American Beat: Tune In, Drop Out, Make Sauce

But in all my years of stuffing myself silly on samples of everything from alligator meat to zucchini pickles, one thing has stood out: There is no better indicator that the American Dream is alive than talking to our nation's hot sauce makers.

Sure, there are workforce dropouts producing other products, such as coffee beans ("I'm really an orthopedic surgeon," said Joe Alban of Kona Joe coffee), breath mints ("I was a pipe welder!" said Jon Mitcheal, owner of Vermints) and potato chips ("I sold bonds in Atlanta-you know, the full range of fixed-income, bank-qualified Georgia paper," said Jim Ehlen of Madhouse Munchies). But for hot sauce makers, being a refugee from the real world is the rule, not the exception.

Ron Boyle ran a construction company in Tennessee, but gave it all up to start the oxymoronically named Porky's Gourmet. Starting in his kitchen with just one hot sauce-the now-legendary Boar's Breath Jalapeno-Boyle now has a line of 28 sauces, including Nuckin' Futs (so hot that it features the warning, "Keep away from eyes, sensitive body parts, pets and children").

Alexandra Weeks was a securities broker in Dallas before she founded Terra Sol Chile Company. "I got burnt out," she said. "A friend of mine was doing groundwater surveys in Mexico, where he met chili farmers who wanted to export chilies to America. I said, what the hell, I'll do that." (Talking to Weeks made me realize that we are all just one groundwater surveyor away from an entirely new career).

Weeks said she preferred making hot sauces to brokering securities because "I get to wear loud shirts and yell a lot. It's like a second childhood."

But why are all of these people making hot sauce and not hologram chocolates? For one reason, Baby Boomers seem to love hot sauce. After all, when Ernest Borgnine wanted to lend his name to a product, the result was Borgnine's Coffee Soda ("This ain't no soda pop! It's brewed from real coffee!"), but when Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir decided to moonlight in specialty food, he created a line of hot chili oils ("It captures the feeling of a medicine man's magic elixir!").