Good old days with fire

To the right there, is a good example of having too much fat on your steak when your grilling on Saturdays. It also applies to the weekly coffee story below. Enjoy.

Remember your birthday parties when you were younger? There was a time when, in my youth, a change took place from pinning tails on donkeys to a higher form.

When I was a teenager, I was sometimes embarrassed by my mother. No, it’s not fun to say, but my mom had ‘consumption’ issues that, in the early seventies, were unpredictable. Having a house full of the most important elements to your high school identity, when your mom was on a binge, was fully avoided at all cost. Younger birthday parties were fine but that season in my mom’s life happened to coincide with my teenage years and as we can all attest, a child, in their teenage years, goes legally insane when anything happens.

My father had died when I was fourteen and my brothers and sister had moved out years before so it was just the two of us. She was really a great mom-with one massive flaw. During the day and a sizable portion of the nights, she was fine, but on some nights-wow. So a birthday party-at night-with my friends-was out of the question. I told her why. She actually begged for a shot at it. Believe it or not, she was actually turning the corner. We talked and came to a mutual game plan. A party of just my guy friends, over for dinner-a big dinner-steaks, potatoes, you know-real food. Stuff that made teen age boys forget about girls and beer was anything that has the word ‘T-bone’ in it. Thus, “Festival” was born.

Festival was the annual birthday celebration that lasted for several years, eventually moving itself to North Mountain Park and the ramada you see next to the water tower, just above the National Guard base on Seventh Street. The boys would gather and grill steaks and eat beans, filling themselves on soft drinks and beef. Alcohol was never needed when you had cows to eat. Teenage boys, with full bellies of good food, were content and not overwhelmed by any other desires, at least for a while. There was a cake in there somewhere but if memory serves, most of that was used in a food fight. As a significant part of the annual celebration, the birthday boy would climb the hill behind the ramada to a craggy outcropping a few hundred feet straight up, light a road flare, let out a god-awful ‘war cry’ and run down the dark, cactus invested, razor sharp hill holding the 1500 degree road flare up so all could see. The idea was to make it down without falling, setting the mountain on fire, or making any form of late night news. It always seemed to work, other than the one time he set his hair a blaze with a piece of molten ember from the flare falling onto his skull. Mom was always so proud-of the party-she never knew about the pyrotechnics.

Festival has gone by the wayside along with the yellow leisure suit. But tomorrow morning there will be coffee and snacks, the food of middle-aged ‘Festival’ goers. Come and enjoy. If you’re there before the sun comes up, and if you listen quietly-facing north, you can hear the war cry of the festival revelers of the past. Don’t try it yourself. At our age, we’ll throw a clot.