I don’t know about you, but I always look forward to summer, mainly because it’s barbecue season. Summer means it’s time to think about taking down the outside Christmas decorations and break out the barbecue grill.

Despite the fact that all kinds of pests come around in the summer that you don’t see in the winter – like mosquitoes, ants, brothers, sisters and other assorted relatives – it’s all worth it because there’s nothing quite like the smell or taste of barbecue.

Men are expected to know how to barbecue. It is their birthright. A boy doesn’t become a man until after his first solo barbecue. I remember fondly the night I became a man, as I did it right in front of all my relatives.

They all came for a housewarming barbecue in our “new” old house and I wanted to show them all that I’d grown up and was no longer the little kid who was dumber than a doorstop. The problem was that I’d never barbecued anything in my life; I barely knew how to boil water. To this day, when I walk into a kitchen, Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker hold their noses.

On that fateful night, it was my Uncle Buddy who stepped forward and helped me pass into manhood. He loaned me an apron that said, “Don’t Kiss The Cook” and a barbecue pit that came from Ancient Grease.

“The secret,” he said, as he arranged the wood, “is in starting the fire. You have to pour plenty of gasoline on it.”

“Is five gallons enough?” I asked as I poured.

“Sure,” he said, “pour it on there.”

We asked the firemen to stay for dinner and had the neighbor kid, who was in Cub Scouts, start the fire the second time.

All the menfolk gathered around the barbecue pit to debate what type of wood  gives meat the best flavor. A city relative suggested mesquite was best. “But it’s very hard to find,” he said. I guess he’d never been to Texas.

Uncle Buddy suggested wood chips soaked in beer. I myself used old railroad ties that were formerly fence posts. The smoke had the distinctive flavor of creosote, and the only thing I can compare it to was the time the stack of tires we used to tarp the hay caught fire.
Buddy told me “always cook hot dogs for the kids first. It is hard to ruin a hot dog.” So we fed the little ones first, and 17 retching kids disproved that theory.

At last, Buddy said we were ready for the steaks. The women marched out of the house with the meat, acting like they’d done all the hard work. Women have cookbooks, meat thermometers and timers to help them, but all I had was my pistol-grip syringe – normally used to vaccinate cattle but now filled with beer to douse the flames.

“How do you know when the meat is done?” I asked Buddy.
“That’s easy. Poke at the meat, adjust the grill to make it look like you know what you’re doing and ask everyone how they’d like their steak. If they want it rare, take it off after you’ve consumed two beers. Medium is three beers. Test the meat by cutting off little pieces and throwing it to your dog, like this.”

The dog went howling under the house and, to this day, has not begged for food.

Buddy and I drank the steaks to rare, but the womenfolk were getting restless. When the buzzards started to circle, the women came and took the steaks away from us and finished the job in the oven.

In protest, Buddy and I refused to eat, which proved fortuitous when everyone else got sick. Buddy thought it must have been creosote poisoning, but I figure it could have been vaccine reaction.

As the smoldering railroad ties turned to ash, Buddy and I basked in our manhood. It was then that he told me the secret that is shared with boys when they become men, over a barbecue pit:
“There are just two things you need to remember, kid – don’t burn your buns, and smoke follows beauty,” he said, as we both tried to move in its path.