Brisket , Sweet Potato pie and David Bowie

  It's been four years since I decided to battle a Brisket.  The last three were cooked on an electric smoker and even then only two of them were even edible.  I so went to great lengths with all three, injection marinades and all.  Two were edible. One even being kind of OK.

  This little seven lb. beauty took ten hours of careful tending while soaking up hickory smoke in a simple barrel type BBQ.  Simple spice rub of Cayenne, Beer, Vinegar, Course Salt and a few other ingredients.  Pretty ugly huh?

 Hah,  turned out pretty amazing.  We subsequently invited some other residents of the park over for dinner.  Scalloped potato's and Coleslaw being the main events. What was going to be just a simple meal turned into several hours of just an excellent time. Somebody brought over a sweet potato pie and some BBQ beans to go along.  And Rolls of course.  Good food and good conversation.

Really it's been awhile since we had a group meal.  The last few occurring with the adult kids.  Those were also highly enjoyable events I might add..  The difference being with this one was it consisted of folks we'd previously had very little contact with.  What a difference a dinner makes.   I suspect much like the Christmas dinner that is alleged to have occurred between the Germans and the Allies in World War I. (And those people were enemies. We were just strangers)  Does make one speculate if more folks in this country, not to mention the world were to sit down to a meal once in a while, maybe then we'd see eye to eye much more often.

So, middle of the afternoon, on a drizzly overcast and cold day, I'm sitting right by the open door in this little castle.  I'm finding it kind'a enjoyable.  Lisa long ago gave up on the day and decided to nap through it.  There is really no other activity around this place.  Secret is, is that most folks only come here on weekends and during the week, the place is more or less deserted.   News everywhere says David Bowie is dead.  Cancer at 69 and just one more reminder of impending mortality.  This one bother's me a little more because I have memories of such clarity of nearly half a century ago.  See I was just fifteen and had just gotten my driver's license. It was supposed to be daytime only but   Dad, working for the UP railroad sometimes needed picked up late at night at the old railroad depot in Twin Falls, Idaho.  The one that long ago was moved twenty miles away and eventually became a pizza joint.  Well, Mom might have been working, or not.  But damn it, a new kid had the ability to drive and maybe she was just tired of so many late nights waiting for his train to come in, that it was more convenient to have the, eager to drive at any time, boy go get him. So I was given the keys to the family bus, which was a solid step above the vehicle I was usually allowed to drive, told to watch out for cops and go get him.

The Bowie connection?  Well, I'd drive around town a bit, cruise Main  trying to look cool as if that car were all mine.  But I'd finally end up waiting in that dark parking lot late at night, sometimes after midnight and, sometimes better than an hour.  And you guessed it.  Always accompanying that memory is the voice of David Bowie singing "Ground Control to Major Tom" over that am radio.  And I'd sit in that car and look up at the night sky (it was always summer of course) like he was really up there somewhere.  Sometimes I snuck a smoke and it, well, added ambiance to the moment.  And today just reminded me once again that like it or not, the world is changing, not always for the best.  And nobody ever gets out of here alive.  But I guess for the most part, when it happens, well, it likely will be with good company.