A FISH LIST AND OTHER HOT STUFF

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993                   TAG: 9302160273
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
A FISH LIST AND OTHER HOT STUFF
Saturday will be the world jalapeno pepper-eating championship in Laredo, Texas. It's an annual event, and this annum it'll happen without Robert Hager, Virginia's finest hot pepper eater.
Hager trekked last year to Laredo to try to wrest the global title from four-time winner Johnny Espinoza, a Texas legend. Espinoza had once set the Laredo record by throwing back 79 pickled peppers in 15 minutes. He showed up with bodyguards.
Hager was disqualified when he vomited with 15 seconds to go in the contest after eating 76 peppers. He would have placed third. Espinoza, sitting next to Hager, threw in the towel then and there. He'd eaten 62 peppers.
Thirty-one other contestants weren't in the same league.
The winner was Braulio Ramirez, a mountain of a man wearing a hairnet. He'd just breezed in from Florida, or Mexico, or somewhere farther south than Laredo. He ate an astonishing 141 peppers and took home the $1,000 first prize.
Hager's game attempt at eternal pepperdom earned him folk-hero status in Laredo. He became a media darling. He limped home to Roanoke.
Espinoza, the disgraced champ, announced his retirement. As of Monday, he hadn't preregistered for this year's jalapeno-eating contest.
But, said Jodi Powell, the director of the weeklong Washington's Birthday celebration in Laredo, Braulio Ramirez is expected back to defend his title.

When the flat-world theorists peered through their looking glasses at the flat horizon, the most distant point they could see to the east was the traffic signal in Bonsack, at U.S. 460 and Alt. U.S. 220.
That Bonsack traffic light was the unofficial edge of the valley, the threshold to the great rural beyond.
It was open-throttle, no-light sailing clear to Appomattox.
No more.
Crews on Monday were hanging traffic lights at the U.S. 460 intersection of Laymantown Road, a few miles beyond Bonsack.
Another frontier pierced.

Here are the answers to last week's gripping state-fish quiz:
Ala., Fla., (tarpon); Alaska, Ore., (king salmon); Ariz., (Apache trout); Ark., Fla., Ga., Miss., Tenn., (largemouth bass); Calif., (golden trout); Colo., (Colorado cutthroat trout); Del., (weakfish); Hawaii (Humo humo nuku nuku apoo ah-ah); Idaho, Mont., N.M., Wyo., (cutthroat trout); Ill., (bluegill); Ky., (Kentucky spotted bass); Maine, (Atlantic salmon); Md., (striped bass).
Mass., (codfish); Mich., N.J., N.Y., Pa., Vt., W.Va., (brook trout); Minn., S.D., Vt., (walleye); Nev., (Lahontan cutthroat trout); N.C., (channel bass); N.D., (northern pike); Ohio (smallmouth bass); Okla., (sand bass); S.C., (striped bass); Texas, (Guadalupe bass); Utah, (rainbow trout); Wash., (steelhead trout); Wis., (muskellunge).
Conn., Ind., Iowa, Kan., La., Mo., Neb., N.H., and R.I. have no state fish.
Virginia legislators are considering the brook trout as our state's standard bearer.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB