Summer In The City

Mrs. Rambler is out on the deck getting the charcoal set up to grill some chicken for dinner. (I know, it should be my job to do the grilling…but we won’t go there. OK?) It got me to thinking about the backyard cookouts when I was a kid. I don’t remember a lot of grilling at my house, but when my relatives got together in the summer, it was often a barbecue of some kind. One of my uncles liked to fish, so when the grilling happened at his house it was after a successful outing to the lake. Another uncle liked to hunt, and you can guess what was on the menu at his house.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the family hunter’s quarry was raccoon. He had many hounds that he used for hunting, and he also took them to trials where there were competitions in tracking, treeing, and pursuing the furry little critters in water. I went along to some of these trials with my aunt and uncle, but what I remember most was that I was usually bored out of my mind. But I’ve gotten off topic here.

One particular barbecue outing stands out in my mind, and it took place at the uncle’s house who did the hunting. As I remember, it was in the fall, and his hunting had been particularly successful. Having harvested the pelts of the raccoons he decided to treat the family to barbecued raccoon. My mother was a little leery, but was willing to give it a try. Uncle Bob did all the cooking, including up mixing up a batch of sauce that was, in his words, “perfect with barbecued raccoon.”

All went well, and soon we were all dishing up the meat, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, and everything

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else that goes with barbecue. There was probably some grilled sweet corn, too, but I don’t remember for sure. As we were all sitting down to eat, my uncle announced that he was going to get some more meat from the refrigerator in the garage to throw on the grill. I kind of noticed him checking to see if my mother was paying attention as he walked into the garage. The next thing we knew there was a sound from the garage like a cat howling. My uncle walked out of the garage a couple of minutes later holding up an animal carcass and announced, “I was out of ‘coon, but there was another cat in the garage. Since Dee (my mother) liked the first one so much, I’ll just throw this one on the grill too.”

Well, Mom’s meal ended up on the grass, and everyone else almost choked they were laughing so hard. Needless to say, that was the last time that Mom tried anything that she didn’t buy at the grocery store. Funny thing is, I kind of remember that the raccoon kind of tasted like chicken.

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