When am I at such peace?
When I am in my back driveway, grilling meat.
I don't know what happened, but it came on strong this year. I've grilled for years, ever since the summer of 1998 when we lived in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn that somehow, impossibly, was blessed with a back deck. (And for only $1,110 a month!) So I grilled dogs and burgers. Sometimes a piece of chicken on a patch of tinfoil, but that's not really grilling. That's using an outdoor oven.
And every summer since then, I've grilled. It is expected of me. But my repertoire remained frozen in 1998: Dogs. Burgers. The occasional piece of chicken on a patch of tinfoil.
This year, everything changed.
Don't know if it was turning 35 or what, but suddenly I was fascinated by grilling. I looked up recipes online. I consulted books for tips. My menu grew exponentially — to chops and ribs and clams and God help me, I'm even thinking about vegetables and kebabs now.
This past weekend, for Father's Day, the kids gave me something I'd been hinting about for a few weeks now.
Oh yeah, I've gone charcoal.
Granted, it took me three hours to properly cook four pieces of chicken. (I don't think I added enough briquettes.) But the euphoric smell of the char, of the ash, of the roasting flesh ... it's still in my head as I type these words. I want to stand up, gather the entire staff of the City Paper and take them on an El ride to my house, where I will pour the Kingsford and await the intoxicating splendor of burning stuff.
Such pleasure it brings me.
Which means, of course, that it's doomed.
I can picture it now. Me, out back with a Yuengling pounder, putting the final touches on my Southwest-style shark kebabs, when a guy in a suit will walk down my driveway.
He'll be a city councilman. He'll ask me what I think I'm doing.
Grilling, I'll tell him. Want a kebab?
What about the secondhand smoke?
Huh?
The councilman will point to the house next door.
Do you think it's fair that your neighbors have to put up with all this smoke?
Hey, I'll tell him. That was only the first time, because I forget to open the vents at the bottom of the grill.
The city councilman will shake his head, sad expression on his face.
Sorry. This won't do.
He'll pull a bright and shiny piece of legislation from his jacket pocket.
And these words will echo in my head as I'm dragged, screaming, from my beautiful little 22-inch Weber kettle grill, trying desperately to stab my attackers with a two-pronged fork:
When they came for the smokers, you said nothing.
When they came for the trans fats, you said nothing.
When they came for the hippies playing guitar in the park, you said nothing.
Yeah. Frickin' guitar players in the park. This week's City Paper cover story by newcomer Will Dean details the latest skirmish in this city's war on personal freedoms.
My dad used to play his guitar outside. He'd smoke, too, and probably have a slice of pound cake between sets. In this town, that makes my dad a three-strikes lifer. Some may cry "police state" and all that, but I think the reason for the assault on the citizens of Philadelphia is more banal.
We've got a city full of serious problems: rampant murder, a broken education system, widespread, corruption, stalled economic development.
So what do our leaders go after?
The hippie with the pound cake.
In other words, the low-hanging fruit.
The stuff that grabs headlines, and makes it look like they're actually doing work.
I don't need City Council to tell me what to do with my lungs. I don't need the legislative branch of the fifth — whoops — sixth largest city in the U.S. wrestling over their abortion stance. I don't need them to snatch the pound cake from my table. And I don't need them to roust musicians from a public park.
Seriously, Council, enough of this shit.
Don't piss me off. I've got a two-pronged fork, and I'm not afraid to use it.
(Simulcast at www.citypaper.net.)
I think grilling meat is a man's undeniable right and I will defend you to my death. Anything that gets me out of the kitchen is worth saving.
ReplyDeleteInspired by your powerful words of wisdom I decided (since I am Philly this summer) to take my stand, but, to my surprise, a fat, naked, long haired, guitar playing smoking man in the park only seemed to frighten the park goers and anger the police whose first words to me were: Not so fast are ya, you fat, naked, long haired, guitar playing smoking man!!!
ReplyDeletePhiladelphia sounds a lot like Chicago. This micro-managing of people's lives by moron politicans is a frightening trend in American life. It does indeed seem to be their way of covering up the fact that they can't run school, transportation, or park systems. They don't want someone to grill, or smoke, or play music in public, and yet they consider it fine and dandy to close public health clinics for the poor and give six-figure jobs to their cousins, all in the same week.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to my world.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe you used to grill dogs. That's sick.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in college, election season began with the ritual Arresting of the Doper. Every now and then they'd pitch a change-up and arrest the guy behind the counter of the adult magazine store.
ReplyDeleteI picked up on the phrase "low-hanging fruit" because I hadn't heard it before the recent American Library Association Annual Conference (whose winter meeting will be here in Philadelphia) but three of the speakers I heard used it.
ReplyDeleteJeeze - I used to play guitar in Rittenhouse pretty regularly, back in the early, mid 80's.
ReplyDeleteOnly ever got hassled by the cops Busking on South Street.
I did get some aggro from a neighbor the first time I fired up a grill outside our apartment building in London, England. Offered dude some Chicken wings and all - he was just SURE I was doing something wrong, though.
It was pretty funny.