Column: Chillin’ and grillin’ with Dad

I bought our first gas barbecue grill when we relocated to Southern California right after we were married in New Jersey.

I have nothing against New Jersey but I would substitute just about anywhere else to have been the site of our wedding vows other than the so-called Garden State. Like Maine. Like Vermont. Like New Orleans. Like Monaco. But back to the grill.

Until California, I was a dyed-in-the-wool charcoal guy. My boyhood summers in the ‘50s Midwest were one long grilling season. My father would come home from work, receive disciplinary reports (if any) from my mother and work through the grilling protocols.

The first grill I recall was the Bar-Ba-Charo. The new ranch house I grew up in had a fireplace in the living room and another in the basement. My father had spotted a low-lying charcoal grilling contraption in a hardware store that fit perfectly into the firebox of the downstairs fireplace.

Hence the Bar-Ba-Charo, which may have been its brand name or maybe a family coinage. Not infrequently, my father would grill up some meats during the winter, a feat that seemed utterly exotic for us middle class suburbanites.

But when the warm weather struck, he really got cooking. He slyly bought four metal pipes that fit over the Charo’s stubby legs and, voila, he had an upright grill in the back yard. He even painted the pipes black to match the Charo. He had fastidious streaks.

It’s not that people hadn’t been barbecuing for eons, but during the ‘50s in America the backyard barbecue became something of a cultural phenomenon. The grills became more stylish, although they were nothing more than a circular pan to hold the coals.

Everyone in our subdivision was barbecuing in the summer. Some dads wore aprons, and some, as a joke, wore a chef’s toque. My father never went down that road, but he had his routines.

Once we retired the Charo, he bought about as fine a grill as you could buy. It had a tan pan and a chrome half-top that allowed for a rudimentary rotisserie, which we never attempted. As the barbecue movement surged there were more and more accessory products to consider.

My father chose to line the grill pan with a bed of absorbent material to hold down flare-ups. He moved away from the classic Kingsford briquettes and opted for briquettes in the shape of wagon wheels. He eschewed name brand charcoal lighter and used paint thinner.

His most personal technique was, after grilling, to pluck the still-burning coals and put them in an air-tight metal container to extinguish them and have them ready for the next grilling session. There’s that fastidiousness, again.

In hindsight, it appears my mother had a rule that my father couldn’t drink liquor during the week. But a particular pleasure during the grilling season was when Ken Ploss, a neighbor across the street, would see my father cooking and come over to shoot the breeze.

Ken was a salesman for Falstaff beer, as good a beer name as has ever been minted. He always brought over a good supply of cold Falstaff, and those nights always seemed particularly enjoyable with a lot of outbursts of laughter between them that I didn’t always comprehend. (The Ploss family moved away and was replaced by the Voss family. What are the chances?)

Many years later, I got that gas grill in California. It was cheap, but I became invested in the convenience of gas grilling and ran through several Webers over the years and took on the mantle of a reliable griller for family and friends. (I once won a gas grill in a raffle run by John’s [Hallman] Gas Co.)

A few years ago, Jane, inexplicably, without consultation, bought a mini-Weber gas grill that I despised. It had only one rectangular burner, which, if you know gas grilling, is unacceptable. I basically boycotted the grill and grilling.

Fortuitously, the lighting mechanism went on the fritz and, rather than trying to fix it, I lobbied hard for a return to charcoal in the form of a classic Weber kettle. Jane eventually agreed and we took the despised grill to the Recycling Center and happily saw it reclaimed almost instantly by an Islander.

My new kettle is crimson red and has the modern features that make it quite the backyard gadget. I readily confess that I miss the convenience of my old gas grills, but am working up some enthusiasm for the venerable rhythms of charcoal. These days, the use of charcoal lighter is condemned, so I have adopted the “chimney” technique, which works pretty well. I was tested over the Fourth with a large family gathering and I made it through two grilling events with no major screw-ups.

I don’t think he’s looking down from anywhere, or looking at all, but I like to think my father is happy that I went back to Kingsford, even though I do not save the glowing coals in a metal container.

But what I wouldn’t give to be shooting the breeze with him, properly marking the steaks, with a case of Falstaff in a tub of ice at the ready.