We don’t grille much any more. I can’t tell you why. We don’t have a bonfire very often either. These things just past away-out of our lexicon of dinner activities and after dinner entertainments. The roaring bonfire and the sparks weaving up to the inky evening sky just don’t have the attraction they used to. The contemplative and hypnotic orange sparks leaping up with the smoke doesn’t get it. I am more comfortable in front of the wavering images on the TV screen. I save the outdoor cooking for the occasional campout, but now that Benny-my camping partner- is far out west I don’t know when I will be doing that next. Tonight was an exception. Lizzy brought home some whole fish and she wanted them grilled on the fire-it is a favorite of hers-so I dragged out the old GrilleMaster 554 parked in the back of the house, uncovered it, and took inventory as to its condition. Already the end of May and this will be the first time we are using the grille. I don’t think we used the grill twice last year. It was not in great shape. The gas manifold was completely rotted and a mouse had obviously spent a comfortable winter in one corner of the firebox. I cleaned it out. I cut out the gas guts and scrapped the grilles. It was my opinion that the racks were not useable. I devised a way to use one of them, positioning it just above the floor of the firebox to hold a bed of old fashioned charcoal. Above that I would use a couple of stones to hold the fish rack above the coals. The fish rack is a two piece affair that clamps the fish and has a long handle that makes it easy to “flip” the fish while they roast. I cut out the bottom of a coffee can and filled it full of charcoal, some newspaper and a few twigs. It lit right up and within a few minutes I pulled out the can and had a nice bunch of coals burning away. My rig with the fish clamp and the stones worked well enough. Balancing the clamp on the stones took some fiddling but the fish cooked. In half an hour we were sitting down to dinner.
It was nice to get in out of the humidity and into the air conditioning. That’s something else I ‘fired up’ for the first time this year. In fact the initiation of the A/C season makes me feel more like summertime than the whole grilling thing. Pretty soon I’ll fire up the TV and sink back into the sofa, stinking slightly of smoke and fish, I’ll watch some stupid sitcom and/or cop/doctor/lawyer show. The end of the evening I won’t be getting into a tent or a sleeping bag but rather into a newly made bed with clean linens, with a book, or the TV (again) and my eyes will close while I think of the GrilleMaster 554 and wondering if I should buy a new gas grille. Or maybe I’ll be thinking of the sculpture I am making down in the basement or the job I will be doing tomorrow. Nothing exciting, that’s for sure. And I just flashed on a line of poetry that I learned back in South Miami Junior High School about how it all ends “not with a bang but a whimper.” I understand that line now. But it’s not exactly true. Life can end without a “bang” but accompanied with a smile. Not as incendiary as an explosion, but far less desperate than a whimper.
