You claim to be a Texan....who the hell smokes meat with charcoal? I'm ashamed of you. To much time rolling the roads in yankee territory, you need to be beat with a poorly cooked brisket!
All right, brother. Take your seat. Fondle the mic cord ferrites, and say a rosary:
The BBQ smoker I own is older than I am.
A
PK.
Portable Kitchen.
When I’m finished I close it off. It’s sealed. Charcoal can be recovered that isn’t used up. Unreal fuel economy.
As it was made at an aluminum foundry near Tyler starting in the middle 1950’s — and has been shipped all over the world — I might ask the same of you: “What do you mean you call yourself even a late-arrived Texan, and you don’t have a PK?”
All kinds of charcoal available. Commercial, like Henry Fords Kingsford, to a number of locally-produced types & brands. Get airtight storage for that. You’ll have that bag a long time. Or I can use GP and add whatever wood I want to flavor things.
Don’t have any? Make some.
Unless one has this airtight seal plus airflow control (direction plus volume; variations thereof),
I use less fuel and can do more with it.
Dad bought his from the inventor as that man traveled the oilfield to drilling sites. Back seat removed and all but drivers position to rear bumper filled with unsold PK units. 1956 Chevrolet.
Texans like to move around. Maine one summer, Big Sur, the next. Big block Chrysler’s were (I swear) invented for us. Torsion bar suspension. Better handling, brakes and trans than Ford or GM, not just the engine.
Extra Care in Engineering.
We notice. We adapt.
Like Sam Walker did (“Dear Mr Colt, .”) or Ranald McKenzie.
And a long list of men besides.
Maybe you’d see a PK early 1960s in Libya. The Rub’ al Khali. Along the Orinoco. The North Slope. Khe Sanh. Frankfurt-am-Main.
Hell, just down the road outside Bug Tussle or Dimebox, TX.
Who said we’d leave BBQ at home? Ha!
“
Hear, O Texas, our BBQ master, the Lord of Smoke, the Lord is PK”.
Mine is in its
64th year of use.
There’s not a continent a Texan with a PK hasn’t ventured.
Not mine (similar); someone recently bought rights and is producing them again.
Cheap at twice the price. (Read and repeat till it sinks in).
Portable Kitchen is description, first. A multi-course meal on one fuel load. Breakfast, Dinner or Supper. Stack to suit. 3,4,5 containers all at once. Remove as required. Close lid. Adjust drive pressure.
Folks went for them Piggly Wiggly propane-bottle gas grills. A post-1963 thing. Like all else that went to hell. Rust thru sheet steel? Check. Bad airflow control? Check. Won’t seal airtight? Check. No thermal mass? Check.
Some kinda TV-watchin’ south Alabammy thing, I guess. Train up some welders and knock out some more.
We’re awful glad it got you a start, . . .
but the day is lengthening and night beckons.
In the dissolution of time (when a boy), Dad said to go get the PK from the rear compartment door of the Beech Bonanza. Put it in the trunk of the rental Dodge the agent just delivered to the airfield. Mountains and trout stream an hour up ahead.
That “past” isn’t past. Any more that this isn't still the Land of Opportunity. A small business owner and a tool required to run it. He paid his company for personal use. Even a boy knows he’s been honored by that.
This day, other tools at hand being lubed & run-checked to get the compass corrected per the National Course Heading. If needed.
Fire in the Wire,
Barbe Rouge.
Mo Powah!
The burning bush is what’s inside.
Ones heart or in a float plane.
To the ends of the Earth.
Man, and tools.
The workman is worthy of his hire.
His tools.
Texas is a state of mind.
.
