It’s time to give the burgers a flip

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from May 28, 2003. Jack liked to grill. Every once in a while when we were welcoming a new staff member or saying goodbye to a treasured member of the newsroom heading off to a new job, he would invite us all over to his house for burgers, hot dogs and brats.



Someone’s trying to take the fun out of grilling.

Backyard cooking combines some basic elements that strike a chord in the primordial soul of most men. It has it all: Fire, meat, smoke, sharp objects, solitude, control, and a chance to work outdoors.

What could be better?

But now someone’s decided that a basic grill is not enough.

The stores and the catalogs are full of grills the size of Buicks, with more features than the average home computer.

You want a fridge with that backyard barbecue outfit? No problem. How about a rotisserie? Maybe a popcorn popper?

Call me a sentimentalist or a throwback, but I think a grill ought to be pretty basic. That means it ought to be black, and it ought to be a little grungy.

Our first grill was something of a disappointment. The grill itself was fine — a little hibachi — but it came in a box labeled “color television” when we received it as a wedding present. Since we had a little seven-inch black and white set, our hearts fell when we learned the box was just being recycled.

Over the years, the hibachi gave way to a Smokey Joe, another little tabletop charcoal grill that we still have somewhere in the attic of the garage.

Then, back when a discount store in Portland was going out of business, we finally bought the grill of our dreams, a classic Weber kettle-style with enough space to cook burgers for the entire neighborhood.

The discount store is gone, lost to the annals of local history. But the grill lives on.

Every few years, yielding to my wife’s insistence and the fear of threats from the county board of health, I replace the grill surface itself, buying a shiny new chrome one. But the kettle itself, with the metal dinged here and there, still serves.

Maybe my hesitation to replace it with some whiz-bang 21st century unit comes from memories of my father’s grill.

It must have been a gift or maybe he won it as a prize. I certainly can’t imagine him buying it. The thing was fitted out in brushed aluminum and was the 1950s equivalent of the upscale “outdoor kitchens” being pushed on the market today. It bore a logo with a man wearing a chef’s hat, something I can’t imagine my father doing in his life.

It was, in short, an embarrassment, the sort of grill that was so extravagant it made you feel guilty if you weren’t cooking on it. By my best recollection, it was used maybe three or four times, then sat on the patio as a silent reproach.

Not so my old smoker. It may be ugly, and it may be grungy. And it’s probably time to buy another shiny new grill surface just for the sake of sanitation. But it works just fine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to flip the burgers.