Last night, we invited a couple of old friends to recreate the light ride in Richmond. For years Richmond has had a Tacky Light Tour, so we were hardly alone as we slowed in front of yards filled with more things than the entire holiday section of Lowe’s. The Tacky Light Tour lives up to its name in this town and it is tragically awesome. 

My wife says it is ironic that I love to ogle lavish holiday displays when all I have erected in our own yard is a red, snake-ish light draped over a pole. My daughter calls it the most pathetic display of holiday spirit she has ever seen. It is kind of lonely, I’ll admit, but no worse than Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree in my estimation.

My pitiful effort aside, we drove around enjoying the electric equivalent of a cruise ship buffet. I loved it. Then we drove over to West Broad and saw the most lovely light of all: the Krispy Kreme “Hot” light. 

If you are unfamiliar with Krispy Kreme donuts, my words will not do them justice. They melt in your hand and in your mouth and on your shirt and leave crispy residue on your pants that will cause dogs to follow you. Hot Krispy Kremes will jump out of the box and down your throat before you realize what has happened. People plan weekends around a trip to Krispy Kreme and will cross state lines to get them.

This is not health food and I don’t recommend it as a habit. I’m not suppose to eat such things. But it is the holiday and my diet is like a Tibetan Monk, so I splurged for two donuts. Everything in moderation.

There was a crowd; a traffic jam, really. Inside the Krispy Kreme, the conveyor belt was running dozens and dozens of fresh donuts through the gushing waterfall of soupy sugar frosting. Hundreds of people stood, hypnotized by the site of orbed dough inching down the assembly line, headed to their waistline. An army of people worked behind the glass wall protecting the donuts from the rest of us. The people in paper hats worked like a Bill Belichick football team. It was impressive. Then one of the workers pulled a long metal rod from behind the Rube Goldberg contraption and began doing something that made everyone gasp in disbelief. He scanned the hundreds of donuts and began to thread imperfectly shaped donuts from the process and toss them in a trash can. 

People stood in shock. A man in flannel began to weep. Childrens’ smiles dipped to snarls. An old woman held her chest and moaned like her grandchild had gotten a tongue ring and used it on the cat. Whispers passed. Eyes darted. Damn.

If you think you have a tough job, at least you are not in charge of standing in front of hundreds of people at Krispy Kreme and throwing away perfectly good, imperfectly shaped donuts. I just don’t think I could do it.

It is a nice neighborhood. They keep everything looking great and the litany of rules is supposed to keep the value of our homes from dropping – not exactly a successful effort in the recent downturn. But I get it. I saw the Stepford Wives back in middle school. I wish I had seen the developer who slung up these houses with 2×4’s, cheap siding and a nail gun. But that’s another story.

I have run crossways of the rules during the many years we have lived here. We are not hellions, by any definition, by the way, but it’s hard to color inside the lines when there are so many damned lines. And I am not good with lines anyway.

Within the first month of moving here I was on the wrong side of the law after installing a perfectly good concrete dog in the front yard. Not surprisingly, the neighborhood enforcers told me to move it. I fought the law and the law won – because my kids wanted to continue to go to the pool without being pariahs, so I bent. There were a few other incidents of suburban disobedience now and then, but my wife smoothed them over. Then this summer, we got a letter saying we were in violation of the association rules in regards to our mailbox and green trash dumpster.

The details don’t warrant retelling. Let’s just say I drove every street in the neighborhood and counted the trash dumpsters that were as “misplaced” as ours. I called the 800 number and left a message that, yet again, my wife had to smooth over.

To change your property in any way, you have to ask permission. I live by the Biblical logic that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. I think it was in the Bible. Perhaps it was Julia Child’s cookbook. Anyway, no forgiveness here.

If you paint your home, an “architectural committee” has to approve the color. Anyone who knows me figured that I would get stinkosaurusly upwind of the powers that be regularly and I have tried not to let them down. No matter what you may hear at the association meetings, I did not purposefully select Beef Jerky Brown as a trim color. Me and the paint mixer at the hardware invented it. It had curb appeal. Made me hungry to look at it. BJ Brown didn’t make it past the first round of voting on So You Think You Can Paint?

The problem is, I grew up on a farm where a man could paint a picture of Jesus on his wall and turn chickens loose in his yard if he wanted. My grandparents had an outhouse. So I don’t understand why a developer can put a blue port-a-potty at the curb while building a new home down the street and I can’t put an outhouse in my backyard (not that I have tried). Sheetrock Bubba exiting the plastic john can’t be helping home values any more than my evicted concrete dog.

Needless to say, I don’t attend the wine and cheese socials or the other neighborhood events and they locals are probably happy about my absence.

It is just difficult, at my age, to ask permission to improve my home as I see fit (since I’m paying for it) from a group who takes one look at my hair and calls security thinking Jimmy Page has wandered off tour. Snide looks aside, I haven not constructed an outrageous plywood phallic symbol to poke fear into the locals. I have not made a spectacle of my social life by inviting 100 friends to clog the cul-de-sac for a Tupperware or drinking party. I have not fired a weapon in the direction of any squirrel – yet. I have not chased joggers with bottle rockets on the 4th of July. I’m doing pretty good here. I just have to paint my mailbox and build a little trellis to disguise our trash dumpster (that, ironically, the association sold us).

When I finish this, I am going to write a letter bitching about that ice cream truck roaming the streets squirting the tune to “The Sting” over and over like a monotonous dream brought on by a high fever. If I lose that struggle, the concrete dog is coming back out, by god, swimming pool privileges be damned.

As a teenager, we convinced a yard full of St. Augustine to set up shop. St. Aug (as one old-timer called it) is squishy like carpet with a four-inch pad. It is tough, green and a man can change his oil on it without much worry of it turning surly on him. Salt water doesn’t affect it. It loves heat, sun, rednecks and hurricanes. Planting it involves yanking up a few strands and putting them in bare spots. St. Augustine is also no respecter of persons, loving mansions to mobile homes.

That was the Gulf Coast. This is Virginia. Different story altogether. As the summer turns to fall, I am suffering from the blue grass blues.

For years, I treated my lawn like a hot date – feeding it, pampering it, whispering sweet nothings into its delicate blades. I hate to imagine how much money I have spent on our yard just trying to encourage grass that won’t embarrass me. No matter how hard I tried, we never won Yard Of The Month. Then this summer, our good grass ran off into both neighbor’s yards and a splotchy rash of crabgrass took over.

I tried like hell to stop it. I pulled it up as fast as I saw a clump making an infectious island. It simply outran me and had its way with my lawn. Soon, crabgrass was the only kind of grass we had.

Crabgrass – it is hard for me to type the word without cursing – is immune to almost everything except lightning. The urine of a female dog will usually kill a hand-sized puddle of fescue. Not Crabgrass. This scourge thinks dog pee is a Mojito and can thrive on a rock in a drought that will kill a pine tree. In a week it will spread like jock itch during two-a-days. My defense could not contain its offense. Crabgrass had me 58-0 at the half.

We finally soaked it in Roundup (the suburban equivalent to Vietam’s Agent Orange). This evening, when I got home from work, I walked through the carnage, now just a landscape of stubbly mud. At least I don’t have to mow it anymore.

I joked about paving it and painting it green with a mop. Then I read on the Internet that crabgrass is the only thing that will grow in the dessert – on asphalt.

After staring at the bog for an hour, it hit me how to beat the stuff: I will plant crabgrass and nurture it and after months of hard work, it will die.

I’ve known Mark McIntyre, the owner, chef and chief baker at Norwood Cottage Bakery for years. His homemade artesian bread was rumored (on Facebook) to be sinful. As I recall, Mark was the one doing the rumoring. After roaming amongst babies, kids and dogs at South of the James (a farmer’s market near Richmond), we found him in the back, grinning in the middle of a tangle of people. The rumors worked, or more likely these people had tasted his bread before.

“This is me full-time now.” He grinned hugely and held out his arms in a sweeping motion to introduce all of his breads and baked goods. He named every baked item quickly, tossing in asides and tidbits that made each one sound like a character in a story.

“I get up at three am and start doing what I love. This is what happens.”

He could sense my vapor lock at so many different kinds of bread.

“I’ll make it easy. This is the big mama,” he said, holding up a torpedo of crusty beauty called simply Norwood Cottage. Two large Labs on leashes stood, listening to him as if he were the bread whisperer.

“This right here,” he bounced the loaf in his hand to test the balance. “This will change your life.”

I took the bread and examined the golden crust under the cellophane.

“A woman asked if I could make a bed out of this bread,” he said. “Best compliment I’ve ever gotten – well, on baked goods, anyway.”

He pointed at the bread to emphasize every word, “Unbleached flour, whole wheat flour  – both – black olives, garlic cloves, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, herbs, yeast, cider vinegar, a bit of salt. Put a slice in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes to re-crisp the crust.” His face turned wistful as he pinched his forefinger to his thumb. “It will be just like a little visit to France.”

I thought about visiting France for a minute. Then we left with Mark’s recommendation of a loaf of Norwood Cottage’s big mama – plus Rosemary Parmesan and Red Pepper Flakes & Parmesan and Jalapeno Cheddar, a bag full. We started eating on the way home. We didn’t say a word for 20 miles. It was that good.

Things just tastes different when they are grown by a couple named Earl and Winnie or homemade by a guy named Mark in his kitchen. These people would be growing and baking no matter if we were buying or not. It is their passion. It shows.

Perhaps man can live by bread alone.

While I will not attempt to defend the architect of this soaring structure, I have to admit, I am attracted to the massive thing like a candlefly to a naked bulb. Is it all of those pickup trucks outside or the fireplace big enough to park an F-150 in? Is it the impressive selection of camo that runs from bathrobes to recliners to thongs? Is it the 42,368 departed animals, frozen in various poses of taxidermy’d splendor reaching into the rafters above a waterfall pouring into a glass fish tank the size of my first apartment (but much cleaner)?

No.

What attracts me to this wet dream of Ted Nugent is the very thing that the aforementioned newspaper hated: the sheer, god awful, awesomely-wicked audacity of it all. I may not share the politics of everyone who shops there, but I can share the smell of venison jerky, denim and lacquered bass boats. It is the mojo I admire, not the lack of classic beauty. Ever see a man collect 50,000 hubcaps in his front yard or decorate a grove of trees with thousands of beer bottles? It is that type of stunning absence of pretension that makes The Bass Pro Shop’s Outdoor World so garish, so perfect, so much freaking fun.

What the hell do people expect in such a store? Taste? Subtly? Fudge? Okay, there is fudge. A lot of it. You want flyfishing lures and fudge? No problem. MoonPies? Got a big selection. You want hip-waders and a turkey baster that will plump three birds and a possum? Bring your Visa. You want Frank Loyd Wright? Keep driving. This place looks exactly like what it is – which is this, from my friend Ray, who brought the “hideous architecture” article to my attention in the first place:

“I don’t go to Monticello for size 20 barb-less dry fly hooks, nor do I search the halls of Saarinen’s Dulles terminal for 12 gauge, size 2 steel shot, high velocity shells,” Said Ray. “Architecture has a purpose and is not meant for all the people all the time. Architecure is like a good dog, a decent truck or a finely-tied hopper pattern – a gentleman knows it when he sees it and does not require any turned-up-nosed yahoo to educate him about it.”

I drove up to the BPSOT Saturday evening. A man was looking at the boats with his wife. 

“You think it’s an ugly building?” I asked.

His wife was beginning to nod, “yes.” He turned quickly and snapped, “If they let me, I’d live here.”

His wife looked at the big building silhouetted against the darkening sky.

“I wish you did,” she said.

He looked genuinely hurt.

Richmond, Virginia lost our baseball team and people are pretty upset about it. The Richmond Braves (AAA minor league) announced they are moving to Gwinnett County, Georgia (a suburb of the Braves home in Atlanta). Even people who haven’t been to a Richmond Braves in ten years are torked. To some in Richmond, this seems to be a bigger deal than the fact that we’re in a war overseas.

Sometimes you have to lose something to learn something. Richmond lost a baseball team. So what did we learn?

We learned that action speaks louder than words.

We learned that, unlike your business, cities will go to great lengths to placate a sports franchisee (or not, in Richmond’s case)

We learned that baseball means a lot more when the opportunity to not go to a game gets taken away.

Truth is, seldom was the stadium full except on July 4th, when fireworks stirred up a capacity crowd and the neighborhood with opposite feelings. In 2007, the Richmond Braves won the Governor’s Cup and there were tickets available. Did you go? Did you even know? Uh huh.

Maybe the small crowds were a function of the stadium (said to be the worst in AAA). Maybe it was because we like the idea of baseball more than the reality. Maybe we just hate the feeling of egg on our faces for losing a team that had called Richmond home for more than 40 years.

If you live in Richmond and really miss baseball in the wake of this announcement, sooth your wounds by going to a VCU basketball game. They have a national caliber coach in Anthony Grant and they’re winning (undefeated at home this season as of this writing). It just might be more fun than avoiding a Richmond Braves baseball game.

If we’re all honest with ourselves (and we seldom are) we have a major league sport in Richmond to replace minor league baseball immediately:

Complaining.

We love complaining more than any sport that involves a ticket. I am up for the Complaining Hall of Fame and on the last ballot, I saw your name as well. We’re teammates and while we never really win (because there isn’t really a scoreboard for this particular sport), we get to suit up every day and step up to the plate.

If someone wanted to fill the Richmond Diamond (remember, the worst stadium in AAA baseball), get a crowd of complainers over there for a noon gruntfest. It’s the perfect venue for us complainers because there’s plenty to complain about. A while back, a chunk of concrete fell from the roof.

Whack. Point made.

Replacing baseball with bitching makes sense, with finger pointing as a close second. You may be too old to play baseball, but you never grow too old to bitch and moan. And there is no shortage of targets to aim at either – politics, government, religion, spouses, jobs, finances, taxes, food, education – it’s an endless list.

Many people will miss professional baseball here. We messed it up pretty good and our team bolted. But we still have bitching to replace pitching. We just need a name for our team. The Richmond Whiners? The Procrastinators? The Unfinishers? The Dealbusters? The Idiots? Take your pick; no matter which name we choose, we can always complain about it.

If you disagree with anything in this blog, and you want to uncork some name-calling, there’s your tryout. Congratulations, you made the team. Get in the bullpen, you’re bitching next.

I was out of town when he called and quickly said, “Absolutely.” It sounded like a great idea. “I’m in.”

On Christmas Eve, Dee surprised us with a car-full of charred birds, his interior smelling like Extra Billy’s had smoked the Audi as well.

“I have two of these smoked turkeys in the trunk and they smell great,” he said. When he opened the trunk, it smelled as smoky good as anything I have ever smelled.

Over the next few days, our family carved and ate that amazing turkey. Extra Billy’s did a wonderful smoke job on that gobbler. The day after Christmas we were in an edit and Dee said, “I’m going to boil the carcass down and make soup.”

I said that seemed like a great idea, so I went home that night, carved the meat we wanted for sandwiches off the bones, and dropped the big bird corpse into a pot of boiling water with a little garlic and pepper.

Here’s where things got interesting. Extra Billy’s smoked the chirp out of that turkey and when the steam started rising, the smell of smoke rose in a beautiful aroma that made us all hungry. Then the aroma turned into sort of a smoked cloud. My son noticed it first.

“Dad, that turkey is starting to smell a little strong.”

“Yeah, it’s going to make some amazing soup,” I said, poking at the tender meat falling off the bones into the boiling water.

“Chernobyl,” he said.

A few minutes later, my wife chimed in, “Wow, that is one powerful smoky smell you got going over there.”

“Uh huh,” I said, my eyes now burning a little from the astounding amount of smoked steam rising into the air of the kitchen.

My daughter yelled from upstairs, “What the heck is that smell? Is the house on fire?”

“No,” said my wife, “You dad has changed his name to Extra Terry.”

“My god, that is strong,” said my son as he left. My wife and daughter followed.

I was alone with the smoked carcass that was filling the house with a pungent scent, not unlike the one inside Extra Billy’s smokehouse itself – a smokehouse filled to the rafters with burnt wood and sweet meat. How could a twelve-pound bird’s remains release such a strong smell?

The smoke detector made a sound, like surrender. I went to check and saw four neighborhood dogs standing in my front yard, snouts raised and huffing the air like they’d caught the scent of Bigfoot on the grill. I looked in the mirror and my eyes were redder than if I’d smoked a doobie the size of a Louisville Slugger.

I opened the doors to ventilate the house. More dogs arrived, and several cats. Joe, across the street, was looking around in the street, craning his neck as dogs milled about. Rudy, our family dog, who had been walking around on his hind legs, trying to get a glimpse of what was in the pot, had had enough too and staggered out the back door and stopped, dropped, and rolled. I thought about following him, but I stayed and finished the deed.

The house smelled like a smokehouse for three days. Visitors walked in and said things like, “Had a fire?” “You smoking a rhino?” “Guess we know who got a smoker for Christmas. You really should do it outside, not in your living room.”

Those were the kind comments.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Extra Billy’s did an amazing job. Most birds masquerading under the banner “smoked turkey” are simply fondled by someone with a smoldering stogie. Extra Billy’s smoked that thing to a deep brown in a real smokehouse. If you live in Richmond and want to experience a real, crispy-skinned, sweet-meated, smoked turkey, that’s the place to go.

2. If you want to boil that same bird to make soup, do it outside – way outside – maybe in the next county. The soup is as good as you will ever taste, but the smell of boiling that bird will lure every dog and the fire department from twenty miles downwind to your door.

3. It was all worth it – even though my family’s wardrobe now smells like six feet up Smoky the Bear’s butt – it was still worth it.

4. Don’t try to get rid of the smell with a can of spray air freshner. It smells like someone burned a florist shop.

Using data mining to determine and predict when and where crime will happen, they allocated resources (officers) to the times and areas (crime). It stuck.

This is yet another example of the common sense of Glue. There is a point in every transaction, be it a conversation, ad, sale or other contact, where Glue must be applied or there will be loose ends to possibly deal with later. And later is always more expensive than now.

That dedicated focus on the Glue “moment” often means the difference between success and failure, profit or loss. Clearly, Glue is sticky, but not if it’s never applied. And if it’s applied to a misaligned transaction or process, it is just as sticky, causing as many problems as no Glue at all. If you put Super Glue on a broken vase after aligning the broken parts correctly, it bonds and solves your problem. If you Super Glue your finger to your posterior, it bonds and causes a problem. Same in business.

Some companies are making business software more like a video game in order to align and Glue their product to their customers. Creating a habitually more satisfying product (a $4 cup of joe at Starbucks) increases the odds of more sales, because people like using it daily and tell others as well (you like the joe, Starbucks likes the $4). So Glue is not just one thing, it’s everything.

What may be powerful Glue for you may be totally un-sticky for someone else (why you need a Gluru). That’s why it requires some research and homework and data mining and experience and talent.

In wrestling (real wrestling, not the pro version), there is a technique called “chain wrestling” in which an opponent connects one move smoothly to the next without stopping, making many moves into one flowing, multifaceted move. By Gluing one move to a totally different kind of move, end-to-end, in a fluid attack, the wrestler creates a nearly unbeatable system that puts even stronger challengers on the defensive and gives the chain wrestler a massive winning advantage. Chain wrestling from a skilled opponent takes luck and strength out of the equation and is extremely difficult to defend against.

What we’re talking about here is basically “corporate chain wrestling:” Gluing one practice, process and function to the next in an aligned flow of unbeatable attack on the competition. Chain wrestling is not Glue, but Glue makes it possible.

Remember the old BASF ads? “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” ®

That’s Glue. It is the contact point, the moment, the bond, the connection of one thing to another that makes both of them work better.

Online brokers, like Charles Schwab and E*Trade, have applied Glue to younger investors by offering higher-interest checking accounts and working harder to get all of an investor’s money, instead of the old a la carte investment strategy in which one bank has your checking, one your savings, a broker does your investments, a mortgage company does you home, etc. By Gluing a high-interest checking account to a younger customer audience, online brokers are aligning and connecting to a potential lifetime investment relationship.

That relationship takes Glue, like a marriage. And just like a marriage, when things get unaligned and unglued, attorneys get rich.

The object of contention involves regional pride, a little Solanum lycopersicum hubris and the third cousins of chili peppers, potatoes, tobacco and eggplants. The Tomato War was fought mostly in my own imagination because I could find few people willing to get into a seed-spitter over the differences I was trying to point out: Texture, earthy complexity, pure old tomatoey taste.

Being from LA (Lower Alabama, to those of you unfamiliar with the Wiregrass area of that state), I pitted South Alabama tomatoes against Hanover County tomatoes at every opportunity. I John Browned and Fort Sumtered the Tomato War with as much fervor as I could slice while here in Virginia and bad-mouthed the Hanover tomato every time I went down to Dixie – a red-stained Don Quixote swinging at swollen orbs in the humidity.

From the moment we moved to Mechanicsville and I witnessed the agricultural tyranny practiced by uber-proud Hanover tomato growers and addicts, I stewed. Hanoverians looked down their noses at other tomatoes. Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta endorsed the Hanover version. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee probably fought because of them. These poor, misguided tomato lovers just didn’t understand the truth of a real tomato.

South Alabama tomatoes were just plain better than the precious Hanover fruit, and I heartily claimed that reality to any Virginian who would listen (that last part being the difficult end of the sentence, as few actually did listen). They looked at me like I was trying to give away free tickets to a Michael Moore movie at Lee-Davis High School.

Now don’t misunderstand me; I love Hanover tomatoes and eat as many as possible. But compared to South Alabama’s vine-hangers, they are tasty wannabes. And I aimed to prove it.

A few weeks ago (in honor of the Hanover Tomato Festival), I took a bunch of Hanover’s finest down to South Alabama and put them to the test with some real “tamater” experts. I was careful not to get my warring reds mixed up because, quite honestly, they all look exactly alike. I put one South Alabama tomato beside one Hanover tomato and served them to several people who refused to let me use their names, which just added to the sneaky authenticity of the experiment – unknown people eating unknown tomatoes. Sounds like lunch in Scooter Libby’s office.

In the blind tomato test, to my sickened astonishment, the Hanover tomato won five out of six matches. I was devastated. I found three more unusual suspects (relatives of mine this time – a shameless attempt to stack the slices in my favor) and tried again. All three picked the Hanover tomatoes, even though they had no idea which tomato was from where.

Undeterred, I brought a bag of fresh South Alabama tomatoes back up to Hanover this weekend and did the same test with several unnamed victims here. Same results. 2,000 miles of driving, and the Hanover tomato won both contests. I couldn’t even celebrate the Fourth with those cheap bottle rockets I snagged in South Carolina, purchased just for my assumed victory. I was ashamed and demoralized and just plain tomato-red-faced.

Then something rather moronic hit me right between the tomatoes: I had never actually taken my own taste test. I was arguing from tongue memory. So I left the room and asked my wife to take one of each tomato, carve them up and place them on two plates, making sure she remembered which was which. I tried the one on the left – an astonishingly fine tomato. I washed my mouth with Coca-Cola (unscientific but effective) and went for the other plate – a darned good tomato, to be sure, but not as sweet or complex as the first. I voted for the first one, knowing (OK, hoping) in my heart it was my beloved ‘Bama tomato. Had to be. I remembered the taste from my youth. I looked at my wife.

“You liked the Hanover tomato best,” she said.

Smack. Betrayed by my own tongue. I know what is coming now. Soon, I won’t be able to tell the difference between Dr Pepper and Mr Pibb or Cher and Barbra Streisand. It’s pitiful.

For me, after 12 years, the Tomato War is finally over. I celebrated the truce with a sloppy BLT using both combatants and washed it all down with a Dr Pep, errr, wait, a Mr Pibb, I think.

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.