1 Boring Old Man

BAR-B-Q.

Five or so years ago, our little Lake community was going to have it’s Spring get-together. They usually bought chicken, which didn’t seem right to me, so I volunteered myself and a friend to BAR-B-Q, something we’d both done for years before expatriating to the country. We built us a "pit" out of concrete blocks, claiming the dimensions were measured in cubits, and came from the Book of Ezekiel. It was a grand success and we’ve done it twice a year since:

Problem was that increasingly, the Ladies of the Lake complained that our "pit" was unsightly. Do they always look like that? Couldn’t you cover it with some nice stone? Is that how you meant for it to look?

We ignored their pleas, but then there was a groundswell of sentiment and the tide turned, so we had to respond to the will of the people. Money was raised. First they built a little covered pavilion with electricity and water [the Pagoda] on the site of our former biblical "pit." Then, with much consultation, a professional, 1/4" steel-plate hand-built cooker got commissioned from Oklahoma. It came today – an apparatus of great beauty [and complexity]: