Hot Sauce Burn

Hot Sauce Burn

Milton wore his Afro with pride. He had no choice, that’s just how his hair grew. He wanted to be on the football team, but you had to be able to run at least 100 yards and do a push-up to do that. He wanted to play in one of the high school rock bands, but you had to play an instrument to do that. Even the chess team rejected him. Turns out you have to be able to play chess to do that. Milton wanted to do something special to stand out among his classmates but it was a sad stretch any way he looked at it. Unlike most kids, Milton didn’t seem to have any skills that had a chance of making him less invisible.

At home Milton got equally little respect. He had an older brother Jeff who was his parents’ favorite. This wasn’t a Tommy Smoothers complex. Milton’s parents actually loved Jeff best. It was easy to understand why, even for Milton. Jeff was a football star who played in the hottest rock band in town. He played the drums, so all the girls wanted a piece of him. Jeff was also a serious student while Milton couldn’t keep his mind on his studies.

After high school, Milton and Jeff drifted apart. Truth be told, it was Milton that did most of the drifting. While Jeff married the prom queen, Sally, Milton dropped from sight. Jeff went to community college and then finished his Bachelor’s degree during nights and summers while he worked at the Blockbuster store. Meanwhile, Milton was bumming around the southwest doing whatever he could, which generally meant working at fast food outlets. His specialty was Taco Bell.

Jeff became the manager of the video store and then went on to a promotion to the head office in Florida, where he became a regional manager. He was well-liked and had a flair for franchising management. He and Sally had three kids and life was good. Every once in a while Jeff wondered how Milton was doing, but then things got busy at work or at home and the years just seemed to slip by.

Jeff was nearing retirement age. The kids were through school and off on their own except for the occasional request for a little help for this or that. He and Sally were on solid ground even though there had been a few tough times. Jeff had not saved as much for retirement as he had wanted, but he had his Blockbuster stock to fall back on. He had been with the firm for twenty-five years and while the company had seen better times, they had been generous with him with stock options so even at the current market prices, he was still OK.

But then the financial crisis hit. That coincided with the final straw of Netflix going online and streaming. The video rental business collapsed so fast it made Jeff’s eyes spin. He lost his job in a matter of days. It was all very unceremonious and not personal. The business was dead. He had stayed too long and saved too little. If only he hadn’t taken those home equity loans to generously pay off the kids’ school loans and pay for their weddings. Now his bayside house was upside down and he had to do a strategic foreclosure just to get out of the tax and utility bills. He was out more or less clean, but their money was about gone and jobs were nowhere to be found. Even Walmart wasn’t hiring greeters at the moment in Florida.

One day, Jeff and Sally just packed up the car and started driving west. They figured if they didn’t find anything resembling a job by the time they got to Arizona, they would just pull a Thelma & Louise off the Grand Canyon. When they reached Santa Fe, things were looking tough. They stopped into a small Mexican restaurant to eat. Jeff saw a bottle of unusual hot sauce on the table. It was habanero-based, which meant it was hot, but it had a peachy sweetness which made the heat almost pleasant. Jeff was impressed so he started reading the label.

There it was at the bottom of the label, in the smallest print imaginable. The hot sauce was made by a company called Milton Corp. it reminded Jeff of his brother, who he hadn’t heard from in twenty years. He decided it was kismet and maybe the hot sauce company could use his franchise management skills. Something made him go for it. He went to the library and found out the company was located just 20 miles away in White Sands, the location of the first nuclear bomb facility.

He dusted off the only suit he had kept and ironed his best shirt in the motel room. Sally thought he had gone crazy, but she had nothing to lose so she just shrugged and told him he had better come back to get her. So, off he went to White Sands to find his fortune in hot sauce.

When he got to the glass and cedar modern building where the company offices were located, overlooking a lovely pine forrest, he told the receptionist he was there to see the owner. She did not seem surprised or put off, but rather picked up the phone and told her boss Jeff’s name. She showed Jeff to a glass conference room.

In a few minutes, in walked a strange bald guy wearing jeans and a t-shirt who looked vaguely familiar. He sat down and just looked at Jeff until it started to get uncomfortable. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” he said.

The penny suddenly dropped for Jeff and he just shook his head and said, “I somehow knew it.” Then they got up and hugged.

At dinner that night Milton explained that all that working at Taco Bell had led him to take a bunch of jalapeños home and he cooked them up with various jams until he found a great taste of hot and sweet. He went on to habanero chili’s and the rest was history. He had started by taking a bottle into a Major Market store and they ordered ten cases right away. He didn’t even have his FDA certificate yet, so he had lots of work to do, but that was all ten years ago.

Milton had done his homework so he knew where things stood for Jeff. Nevertheless, he asked his older brother for help, saying he really needed him in the business. Jeff suspected Milton was being kind, but he accepted immediately.

Milton remembered his brother as his idol and he was glad to help and even more glad to have him near again.