ourselves? Where we can just say, y’know, thank you for working so hard to keep me so safe, but I’d like you to kindly go fuck yourself now. Y’all can form a circle and give each other body cavity searches in perpetuity — for myself, I’d like to be left alone.

For better or worse, all my favorite protest songs are country songs. Most of ‘em are Kristofferson songs.

And, speaking of which, John Trudell does a pretty good job of speaking for John Trudell.