Tuesday, November 4, 2003 – Austin Statesman Newspaper

Is there no honor, no dignity? Is nothing sacred? Can’t a Texan even trust the integrity of a bowl of red anymore?

Scandal has rocked the chili cookoff world. On Saturday in Terlingua, in the heart of the Big Bend, at the 37th annual Original Terlingua International Frank X. Tolbert-Wick Fowler Memorial Championship Chili Cookoff, the granddaddy of Texas chili cookoffs, the winner was defrocked for pulling a fast one.

Chiliheads say Don Eastep of Springfield, Ill., entered chili he didn’t even cook, and won. At least he was the winner for a short time.

“We caught the scoundrel, the Benedict Arnold that he is,” said Tom Nall, of Wick Fowler’s 2-Alarm Chili, who was one of the judges at the finals table. “We’ve got to set up guards on the border to make sure he never comes back.”

The story goes that Eastep entered by posing as his brother, Larry Eastep, who had qualified for the cookoff but didn’t attend. Then Don Eastep, who was not qualified to enter, went to various chili cooks entered in the cookoff and gathered samples from them in his tasting cup, said Joe Felty, who works security at the cookoff.

Then Eastep transferred the chili to his brother’s entry cup and entered the chili – and won. Briefly. When cookoff officials found out what had happened, the winner had to give back the trophy and the other awards. “The whole thing started out as a prank, just as a joke,” a contrite Don Eastep said. “It wasn’t meant to defraud. There’s no way anybody is going to profit from it. The bottom line is I should not have done it. And when they called the winning number, I wish at this instant that I would not have responded.”

Don Eastep said that when he was named the winner he was “absolutely stunned.”

“How could you possibly win with a conglomeration of chilis?” he asked. “That was the last thought in my mind that it would win. And when it did, there was nobody who was more shocked. I should have just sat there like a bump on a log.”

Cowboy cook Crazy Sam Higgins of Fredericksburg says the scandal came to light when the noncooking winner went around thanking the cooks whose chili he had pilfered.

“Instead of keeping his mouth shut, he went and thanked them for it,” Higgins said. “And he (ticked) everybody off. It was more pricking than thanking, so they checked up on him.” “He got busted, and his name is Dirt,” Felty said. Felty sees additional security measures coming to protect the sanctity of Texas’ state dish. “Because of this, before somebody can get a chili cup, they’re going to have to show a picture ID,” Felty predicted. “But who knows even then.”

From the reaction, it’s a surprise the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t been notified to check the guy’s shoes to make sure he’s not trying to sneak in beans.

Nall said Eastep was lucky he pulled the stunt this year because there were a lot good entries to borrow from this time around. “I guess that’s why he was fortunate, because the year before there weren’t a lot of good ones,” said Nall, who has been a judge at the cookoff for at least 30 years.

“There was some discussion pretty late in the evening that maybe we should find the scoundrel and throw a lasso around him and drag him out of town,”

Nall added. “He’s a pretty tough hombre to try to pull that off in Texas. It’s bad, it’s true traitorism, but it had to be from another country – which is Illinois.”

Kathleen Tolbert Ryan, whose father, newspaperman Frank X. Tolbert, help found the cookoff in 1967, says she confronted Eastep at his campsite as soon as she found out what was going on. She then made him return all of his winnings – including a trophy, a necklace and a hand-painted stove.

“I went over to the person who claimed to have won and took the (winner’s) necklace off of him that I had put on him earlier,” she said. “I took that off his neck and told him to march back to the stage.”

Ryan referred to the brief winner as “the great chili impostor.”

The scandal turned out well for Dallas dentist Ted Hume, who had finished second but was named the winner after Eastep was gonged. Because of the win, Hume says he now qualifies automatically to enter the cookoff every year.

Hume was thrilled. “I’m qualified for life, and in a few years people will have forgotten and all they’ll know is I’ve won. A friend of mine says it’s like qualifying for the Masters.”

Higgins said this wasn’t the first time funny business has occurred at the Terlingua chili cookoff. He says four or five years ago somebody won the accompanying bean cookoff with – say it isn’t so – canned beans.