Mmmmmmmm! Onions!

Having lived in the Midwest for most of my life, I was never influenced by hot sauce, hot peppers or any of that 'hot spicy' stuff, including Buffalo Wings.  Just not my style.  Oh, I'd have Tommy's Subs with extra hot peppers (not really hot banana peppers) and Tommy's Pizza with some crushed red peppers sprinkled on top, but not like my Dad.  I remember his weekend breakfast of eggs covered in black pepper and drowning in Tobasco Sauce.  I tried a drop of Tobasco Sauce once back then and have stayed far from it ever since.  Onions, now that's my favorite.  I cook with onions but especially LOVE fresh sliced/chopped onions.  On hamburgers, hot dogs and salads, fresh onions.  Charlene may be the Garlic Queen but I'm the Onion King.
But now, I live in Southern California of which the vast majority are Hispanic.  Oh, my God, do they love HOT.  Not temperature wise, rather spicy-wise.  My introduction to Hispanic Spicy-ness was my friend Omar.  Shelley, Sister Pat, Cuz'n Kent, Scott and Nathan have met Omar.  We all love him.  He's like a big puppy, kind and gentle.  He used to give me his Mom's burritos at lunch and then he'd go out and buy something to eat.  For years, his Mom would take dinner leftovers and make burritos for him to eat for lunch.  I guess he was a little sick of them.  When Zachary spent a summer out here, when Scott spent a few years out here, when Shelley was here, when Sister Pat was here, I'd bring home what we like to call, "Omar's Mother's Burritos" and have them try them.  All of us just love them.  Better than anything you can buy.  She could make a fortune opening a "Omar's Mother's Burritos Shop" in the Midwest.  If Omar decided to eat them, he'd drown them in Tapatio Sauce followed by Tobasco Sauce.  Ahhhh!   Just thinking about it makes my tongue burn.  Omar would buy a bag of potato chips, dump them on a paper plate and do the same.  I mean he would drown them in Tapatio and Tobasco Sause and eat them like it was just plain chips to us.  Wouldn't bother him at all.  I do, however, remember that whenever he would buy a sandwich that had fresh sliced onions on it, he would pull them off and give them to me.  I'd eat them raw, just pop them in my mouth and chew away.  It really freaked him out.  He said they were too 'Hot' for him and didn't understand how I could eat them.  Talk about an oxymoron!
Ventura County doesn't have a lot of industry that makes stuff; it grows fruit and vegetables and has processing plants for all the produce grown here.  Lettuce of all kinds, onions, cabbage, strawberries, raspberries, celery, beans, lemons, oranges - - I could go on and on.  Lots of fruit and vegetable processing plants that take the stuff grown locally, process it as fresh or make juice and ship it all over the country.  One of the places I love to take service calls is anywhere on Pacific Avenue in Oxnard.  There are lots of processing plants in the area but the one that makes me slow down, roll down the window and take a giant sniff is:

I ask all my customers in the area how they like the aroma of onions every day, all day and they just find it repulsive.  Of course, they're Hispanic.  The Midwest guy, he's floating in onion aroma, smiling..........