For most Americans of the 1950s and 1960s, the "corn chip" was not the product we know today, but the Frito®, which has a completely different taste and texture.
Fritos® are a fried composite of corn mush (or, the official line is "extruded masa harina)" fried to crispness. In my mind they are to corn chips as Pringles are to potato chips.
Amazingly, they have been around since the 1930s. We owe them to one Charles Elmer Doolin of San Antonio, who wanted to produce a corn snack but found that tortilla chips (at that time anyway) wouldn't stay crisp. He encountered a Mexican fellow making chips this way, bought the idea, refined it to his taste (even eventually having a special sort of corn grown locally). In 1932 he began marketing them, some time before his death in 1959 he went into partnership with Herman Lay, and the humble "frito" (Spanish for "fried") became a powerful brand name.
There were also various sauces and dips created, but the preeminent one was bean dip. That was a marriage made in heaven. Bean dip just doesn't taste right on anything but a Frito. My dad, in his retirement years, at some point took to watching golf on TV on Sunday afternoons (he was never a golfer) and would almost always break out the bean dip and Fritos for the occasion. I guess I picked up a taste for them, and still get a craving now and then.
But there's always trouble in paradise. First, the bean dip produced by Frito-Lay has been toned down to a bland shadow of its former self. I recommend getting your own refried beans and doctoring them with cumin, chilies, and other additives. But you can't make your own Fritos, so once you have the bean dip, you'll need to go looking for them, and there is a second problem. I don't know if Fritos are still selling well in Texas, or on the moon, but in my area (northern Virginia) they are getting scarce. In my most recent search at a very large supermarket I almost overlooked the tiny space devoted to Fritos amid the huge shelf space given over to other "corn chips" (many of them also made by Frito-Lay). Also, they were ignominiously hidden behind a floor-standing display of some other product.
I'm sure it's a sign of changing tastes. People now prefer the lighter feel of a "tortilla chip." Still, I mourn the dwindling exposure of "real" Fritos®, and fear the product may disappear entirely as demand for them lessens. Go out and get a bag today!
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