Road food: Cincy chili and Tar Heel pie

postcard: Cincinnati, chili capital of the USA 

What's the point of seeing the USA in your Chevrolet if you only eat at fast food chains? You have an Egg McMuffin, you've had the only one they've got. Once in a while you should step out of your comfort zone and grub like the locals. In Cincinnati, you can get your chili five ways. Five! (Top that, Ronald McDonald.) In case you're wondering, at Skyline Chili it goes like this: make your basic Cincinnati chili (directions on the postcard, courtesy of Cin-city resident Yvonne Witt.) Put it naked in a bowl: there's your first way. Served over spaghetti, that's 2-way. Chili over spaghetti, topped with grated cheddar cheese: 3-way. Put chopped onions on that, you got your 4-way. Here comes the twist: the 5-way is the same as the 4-way, adding kidney beans to your chili. Got that? If you're too hungry for Skyline's higher math, you can always just order the Coney topped with chili, cheese and onions. Don't forget the Altoids!

February, 1993: Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds, is fined $25,000 and banned from daily operations of the baseball team for -- oh, let's just say she used some colorful language about some of her employees, shall we? May, 1993: my friends Joy and Liz stop at Skyline Chili: "Saw Marge Schott drowning her sorrows in some 5-way chili," Liz writes. Wow, 5-way and a Marge Schott sighting: that's livin' la vida Cincinnati!

Postcard: Tar Heel Pie, North Carolina

Can there be anything better than chili from "the chili capital of the USA?" It's just possible. Later in that same trip I get my answer from Liz herself: this North Carolina card features a recipe for Tar Heel pie. Of course, you can't go too wrong with a recipe calling for a cup of chocolate chips and a stick of butter. Add some chopped pecans (how else would you know you were in the south? Oh, yeah -- that whole stick of butter), flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and ... brown sugar, too. Sweet. I should try this someday, just before a trip to the dentist. A note from Liz: "better than Cincy chili?" She was south of the Mason-Dixon line when she wrote it. Thank goodness Marge Schott had no comment.

Postcard: Cornmeal Pancakes favored since early West Virginia

Cincinnati chili and tar heel pie: that should hold you till breakfast. And for breakfast? If you're driving through Morgantown on your way to the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, skip that Egg McMuffin again, and sample the cornmeal pancakes, "favored since early West Virginia." (No butter stick this time -- basically just cornmeal, milk and eggs. Pour on the griddle, and flip just once. Then help yourself to the butter and syrup, and your choice: sausage or bacon.) Joy and Liz sent this card on a trip to Pittsburgh in July 1998: "old Ukranian ladies, families, pierced and tattooed kids" along E. Carson St. My bet is there's got to be a postcard with a great recipe for pierogi somewhere along the Strip. Gotta find it, or just wait long enough: Joy and Liz will send it some day ...

Hollywood tragedy: Elvis, Marilyn, and James Dean

Postcard: Tyrone Power in "Blood and Sand" (1941)

Old Hollywood -- maybe not ancient, silent, black'n'white, but still really old Hollywood. Those were the days. Stars actually had privacy back then, or at least an agent who spent time keeping them out of the newspapers! Imagine. There will be a day far into the future when Lindsay, Zack, Miley, Angelina, Casey, Katie, Brad, Ben, Matt and every Hollywood star who's ever appeared on the cover of People magazine will be as fondly recalled (if not as outrageously costumed) as Tyrone or Carmen. Even Lindsay has already dressed up -- or is that dressed off? -- as Marilyn, so that day may not be as far off as I hope.

What the current crop of stars needs is, of course, some real tragedy, and not "the court took my babies away" trailer sagas of Britney'n'K Fed. (Her head-shaving seems like a promising start, but still: hair grows back.) Real tragedy, like the heart attack that killed Tyrone Power on the set of Solomon and Sheba in 1959. The postcard above shows Tyrone in costume from his remake of the Valentino flick Blood and Sand. (Nice pants!) The flip says Power was "the star in a host of big pictures," but no mention of a few that got away: he turned down the Burt Lancaster role in From Here to Eternity, and was turned down for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. Adding insult to injury, the director of Solomon and Sheba kept Power's performances in the completed film. Now, that's tragic. My friend Liz sent this card in 1988, originally from the Movieland Wax Museum, then she and Joy were off to Seattle, Canada and points north. In May. Brrrr.

Postcard: Carmen Miranda

My sister Rene sent this card of the other divine Miss M (above) just before I went to visit her for July Fourth, 1994. Carmen provides more Hollywood tragedy: another early heart attack, in 1955. She didn't smoke or drink, says her biography, so maybe it was the outrageous headwear that did Miss Miranda in. James Dean made his exit by car crash on September 30, 1955: it was a busy year. Death is such an iffy career move, but in the case of the movie mags, like on the postcard below, tragedy sells. Is it any wonder Elvis would come to a tragic end after being paired with Jimmy here? The flip only mentions Dean, so apparently it was only a matter of time. Those magazines knew. I bet Col. Parker sweated over Elvis' death odds every morning for years ....

Postcard: Elvis & Jimmy, direct from Amsterdam (1987)

Patrick writes from Amsterdam, 1987:
More soul music on the radio here than in Atlanta. Not necessarily better. Lots of Afro/reggae/hiphop groups playing around town ... Record stores -- one had a "wreckabilly" category ... more 60s and psych discs than you could shake a thai stick at -- Georgia Satellites disc elsewhere. Many music videos for sale. Guy in front of the train station w/ Strat, playing "Blue Suede Shoes." I give it a 2.

Postcard: Marilyn sends square-cut or pear-shaped birthday wishes from Rocky, 1986

And what more can be said about Marilyn? Not much at this late date. I don't know, maybe Lindsay's recent magazine photos posing as Marilyn may be one of those weird omen-like events that begs the phrase be careful what you ask for. Look what happened to poor Anna Nicole, for instance -- she was pure Texas trailer, but she didn't fool around with that Britney haircut jive. She went straight for the slow-motion pills, just like Marilyn. Rocky, once an actor, writes: I'm going to be in New York all summer and possibly for years to come. (See the "Woody and Christ at the Met" card in the post of March 22) -- Rocky eventually studies for the Episcopal priesthood, side-stepping all the lure of that Hollywood drama. Smart boy.