A Food Fight In Court

I have a bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce in my kitchen cupboard. So when I saw an item in Harper's magazine (January 2023 issue) quoting a class-action lawsuit against the product's manufacturer, the T.W. Garner Food Company, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I became very interested in what the lawsuit was about.

The lawsuit, filed in September, stated that "A hot sauce is labeled 'Texas' if it is made in Texas, using Texas ingredients and flavor profiles. .... Texas hot sauces...must be made in Texas from ingredients sourced from Texas. ....Texas takes great pride in its hot sauce. ....The defendant trades on the reputation of Texas. There is nothing Texas about them."

Nowhere on the label does it say "Texas-style" (whatever that is). There's only a cartoon-drawing of a cowboy wearing a 10-gallon hat, with a whip in his hand, and three red peppers near the logo. The label says the company has been making Texas Pete hot sauce "Since 1929." Which leads one to ask this question, why has it taken 93 years to complain about the product's authenticity?

Frankly, I don't know what makes Texas hot sauce different from any other hot sauce. If there is such a thing as Texas-style hot sauce and the recipe is generic and in the public domain, how is its replication by others injurious to the reputation of Texas? I'm not a lawyer but based on the above quote, this lawsuit sounds frivolous. That could mean it will get thrown out of court.

A House Plant With Literary Roots

I recently found in a manila file folder a copy of an e-mail my late friend, the poet Velma Reeb, sent to me in August 2007.

"How is Little Philly?" she asked. Little Philly is the name she gave to a philodendron cutting she took from the house plant she called Big Philly. "The original Big Philly was my friend Alma Stone's plant," she wrote. I'm assuming that Velma's Big Philly was at one time a cutting from Stone's plant.

After giving me instructions on how often to water Little Philly--"Water weekly only; spritz with water mid-week or every few days"-- she described who Alma Stone was. She was "a fiction writer ("The Harvard Tree" and "The Bible Seller")" who "wrote up into her 80's, and died a few years ago in her 90's! In fact, her work can be found on the public library shelves. She won a national award for one short story." The award Stone won, according to Velma, was the O. Henry Award.

These literary works as well as her other papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. The location of her papers is fitting because she was a native Texan, born in the east Texas town of Jasper in 1909.

P.S. Fifteen years later, I still have Little Philly. I placed it in my bathroom window, where it receives a lot of moisture and sunlight.

Happy Juneteenth 2020

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved blacks in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior.

Recently various states, municipalities, and companies have designated Juneteenth as a holiday. It may even become a national holiday.

Don't Insult The Alligator's Mouth

The following unpublished letter-to-the-editor was submitted to the New York Daily News's "Voice of the People" via e-mail on July 6, 2015:

Dear Editor:

Re: the young man in Texas who jumped into a body of water containing an alligator despite pleas by onlookers not to ("Man Teased Gator Before Fatal Attack," July 5).

This tragic event brought to mind an African proverb that the young man if he had heard of it should have heeded: "Until you have crossed the river, don't insult the alligator's mouth." In other words, when in the presence of danger, proceed with caution until you are out of harm's way.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith


Note: I remember seeing this proverb in a paperback anthology of Negro literature edited by Langston Hughes.