Elfrida Chili

road, full of sunshine and merry may secrets, it seems to say. Follow outstretched arms toward the blue their blossoms rippling color to bid you welcome and all the ways in honor of your visit. If the travel on.

The desert road was not made to drive slowly you will not frighten it, big-eyed and alert, will pause

humorous character as birds go, will

built in a cholla, truly a masterpiece if you take your time you can find these desert fellows worth while restful land. Make a day of it. Watch it when it gets up, yawning and the bright light of a new day is enough. As morning grows older, the enough to cause you to shed your offee, because the delicate odor of nuance in living.

time to curl up for a nap. Then comes The color of the setting san spills gone taking the shadows in the sky, the moon comes up.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

ELFRIDA CHILI BY TAMARA ANDREEVA

Dude and old-timer; cowboy and Mexican vaquero; passerby health-seeker and born Westerner, all had at some time or another known the flaming sensation of chili-flavored food. Most take it for granted that peppery food had originated in Mexico, migrated West, becoming its culinary landmark. But the presence of “hot stuff” was felt and known wider and longer than a casual observer suspects. Kingdoms fell and formed around pepper; search for it girdled the globe; ransom and taxes were paid in pepper, and world economies rocked from pepper swindles in London's Exchange at Mincing street.

Its near-indestructibility is what made pepper a medium of exchange, comparable to gold in the days of ancient Rome. To keep the vandal Alaric away from its gates, Rome had to pay a 30,000 lb. ransom in black pepper. When he first went around the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco de Gama, explorer and adventurer for the Portuguese Crown, was not looking for pearls or diamonds as commonly believed. He was looking for black pepper. When he did find it at Malabar, Portugal became one of the richest and most influential powers of Europe. The power went to Great Britain as the pepper trade was usurped by the East India Company. Every six years London's Mincing street Exchange was rocked by financial earthquakes the center of which was pepper. Its growth being completed every six years, the seismograph of Mincing street regularly recorded those earthquakes every six years. The biggest one of these took place in June, 1937, when Garabed Bishirgian, Armenian pepper king, tried to capture the pepper market by foul means. At first he succeeded, sending several minor firms into bankruptcy. But British authorities caught up with him, and Bishirgian is now counting imaginary profits in jail. Meanwhile pepper trading switched from Mincing street to Wall street, and stayed there. Government-controlled, the American exchange allows only fluctuations of one cent per pound. The chief varieties of black pepper under brokers' scrutiny are those grown near Singapore. Malabar, Aleppy, Cochin, Penang, Singapore, and Siam are their recognized names. Red chili peppers or capsicum peppers can't boast as bloody a history as their black cousins, but in general popularity they are running a close second. According to Stewart Brockman, Arizona's Chili Pepper King whose vast Elfrida chili farms produce a great bulk of the fiery stuff consumed in the Southwest, Americans are prolific chili eaters. Chili peppers are grown in Louisiana, California, and New Mexico. Before the War, a considerable quantity was imported from Japan. Brockman himself had been around chili for over 20 years, having started as spice salesman for the Ben Hur Company in Los Angeles. Paradoxically enough, what now is a remarkable success story, had started out as a failure.

Brockman had made numerous flying trips into Arizona, but could not sell any California-grown peppers. The natives simply did not find them hot enough. In Southern Arizona they bought and cherished Mexico peppers. In Northern Arizona they bought them from New Mexico. The amount of red hots grown in Arizona proper was negligible. Being a conscientious salesman, Brockman could not begin to sell his customers until he believed in the product he was selling. He decided to find out for himself the difference between the California chili and the chili beloved of Arizonans. The day he tried real Arizona chili, he licked every cool doorknob in his hosts' house, and still the fiery feeling would not leave. He became a hot chili convert; now all he had to do was convert his Los Angeles Boss. He proceeded to build the Elfrida plant for the Ben Hur people; then bought them out in 1945, together with Howard E. Ames, forming the A & B Company. His present large holdings started with a small six acre experimental patch.

He planted it with the seeds of the hottest chili known, which he personally imported from the University of New Mexico where it is known affectionately as “College Number Nine.” While he watched the development of the young plants, he learned the ropes. He found that the best way to grow chili is in patches of about 10 to 40 acres. The process was to seed peppers in hothouses late in January, letting them remain there for three months, until the end of frost danger. At that point, young plants could be safely transplanted in the fields. Each plant had