Summer is officially here with Memorial Day past and the torched meaty smell of smoky perfume in my backyard every afternoon. People are grilling.
The Heart, Patio & Barbecue Association says more people than ever have grills. 17 million were shipped last year, up from 11 million in 1985. Gas grill sales have flamed up to 9 million a year while charcoal grills have burned down to 5.7 million, a dwindling and charred decline. Do the math on those numbers above and you have to wonder what the other 4.7 million people are cooking with if not gas and charcoal – wood, coal, corn cobs, nuclear?
I asked a few people which they preferred.
“Gas,” was the one word comment from my cousin. He said nothing else about it and wanted to talk about Alabama football instead.
“Gas is so much faster and I come home from work and I want to get it going quick,” Said my neighbor. “I love the taste of charcoal but who has that kind of time anymore?”
“If I have the time, I use charcoal,” said another down the street. “Nothing tastes like charcoal unless maybe wood. But 90% of the time, it’s gas.”
“I love my new gas grill,” said the woman at the grocery store where I was buying steaks to grill out. “When I was a kid, my daddy cooked out on charcoal, but I have three kids and charcoal takes way too much time to get started. With gas, I’m finished eating by the time that charcoal would be about right to cook with.”
I walked down to a friend’s house, following the smell and found him on his deck, grilling burgers.
“Smell that?” he asked as he flipped the heavenly aroma’d orbs on his charcoal grill. “When the Good Lord invented hamburgers, this is what He was thinking about.”
As I stood admiring the smell, deep inside, it triggered a flash memory of Saturday afternoons in summer when my father grilled hamburgers on our old, bent charcoal grill in Montgomery, Alabama’s Westgate neighborhood.
“I know what you’re thinking. Gas won’t give you that memory,” said my friend. “Only a sack-full of Dizzy Dean, some Gulf lighter fluid and a match. That is your memory right there.”
Grease crackled through the metal grates from the patties and splattered on the ashen briquettes below, exploding like steaming raindrops into hell. The smoke that drifted up made me understand why there is a visceral connection to charcoal grills. Cavemen grilling a saber tooth steak felt what I felt at that moment. My DNA was smoked.
As soon as I got home, I fired up my gas grill and slapped some burgers on the propane-stoked fire and was eating before my friend had doused his crumbling coals. I am clearly tortured between gas and charcoal, but not enough to give up the speed of instant, gas gratification.