Chapter 19 - "Eternal Burgers"

Bacon cheddar burgers grilling on aluminum foil in their own juices.

Sitting on a blue fabric chair, the kind that folds up and goes into a carrying case, I lean back and cross my left leg over my right knee. My non-smart prepaid Tracfone has a clock that I check. I have five minutes before I flip these six burgers. The lid is down.

Smoke pours from under the edges of the grill when the grease on the foil runs through a hole or out the corner of the foil to drip onto the coals below. This smell is heaven. My ancestors from a million years ago nod silently in agreement from around their own fires.

I’m sitting on the concrete driveway at the corner of my front porch where the grill sits. It’s summer.

A full glass of inexpensive Merlot sits on top of the rusted left side, metal-lidded burner pad, next to a wire brush that I don’t use anymore since I started using this aluminum foil. I take a sip, then a second. I lean this lawn chair back on two legs and inhale deeply through my nose and let it out with an Aaaaah.

I’ve backed our Pontiac Montana van ten feet closer to the road end of the driveway so that I have more room to sit in front of the grill. I’ve dragged the grill a foot or two away from the white vinyl siding-covered lower edge of this side of our open front porch.

Two Christmases ago, I hung those big bulb colored lights up there where they’re attached to the gutter along the front of our wide front porch, as well as along the guttered narrower sides of this covered porch.

Balanced on the back chair legs, I enjoy the humid night air and the smells—especially the smells—and I look at the faded colored bulbs. Some of them, most, are showing more white light than colored because the color has worn off and flaked away and dried away in the heat and cold and sunlight over these past two years. They’re still very nice. It’s a very, very nice feeling, right here.

Mike, our large and hairy white English Labrador, with the shape of a polar bear and the heart of a sensitive kitten, lies on the concrete in front of my feet, right in front of the grill. He’s always nearest the source of food smells.

Two minutes.

Smoke is really rolling out now from the edges and holes in the closed grill that we inherited when we bought this place. The thermostat is edging upward from “med” to “med-high.” I lean forward to turn the dials on both burners down.

This is the life. You’ll never hear me say differently.