Real Men Barbeque

tomkatt4 (tomkatt41) Writes:

"It's curious to think that, for me, Memorial Day, this uniquely American day of remembrance, is somehow tied up with my masculinity, but there it is, Dr. Freud, fact!

It's the one day a year I get to show what a real man can do. And, doc, what real men do on Memorial Day is barbecue.

Take my father, Aaron Leo.

Though he cooked but this one day a year, Pop, like all men before him and most of us who follow, considered himself the unquestioned master of the Weber. But hey, he had good reason. His Memorial Day barbecue was the talk of the family. My aunts Dorothy and Ida (who could always be counted on for three opinions between them ... on anything) might argue over this or that but there was one subject on which they agreed, especially if Aaron Leo was out of the room.

No question, doc, it took a man to turn out a barbecue like Pop's.

I was just a slip of a lad m'self when I met manhood's ultimate test of fire. It was on a Memorial Day morning, a morning a lot like this one, when Pop beckoned for me to join him. Today, he confided, I was to learn the deepest, darkest male secret of all, the secret of cooking over an open flame.

What's that, doc? Oh, for sure! I was dying to learn what every man needs to know but, at the butcher, nothing was revealed; nor did Aaron Leo speak of the lore of the grill at the bakery, not even at the Crunch ‘n Munch Pickle Works.

Oedipus, doc? Hmmmm. Alls I know is that the suspense was killing. Would I ever be able to become a man? Was the day long enough to learn how? I had my doubts, doc, and I had ‘em in spades. It was only when we got to the hardware store that Pop at last spoke of the invisible but ever-present truth that separates men from the rest of humankind.

The thing that women don't get, he confided, eyeing the shelves, the reason they can't grill worth a darn, he added, selecting a five-gallon tin ...

(The anticipation was too much for me, doc, I couldn't catch my breath I was so excited)

... is plenty of charcoal lighter fluid.

There it was! Plenty of charcoal lighter fluid ... the secret of manhood at last!

Just soak half a bag of charcoal briquettes in a couple of gallons of lighter fluid ... arrange the meat on a cold grill ... touch a match ... and BOOM: not just manhood ... and not just instant barbecue ... but instant barbecue perfumed with that manly aroma of petroleum that says, "Psst, hey, buddy, put your nose into this and you'll known what it feels like to be a real man!"