Grilled!

    The art of backyard grilling has changed a lot
over the years.
     I can still remember my Dad's small folding
steel grill that we carried in the trunk of our
1950 Buick along with a bag of charcoal and,
if we were lucky, a can of lighter fluid.
     More often than not we didn't have the fluid
and had to find some kindling to burn to ignite
the charcoal.
     Propane grills and lava rocks are the standard
these days. At least for those of us who end up
grilling at least a couple of times each week.
     Up until two weeks ago we had THREE
of those grills set up around our camper.
     One belonged to a friend who had moved
from the campground. One was an older,
smaller, unit we only fired up about once a
year if we happen to have a lot of guests and
needed the extra cooking space.
     A careful examination of that grill last
week reveled some serious deterioration so
we elected to junk it.
     Our old, larger grill, was our primary
unit anyway.....till we junked the other
one!
     I guess it's one of those 'Murphy's Law"
things. We no sooner hauled one grill to
the scrapyard when one side of our
 "Old Faithful" stopped working.
    No problem. Our neighbor who left his
grill behind said we were welcome to it!
    But when we checked it out we found
it to be much smaller than we thought and
in need of some upgrades, including the
lava rocks.
    Thus began a surgical operation to
clean our old unit and transplant usable
parts from our former neighbor's grill
to restore "old faithful" to its days of glory!
    Four people worked at the task!
    You don't clean 5 or 6 years worth of
grease in 20 minutes.
    There were plastic shelves to be
transplanted.
    And a new burner to be installed.
    Except, with regard to the burner, the
"Universal" unit we bought was
apparently from a different universe than
our grill. A new unit has been secured
which may do the trick when we return to
retry installation.
     Some folks cleaned,  disassembled
then reassembled parts,  drilled new
holes to allow parts that didn't match to
match, and cleaned up.
    I assisted the best way I know how.
    I went for things I was sent for and
generally stayed out of every body's way!
    The story will probably catch up with
me when all is said and done.
    I'll probably get stuck doing the
grilling when "Old Faithful" is fired up
again!
    Hope you've got enough hot dog buns
for all your  hot dogs and that all your
NEWS is good!