The Great Flame-Out

It’s an annual rite of spring at most dwellings in the northern part of the country—the first barbecue of the season.  At the Walker household, it serves more than simply the purpose of welcoming the warm weather with an outdoor-made meal.  It’s a chance to once again demonstrate the incompetence of the male head of the house.

And if you haven’t yet figured it out, that’s me.

At 34 years old, after years at the helm of my trusty Weber, you would think I would be a master of charcoal charcuterie--or at the very least that I’d be competent.  Yet the heat of the season seems to melt more than just the snow.   My mind collapses into a gooey puddle of confusion every time I pull the grill out from its winter slumber. 

For the inaugural feast, my wife has pulled two homemade polish sausages from the freezer, sliced up a succulent zucchini to cook in the grill basket, and for the three-year-old, procured a plain old hot dog.  Nothing says summer like a hot dog on the grill.

I arrive home from work 15 minutes later than I had planned, and while my family is happy to see me, I’m immediately ordered into the backyard to fire up the Weber.  With my tools at hand, I fill the chimney with charcoal and light up the first flame of spring.  The smoke begins to rise.  The long-forgotten scent fills the air.  Everyone smiles a hungry smile. 

It’s going to take a while to heat, so when Grace, the three-year-old, begs me to play, jumping on the chance to steal my attention away from her three-month-old sister, Madeleine, I happily oblige.  I’m delighted just to be outside away from the perpetual chill that scourged our spring. 

Ten or so minutes go by.  Sarah pops out with the baby to check on us, I waltz back to the grill to find that the coals at the top are just above the line of gray.  It’s still going to be some time before they’re ready.  In retrospect, it’s sweet that after years of demonstrated cloddishness, she still thinks that I know what I’m doing when it comes to cooking outdoors.

The heating of the coals continues to drag on.  Ten minutes later, Sarah strolls out.  “Are they ready yet?” she asks in a perturbed tone.  I go to the grill.  Hmmph.  The top ones are gray, but not thoroughly so.  I tell her it will be a few more minutes.  She grumbles something as she heads inside.

A few minutes turn into ten more.  I continually check the coals, but I’m sure that they have to be totally gray before I can pour them out.  That's what the manual said.  Or at least the part I remember.

Hunger creeps in.  I start feeling weak as I lope after Grace.  She begins to cry for no apparent reason.  Sarah bursts through the door.  The look on her face tells me all I need to know about her state.  I peer into the chimney to see that the coals near the top still aren’t completely covered in gray, but I tell her that I can dump them out “a bit early” and get on with the grilling.  I know how to take care of my girl.  As she steps back into the house, I gingerly tip them out only to see that the ones at the bottom are halfway disintegrated.  I almost made quite the mistake!  To be fair, I only got this chimney at the end of last summer, so I’m not quite used to how it works.  Never mind that, though.  It’s time to get to the food!

I had read something a while back about indirect heating of the grill, another part of the manual I vaguely remember.  On the few occasions we had tried to barbecue vegetables last summer, they hadn’t turned out quite right, and thus I thought it might be a good idea to keep the heat from escaping out of the grill in order for them to properly sear.  So I lowered the basket onto the grate, lifted the cover onto the grill, and closed the vents on both the top and bottom of the Weber.

Genius. 

I’ve never been a fount of intelligence when it comes to….well, pretty much anything.  What I am good at is convincing myself that something inordinately stupid is actually the right thing to do.  After 34 years, I didn’t even need to consider that this might not be the proper process for heating the grill.

I go back to playing with Grace until after a few minutes, the wife, her frustration now having turned to desperation comes back out to check on the progress.  I proudly stroll to the grill ready to take in the tantalizing aroma of freshly barbecued zucchini.  With a grin in my tummy ready to burst into a laugh, I lift the lid, and upon doing so, instantly notice the lack of scorching heat blowing up into my face from the grill, strange since, you know, grill heat normally does that.  I notice grayish, fluffy bricks of coal, lying dead on the bottom grate as if they were the victims of some horrible tortuous massacre.  There is no glowing red ember of life to be found among them. 

I immediately realize the remarkable gaffe I have committed.

“Mmmm!  Looking good!”  I shout back to my slightly suspicious spouse standing a few feet away at the back door.  “Should be ready in a few minutes!”  With a not-so-scant scowl, she turns to head back inside.  Crisis averted.  Momentarily at least.

Grace yells for me to come play with her.  “Not now!” I say in my most pleasant tone, though even a three-year-old could see that the sweat on my brow was not caused by heat from a grill.  I quickly rush to grab the chimney.  One by one, I take the suffocated coals off the grate and drop them back in.  A glow!  There’s still hope!  I snatch whatever newspaper is near me and stuff it underneath, hoping against hope that there’s still time to salvage the flame.  And as I wait and watch the last remnants of May 2010’s City Pages light up, I fidget.  I dance.  I throw mental fireballs at the chimney.  And with Grace clambering for my attention behind me, and an increasingly agitated Sarah attending to the baby in the window in front of me, I pray to the charcoal gods that I can get this fire to light again.

There are moments in life when you truly know a higher power is at work.  If those coals hadn’t lit up, my daughter would have thrown a fit, my wife would have thrown the baby, they would have grumpily choked down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, and I would have slept hungry next to the cat litter in the basement. 

But, remarkably, they ignited.  The food cooked.  We ate.  The meat, the zucchini, it all turned out rather well actually.  And in the end, so did the first barbecue of the season.

Now it's time to convince myself I did everything right just in time to screw up the second one.