My love affair with the grill began in my third year of college, when I moved into my first apartment. I shared the second-story flat with two other students, and we furnished it with a threadbare loveseat with a flowered print ($35), a kitchen table donated by my aunt and uncle, and a hibachi grill from the local hardware store ($20).
The apartment had a front room, a closet, really, with two windows that opened onto the roof over the front porch. The windows were large enough to climb through, and the pitch of the roof was almost flat, so we had our own private balcony. Normally I did our grilling in the back yard, but as the weather turned to winter I found I could avoid the walk down the back stairs and the cold both at the same time. The grill sat on the roof of the porch within arms-reach of the window - a perfect setup.
There was, of course, the carefully considered but in the end, completely ignored risk of setting the roof awash in flames and burning down the entire neighborhood. In defiance of Vulcan, I took to starting my grill using a large handful of black powder in place of conventional lighter fluid. This produced a rapid start, a small thrill, and most importantly a nice peaty, gunpowder-y taste to hamburgers as well.
I don't recall much of my grilling menu in those days, aside from the two 10-lb boxes of bratwurst we kept in the freezer. The taste of a properly grilled bratwurst in my mouth instantly invokes happy memories of summers as a child in Wisconsin. Bratwurst was a staple of our household, and little did I know that upon moving to Pittsburgh to pursue higher education I would find a dearth of bratwurst. I searched among the stores in Pittsburgh for months, looking for anything resembling a bratwurst. Unfortunately for my taste buds, Pittsburgh is a heavily Polish area, and the primary sausage was the kielbasa. In fact, this was the only sausage, and was served boiled, warm or cold, throughout the city. I grew to hate the kielbasa. The kielbasa was the enemy, for without it I might have been able to find my beloved bratwurst.
The solution presented itself one evening after
my good friend Uge and I had downed a fine vintage bottle of
West Virginia wine we found at an out of the way tasting room
in the heart of wine country. I'm not sure of the exact varietal,
but there was a fair chance that it was made from grapes (Concord,
perhaps?). We loaded up my car with the necessary supplies: clean
underwear and a Nissan thermos filled with six double-shots of
espresso from the Coffee Tree café. We then made the 12-hour
journey back to Wisconsin, stopping only to fill my car with
oil and water the roadside scrub brush. Our parents were very
surprised to see us. I believe my mother thought something terrible
had happened, but then she realized it was only the call of the
wurst. We caught a quick nap while my father secured two boxes
of frozen bratwurst from UW Provisions - one smoked and one raw.
Uge's father, a chemistry professor at UW-Milwaukee, scored enough
dry ice to keep the bratwurst happy while we headed back to school.
When I showed up back at the apartment, my roommates had not even realized I had been gone. When they heard about the journey, they thought I was crazy. But then the smell of bratwurst began wafting off the porch, and they took their first bites of sausage, the juices running down their chins, and they finally understood what had been eating me from the inside for the last three years. They said nothing, but as they licked their fingers clean and went for more bratwurst, the understanding was clear.