Barbecue: it's the pits

Ever since our ancestors huddled together in caves blackened by fire and smoke, trying to keep warm while trying to reduce a mastodon ham-bone to something other than leather, there has been a handing down of knowledge about fire. So important was fire that the Greeks claimed that Prometheus stole it from the gods who were hoarding it as one more sign of their superiority. Superior firepower, I suppose you might call it. They rewarded him by chaining him to a rock and letting an eagle devour his liver once a day for eternity. The liver, of course, unless soaked in alcohol, regenerates itself.

Somewhere along the line of Western civilization, the knowledge and fear of fire was supplanted by the taming of fire. When we wash our clothes, we can hang them out to dry, or, much more conveniently, bundle them into a dryer with a cloth that makes them smell as though we hung them out. The furnace replaces the soot-blackened firepit. And if it's not warm enough for you, there are many different kinds of heaters.

And so the last vestigial bit of knowledge about firemaking is dying out. As, for example, today when my next door neighbor's grandson, early twenties, dragged out the smoker kettle and prepared to set a barbecue dinner for his beloved. Sitting in the Zinn Center, I observed only his hands and feet through the wide boards of our deck. But that was enough to tell the whole story.

First, he poured in a fairly generous portion of a new bag of briquets. So far, so good. Next came about a quarter of a spray bottle of firestarter. Then came the wooden matches. About two dozen of them.

The wind was up a bit, and Grandson had a lot of trouble getting a flame to catch. He's close to six feet tall, and it's a long way for a match to fall and retain its flame. Some matches indeed fell into the firepit, but landed in such a way that they could not catch the fuel. Some fell across the grill, and so other matches had to be used to push them into the fire. Bending over would be dangerous if your reaction time is factored by your height.

After a time and a tussle and the addition of more starter fluid, a fairly decent plume of orange flame shot up, and G went inside to get the chicken breasts. After carefully applying at least four different doses of dry seasoning to the topsides, he went back to find the fire had left no discernible trace of its existence. The occasion called for more fluid and more matches, and apparently more wind.

Eventually, another dozen matches later, he saw flame, and encouraged it by spraying the starter stuff directly into the cauldron. He was rewarded by the heavy smell of refinery and a generous flare. At this point, he put the chicken on the grill.

Covering the grill, he went back inside. Upon his return, the flame perversely had died down again. He treated it to several fresh infusions of starter spray, around the outside edge. Some additional flames burst up, but apparently not enough to suit the recipe, for he then began lighting matches and tossing them onto the unburned briquets. Back into the house for a few minutes, and soon out again to turn the birds.

At this point, he added equal amounts of condiments to the conflagration for the second side, squirted a bit more starter, and threw in a few more lights. Then the cover went on again, while the neighborhood began to smell like the Esso truck had just made another delivery.

Finally, the chickens gave up, and he replaced them on the grill with hamburgers or buns: it was difficult to tell through the smoke. And then, at last, the reason for this labor of love, this multimatch extravaganza, his girlfriend arrived.

I do not know how the meal turned out. I can only guess. It might have been the original or the crispy. I speculate that it was historical, in any case. It had to have tasted like one of Ogg's attempts at mastodon meat when he tried using tar pit blobs as briquets. That was before Ogga took over and forbade him to enter the kitchen ever again. And just think: it could all so easily have been otherwise, if the ancient knowledge of the mystery of fire had been passed from father to son just one more time.