I have used a charcoal grill for my entire adult life, at least during those years when I had some place to store a grill when not in use. I long ago convinced myself that my grilled entree’s taste better when cooked over charcoal than when cooked over a blue, propane flame. In fact, I have convinced myself that it is so much better that it’s worth screwing around with all that ash removal and the setting of lit matches to the jet fuel that is required to get it started. My son went to the dark side several years ago, buying a huge, stainless steel gas grill. His barbecue tastes pretty good. I may not be holding out much longer, but I have not yet turned that corner.
For most of my boyhood I lived with my family in a house built by my father out in the countryside of southwestern Michigan. It’s perched on the crest of a hill about five miles north of Buchanan and surrounded by farmland and virgin forest. Five miles may not seem like a lot these days, but when we first moved in one would have to navigate a two-lane country road and then two more gravel roads to reach it by car or tractor. Later, the county would pave Glendora Road, but Aalf’s Road, where we lived, remains a graveled one-laner to this day.
We did not have air conditioning, so any time the furnace was not needed for heat pretty much all the screened windows in the house would remain open all day and night. I shared a bedroom and one of two twin beds with my younger brother with mine on the side of the room adjacent to an east-facing window.
One of my fondest memories of living in that house was the smell of the sweet, country air that would drift silently through those open windows in the wee hours of a summer night. There was no car noise, or unnatural sounds of any kind out there. Just crickets and cicadas. A barking dog in the distance somewhere. And I recall sometimes lying at the foot of my bed with my hands and chin resting on the windowsill watching as the moon began to rise into the dark and star-studded sky. As it lifted fully above the tree line on the far side of the cornfield the lone tree that stood in that field would begin to throw a moon shadow across the waist-high corn stalks. And, if it was a full moon, it would be “…as bright as a readin’ light,” to borrow a line from songwriter, Mike Burton, and thus casting a soft, gray aura across an utterly peaceful and tranquil countryside. Sometimes I would fall asleep there.
I read an Associated Press article in the local newspaper this morning reporting that most of the violence witnessed at a recent Trump protest in Oregon was perpetrated by a group of self-described anarchists who elbowed their way into an otherwise peaceful gathering. As it turns out, these were the folks who were primarily responsible for the smashing of windows and other mayhem that occurred at the scene. Well, speaking of anarchists”:
Chuck Todd interviewed Jonathan Rauch on Meet the Press yesterday. Jonathan wrote the attached article for Atlantic Magazine. This is a powerful “must-read” for every voter in the country, regardless of red or blue or in between.
Been reading up on Hillary’s emails and Donald’s ramblings: Where is Pat Paulsen when we need him?