Sparks – Page 3 – The Write Spot

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Just Looking

By Ken Delpit

What’s in a look?

Quite a lot, actually. Consider looks in their simple verb forms, for instance.

The meanings range from imperatives to advisories to admonitions to out-and-out warnings.

Look away. Look up. Look over there. Look down. Look around. Now, look here! Look sharp! Look out! Look at you!

Or, consider the noun forms. As with its cousin verb forms, noun looks span a range of meanings, from complimentary to critical to probing to mysterious.

Let’s take a quick look. That is a bad look for him. They kind of gave me a funny look. We need to take a deep look. Now, that is a good look for you. I was left speechless when she gave me that look.

Or, consider “ing” forms to describe appearances and states, from transitory to reputational to habitual.

Looking tired. Looking confident. Looking like a winner. No thank you, just looking. Looking surprised. Looking smug and haughty. Looking like you’re enjoying yourself. Looking Good!

In short, if you find yourself stranded on a desert island, and you have only a few words at your disposal, you could survive pretty well if “look” is among them. Well, that and a solar-powered satellite cell phone.

Thank you, Ken, for this fun take on the word look.

Ken Delpit has been writing for quite a while, that is if you count computer programming and technical documentation as “writing.” Since leaving those professions behind, Ken has discovered an exciting new world of creative writing. He is now giddily exploring new devices, such as adjectives, subtlety, mystery, and humans with emotions and feelings.

Aternatives for the word look, from Daily Writing Tips:

“Look, it’s perfectly acceptable to use the verb look, but don’t hesitate to replace this fairly ordinary-looking word with one of its many more photogenic synonyms. Many of these substitutions come in especially handy when it comes to finding one word to take the place of look-plus-adverb or look-plus-adjective-and-noun, as the definitions demonstrate.”

1. Blink: to look at with disbelief, dismay, or surprise or in a cursory manner
2. Browse: to look at casually
3. Consider: to look at reflectively or steadily
4. Contemplate: to look at extensively and/or intensely
5. Dip (into): to examine or read superficially
6. Eye: to look at closely or steadily
7. Fixate (on): to look at intensely
8. Gape: to look at with surprise or wonder, or mindlessly, and with one’s mouth open
9. Gawk: see gape
10. Gawp: see gape (generally limited to British English)
11. Gaze: to look steadily, as with admiration, eagerness, or wonder
12. Glare: to look angrily
13. Glimpse: to look briefly
14. Gloat: to look at with triumphant and/or malicious satisfaction
15. Glower: to look at with annoyance or anger
16. Goggle: to look at with wide eyes, as if in surprise or wonder
17. Leer: to look furtively to one side, or to look at lecherously or maliciously
18. Observe: to look carefully to obtain information or come to a conclusion, or to notice or to inspect
19. Ogle: to look at with desire or greed
20. Outface: to look steadily at another to defy or dominate, or to do so figuratively
21. Outstare: see outface
22. Peek: to look briefly or furtively, or through a small or narrow opening
23. Peep: to look cautiously or secretively; see also peek (also, slang for “see” or “watch”)
24. Peer: to look at with curiosity or intensity, or to look at something difficult to see
25. Peruse: to look at cursorily, or to do so carefully
26. Pore (over): to look at intently
27. Regard: to look at attentively or to evaluate
28. Rubberneck: to look at in curiosity
29. Scan: to look at quickly, or to look through text or a set of images or objects to find a specific one
30. Skim: see scan
31. Stare: to look at intently
32. Stare (down): to look at someone else to try to dominate
33. Study: to look at attentively or with attention to detail
34. Watch: to look carefully or in expectation
35. Wink: to look at while blinking one eye to signal or tease another person
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Claudia

by Nona Smith

We held our wine glasses up and tapped their rims together. Clink.

          “Do you know why that’s done?” Claudia asked.

          “I have no idea,” I said.

          “The French began the custom centuries ago. It’s to make us appreciative of all five of our senses.”

Claudia had a treasure trove of that kind of information.

“Ahhh, les Francais; ils savent tout,” she added.

          She spoke three languages fluently and had enough vocabulary in others to find bathrooms in foreign countries and order wine in restaurants. Born in Germany and well-travelled, Claudia had European sensibilities and a sophisticated sense of style. Her hair was cut by a Sassoon-trained stylist, she wore only Italian-made shoes, and the walls of her dining room were painted Chinese red, seasons before that trend appeared in Architectural Digest. She owned a few expensive, elegant gold pieces, but most of her jewelry was purchased during her travels from local artisans or at art fairs at home. It was this we bonded over.

          On her first day working as a travel agent at Trips Out Travel, I admired her earrings: thumb-nail size, straight-back chairs, crafted from black metal. Definitely not gold, but certainly expensive. Something she might have found in a museum gift shop.

          My compliment caused her to tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear and caress her earlobe. “I found them in Taormina. I had to sort through all that cameo crap they sell there before I found anything interesting.”

          Claudia had opinions. Very firm opinions. About food and clothing and what was worth spending money on. Her generous smile drew people to her; her sharp tongue sent them away. She possessed a quirky, wicked sense of humor and had a flare for the dramatic. She’d once been married and had a son Adam she adored, but when I met her, Claudia was living alone in a one-bedroom gem of a house secreted into the Berkeley hills. She took her cockapoo Milo, a yappy attention-grabbing dog, with her almost everywhere. And Claudia was devoted to the game of What If… What if you weren’t a travel agent; what else would you be? What if you didn’t live in this country; where else would you like to live? What if you knew how to play a musical instrument; which one would it be?

          Milo was not with us the afternoon we dined at our favorite dim sum restaurant in the City. We’d already polished off a bamboo steaming-basket of shrimp dumplings and a platter of al dente Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce when Claudia nodded to the waitress rolling another dim sum-laden trolley towards us. “We’ll have the shu mai and the pork buns,” she said with authority.

          We held our wine glasses up and tapped their rims together. Clink.

          “What if,” Claudia began, “you were on Death Row and going to order your last meal; what would it be?”

          I don’t recall what I answered, but Claudia’s answer came quickly and definitively. She waved her chopsticks over the bountiful table. “This is what I would order.”

          Late the next morning, Adam called. “It’s bad news. It’s Mom. She died yesterday.”

          “Oh, Adam,” I said. Tears sprang to my eyes.

          He continued to speak, “… alone in the house … Milo was with her … brain aneurism …”

          I heard his words, vaguely, but the picture in my mind was of Claudia, her chopsticks held aloft, pronouncing the dim sum her last meal of choice.

“Claudia” by Nona Smith is one of the featured pieces at the Artists’ Co-op of Mendocino, Traditional and Contemporary Fine Arts 2021 Ekphrasis X Exhibition, where writing is paired with visual arts. You can see the artwork inspired by “Claudia” and the other winning entries at 2021 Ekphrasis X Exhibition.

Ekphrasis: Art describing other art. Writing is paired with visual arts.

Nona Smith is the author of Stuffed: Emptying the Hoarder’s Nest and numerous short stories, humorous personal essays, and bad poetry. She was a long-time board member of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference and currently sits on the board of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast and is editor of the club’s annual anthology. Nona lives with her patient husband Art and two demanding cats.

Her writing is featured in many anthologies including The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year. Available at Gallery Books in Mendocino, Rebound Books in Mill Valley, Book Passage in Corte Madera, at Amazon, and through your local bookseller.
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Today’s Sparks is a pantoum.

Barbara’s Braid

By Karen Ely

Weaving strands of amber honey

Over, under, around and through

Silky locks of shimmer sunlight

Plaited patterns, three by two

Over, under, around, and through

Brush strokes cultivate the threads

Plaited patterns three by two

A tapestry of golds and reds

Brush strokes cultivate the threads

Silky locks of shimmer sunlight

Plaited patterns, three by two

Weaving strands of amber honey

Karen Handyside Ely was born and raised in Petaluma, California. She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with her husband, James.

Karen has been published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections, The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year. All available at Amazon and your local bookseller.

Discoveries is on sale for $6.99 at Amazon for a limited time.

Writers Forum hosts Saturday afternoon writing for the month of October 2021. Free on the Zoom platform.
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Ascension Garden

By Stacy Murison

The first time, you drive by yourself. You have some idea you are going there, but are still surprised that you know the way, without her, through the turning and turning driveways. Left, left, left, left. Park near the rusted dripping spigot. The wind blows, unseasonably warm for November.

You bring the candy bar, her favorite, the one from the specialty chocolate shop, the one with the dark chocolate and light green ribbon of mint. You try to eat yours, but instead, stare at hers, unopened, where you imagine the headstone will go and sob without sound while the wind French-braids your hair just as she would have, and that’s how you know she is here.

She is still pushing cicada shells off white birch trunks with her toes, dancing around pine trees with roses garlanded in her hair, singing of her love of tuna and string beans, of percolated coffee, of lemon waxed floors, of gelatin molds, of cherries, of lilacs, of chicken soup, of kasha, of home sweet home, of you.

“Ascension Garden” was published August 16. 2021 in River Teeth, A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

Posted with permission.

Stacy Murison’s work has appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies (where she is a Contributing Editor), Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Every Day Fiction, Flagstaff Live!, Flash Fiction Magazine, Hobart, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, River Teeth, The Hong Kong Review, and The Rumpus among others.
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Chuckstable

By Lynn Levy

Dana cracked her gum and then smoothed it against the roof of her mouth. She pushed her tongue through, making that all-important thin membrane that would become the bubble, and Bobby watched, thinking that the gum made her tongue look as pink as the boa she was wearing. Which was saying a lot.

There was no explaining, really, why Dana was wearing a boa at all, but Bobby knew her better than to ask. Dana had on a boy’s tank top, cut-off jeans, and Goodwill Kiva sandals with one of the straps broken. She also had a scab on her left knee that grossed out the toughest kid in the neighborhood, and a thin white scar on her right arm from the time she’d fallen out of the big old oak on a dare that she could climb higher than the boys. The bone had stuck through, but Dana didn’t cry. After that she made her own rules, and nobody stopped her. If she wanted to wear a pink boa to catch snapping turtles, that’s what she did.

Dana blew the bubble and popped it, and used her tongue to pull the broken film back into her mouth.

Bobby pushed his old safari hat down over his forehead, hoping the shadow would hide his eyes. If Dana caught him staring, he was sure he’d shrivel up and die, though he wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t even sure why he was staring, actually, it was just that over this last summer, somehow Dana had gotten really … interesting.

While he watched, she took a couple of quick lithe leaps across the flat stones, until she was in the middle of the creek, cool water riding over her feet, making the creek surface a different shape right there, two smooth glassy bumps that no longer looked like feet. Dana crouched and looked down into the water. She let her fingers dangle just below the surface, the current drawing little wakes around each one. She didn’t seem to notice the ends of the boa dipping into the creek, the feathers shrinking with wet.

Bobby jumped a little when she squealed. “It’s a big one!” she called. Then, annoyed, “Are you gonna come help me or what?”

Bobby ambled over to the creek bank as if he was just himself, instead of how he felt, like he was someone meeting Dana for the first time and shy because of it. He’d known Dana since their Mommas had let them play out in front of the trailers, in undershirts and no pants.

“What do you want with them snappers, anyway?” Bobby asked.

“I wanna put one in Duane’s outhouse,” she said. “On accounta what he said about Chuckstable.”

Chuckstable was Dana’s dog and the love of her life. He was also the ugliest thing God ever put together. What Duane had said was actually pretty funny, but didn’t bear repeating unless you liked the taste of soap.

“His Pa finds it, he’ll just kill it,” Bobby said. Dana looked up at him, squinting. The light caught her eyes, and the browns and greens flickered just like the creek bottom.

“Ya think?” Dana asked.

“Uh huh,” Bobby said.

Dana sighed, and leaned forward, reaching into the water to stroke the turtle’s shell once, carefully, from behind. Bobby noticed the way the knobs of her spine pushed against the tank top, and had the weird thought that she’d be safer in life if she had a shell too.

“You’re right,” she said, standing. The wet ends of the boa came out of the water and clung around her knees. “But it was fun to think about.”

Originally published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, print version available for $6.99 for a limited time at Amazon.

Lynn Levy’s writing has also been published in The Write Spot: Possibilities and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year. All available in print ($15) and ereaders ($3.49) at Amazon. E-reader available with Kindle Unlimited.

All the Write Spot books are also available through your local bookseller.

Lynn Levy lives in Northern California with her husband, an endless parade of wild birds, and one dour skunk who passes by nightly. She and the skunk have an understanding.
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Journey

By Pam Hiller

The first leg of our trip to Nashville began with a Thursday afternoon flight. As Jon spent the three hours attending to job details on his laptop, I found myself increasingly staring at cloudscapes from my window seat. Snow covered mountaintops appeared to float on a sea of white clouds. Sunset over New Mexico’s red rock formations astounded with light, shadows, reflections, as earth and sky interacted. Dusk’s purple light soothed west Texas plains where vein-like rivers flowed. The night sky, increasing lightning flashes on the horizon, thrilled as our plane was diverted from Dallas to Wichita Falls.

A question began emerging in my mind and heart. I felt myself a part of the grandeur, the immense mystery I was observing. On the other hand, it was apparent that an individual life is literally invisible in nature’s vast scale. Does a single human existence really matter?

Saturday afternoon we attended a ceremony naming our former high school auditorium after a beloved drama teacher. City officials presented a declaration from the mayor declaring it Kent Cathcart Day in Nashville. Two former pupils gave speeches describing this man’s profound impact in teaching students to dare living authentically. Approximately half of the people in the audience were students from his first theater class in 1972 through his last class in 1999.

Once the speeches ended Kent sat in a brown leather armchair on the stage, a fatherly figure sharing his thoughts and observations. Amid the laughter and memories, he expressed a few simple statements about his faith, in a way as a public school teacher he hadn’t before. He told us that every morning before teaching he would attend an early morning mass. He spoke of allowing one’s active life to lead to a place of silence where God could be heard. He emphasized that whatever spiritual path one followed making room for this silent space was an essential component. As in our youth, we listened spell-bound.

Post celebration several former classmates met at a nearby home. We talked late into the night describing adventures (and misadventures) connected to time we spent in our home away from home, classroom S-01. As the evening progressed it became apparent that each of us had felt seen, attended to by Kent, in ways that deeply affected us both as teenagers and adults.

So, to return to my question—does a single human life matter? What I experienced that weekend is that each life radiates outward in circles we can’t possibly imagine. While I still felt awed by the unknowable mystery of it all, I also felt more grounded in the feeling that the integrity of each person’s actions is important. We all contribute to the world in ways that are obvious, and in ways we may never know.

Pam Hiller draws upon the storytelling traditions of her Tennessee childhood as inspiration for her writing. She has been blessed with a mother, relatives, and friends who know how to tell a good tale. Book-filled libraries have provided her with endless sources of wonder and interesting thoughts to ponder. It is Pam’s wish to write from the heart, from life experiences that influence her changing sense of being alive.

Originally published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, on sale for $6.99 for a limited time at Amazon.

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Water

By Susie Moses

All summer long I yearn to be in water.

First choice – A freshwater lake, cool and clear, minerally, soothing to the skin. Quiet, still. Maybe at times a whitecap or two, but no big waves, just gentle undulations, giving the swimmer a sense of massage. A tickle of weedy underwater growth against a foot, a small fish swishing by a shin. Avoiding the mucky bottom.

Second choice – An East Coast ocean, edged by wide white sandy beach stretching for miles along the shoreline. Sweet breezes, bright white pelicans in formation against the stunningly azure sky. Watching them drop like stones into the waves to spear a fish each had been keeping an eye out for.

Venturing into the water as it laps onto the hard sand, toes tickled by the searching wavelets propelled by the incoming tide. The zing of the chill, a thought of recoiling immediately overcome by the desire for immersion, the feel of the briny liquid fully enveloping the cranium.

Muffled underwater sounds create a sense of otherworldliness, a retreat from the cacophony of life above the surface—squealing toddlers, mothers’ warnings: “That’s far enough!” Squawking seagulls, shouting teens as they hurl frisbees at one another. Momentary peace—but only for as long as a breath can be held.

Third choice – A small river, where I found myself last weekend, immersed in green water flowing between old beech trees, tulip poplars and sycamore arching above the waterway, gnarled ancient roots exposed along the eroding muddy bank.

I lie prone in the water above the massive rocks that pave the river bottom, face skyward, reveling in the flight of the great blue heron soaring overhead as it traces the path of the flow. I hang on to a silty stone to keep from being swept downriver as I feel the steady pull of the moving stream. The shore is rocky where we emerge and retrieve our beach chairs, wedging them amongst stones, a bit of a wobble inevitable as we balance them on the uneven surface as best we can, and splay ourselves out to dry off in the sun’s strong rays.

Did I say this was number 3? At that point, lying in the bracing liquid caressing my body, hot sun warming my upturned face, my hair pulsating with the water’s movement, taking in the wonder of the great blue making its way upriver, I think it simply can’t get any better than this.

Summer at its finest.

Nestled in a body of water far from human development, noticing an iridescent blue dragonfly waft about. Noting a doe and her fawn far downstream crossing to the other side. No sign of another person for miles, save the one dear friend who floats nearby.

This is nirvana. Cool water, clear light, brilliant sky.

Nature. Respite. Peace.

Susie Moses is a generative writing junkie, enjoying the process and dreaming of actually doing something constructive one day with the piles of papers and notebooks she has accrued, that are spilling out of closets and off shelves and out of drawers.

But for now, just getting words down on the page is an accomplishment and a delight. She spent the year of Covid in Marin County to be near her daughters, but has returned to her beloved Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, at least for a while.

You can read Susie’s dream of living in a cabin in a forest, by the edge of a lake here.
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What Energizes You?

By Bonnie Koagedal

Energy is everywhere. We are made of life energy. A person can influence their life, health and others by sending energy through thought. I call these thoughts: prayers without movement.

Still mindfulness is a prayer. Thoughts are energy similar to words. They carry power and pain.

These teachings came to me recently as the pandemic shutdown escorted me into quiet times in one place called home. These teachings were told to me years and years ago. I did not grasp the fullness or capacity of energy through thought until the shutdown. This time was my vision quest.

When we can become no thing, no place, no thought as Joe Dispenza teaches we can affect our energy above and beyond our bodies. I was fascinated and obsessed for several months about these teachings.

As a child and into young adulthood. I felt I had too much energy for my own good. I bounced off the walls of my life and experiences. I pushed myself to have adventure after adventure and not stop. Like many people who experience trauma or tragedy, a dramatic circumstance sends us to another side of our life energy.

I learned to pray and turn my worry over to a universal God when I experienced the trauma of having a premature baby at age 38. She was born at 24 weeks gestation and was given a 5% chance of survival on the night she was born. She is now 28 and an amazing human.

What this experience led me towards was an ability to stop and enjoy the universe rolling on in my favor, whatever my favor was. I learned to clear my worried mind and let the universe provide. Inner mindful energy is a space I enjoy immensely now as much as being out and about meeting people and doing energetic hobbies. What energizes me is drastically different from what energized me early in life.

I gain great energy communing with my soul, my spirit animals and nature.

I am over the moon grateful for the authentic me that was able to emerge in this marvelous life. The art of “Be Here Now” is my mantra and way of living my life to its fullest.

Bonnie Koagedal moved to Sonoma County in 1986. She lives in Petaluma with her husband and fur friends. Bonnie enjoys soul seeking hobbies which include writing. Bonnie works in Senior Support Services part time. She tours families to board and care homes for a placement service. Favorites: Travel in her motor home and trips to her home in Arizona
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Mycorrhiza*

by Patricia Morris

I live under the canopy of a grandmother valley oak. It grows in what is now called “my neighbor’s yard,” due to the way we white settlers swept through this what-is-now-called a nation over the past 300 years and took over everything. Massacred people who were living here, infected them with deadly diseases, tried to re-make them in our image. Declared that we “owned” the land, bought and sold it; built structures to live in, structures that got bigger and more permanent as time passed; built fences to delineate MINE.

But before all this, there was the valley oak. Like all oaks, it began as an acorn, scrunched into the dirt next to a small seasonal creek. Its roots sank deeper each year, reaching for the water. Its mycorrhizal fungi spread wide, linking fingers with the grandfather sycamore nearby, and the great buckeye at the deeper part of the creek. They grew up together sharing food; sharing information; sharing tenants such as woodpeckers, scrub jays, red-shouldered hawks, squirrels, and woodrats.

The grandmother oak watched placidly as the Coast Miwok women gathered its acorns, ground them into mush, and fed them to their families; as the Spanish and then the white folks pushed in and planted crops and orchards, grazed cattle and sheep; as roads were laid down and houses sprang up, displacing meadows and pastures.

Fifty-one years ago what I call “my house” was built beside the oak out of dead redwood trees. The oak, by this time the oldest living being in the area, grew protective of this redwood structure, and even of the humans within it, despite all the destruction they wrought. I’ve had no doubt, since first setting foot on what I now call “my lot,” that the tree is protecting me and sending me love. Its ever-expanding canopy of leaves covers over two-thirds of my house in the summer, keeping it cool on even the hottest days. In the autumn, as its acorns hit the roof, the deck, sometimes even my head, like small exploding artillery shells, I give thanks and gratitude for the way it shares its abundance.

On a cold, dark winter night, silver stars glitter through the outline of the oak’s bare black branches, its ancient arms reaching to the cosmos. My tiny form sits in a tub of hot bubbling water. Boundaries between me, tree, and twinkling stars dissolve into emptiness.

* fungus which grows in association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship. Oxford English Dictionary

Patricia Morris lives under the trees in Northern California and writes on Monday nights at Jumpstart Writing Workshops. She dates her love of stories to being read to while sitting on the lap of her Great-Aunt Ruth, a children’s librarian. Her writing has appeared in Rand McNally’s Vacation America, the Ultimate Road Atlas and The Write Spot anthologies Possibilities and Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, edited by Marlene Cullen.
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This Sparks page on my website, The Write Spot, is, hopefully, a place for entertaining, fun, and enlightening reading.

“An Exercise in Barbecuing” by DS Briggs is one of the funnier stories in Discoveries.

The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing Discoveries is for sale for a limited time for $6.99

An Exercise in Barbecuing

DS Briggs

Very recently I leapt into the world of backyard barbecuing. For years I have secretly wanted to learn to barbecue. In my family it was always my Dad’s domain. However, I love grilled foods and got tired of waiting for Mr. WeberRight to BBQ for me. I proudly acquired a very big, shiny new Weber BBQ. It came with a grown-up sized grill width of twenty-two and a half inches. I dubbed my new friend “Big Boy.”

Unfortunately, for me, Big Boy came in a big box with far too many pieces. It was with a definite leap of faith to undertake putting Big Boy together. He did not have written directions, nor a you-tube video and I have no degree in advanced “IKEA.”

Instead, Big Boy came with an inscrutable line drawing and lots of lines leading to alphabet letters. Still, I have my own Phillips’s head screwdriver. I used to call it the star-thingie until an old boyfriend corrected me. But I digress. Suffice to say, after trials and even more errors, I constructed Big Boy.

Okay, so it took me three hours instead of twenty minutes, but Big Boy was upright and proud. I just wanted to admire my handiwork by this time and Big Boy was clean, so very clean. In fact, he was too clean to use. I postponed the baptismal fire and nuked my dinner that night. In a couple of days, after repeated trips to the store for important and essential tools of the trade: A cover to keep Big Boy dry and clean, real mesquite wood to feed him, and long-handled tongs. For my own protection I bought massive mittens. I was almost ready to launch Big Boy.

A few forays into the garage for additional must haves—my landlord’s trusty but rusty charcoal chimney fire starter can with a grate on the bottom and handle on the side and a dusty, spidery partial bag of charcoal in case my mesquite wood failed to turn into coals. I was finally ready to light up the barbecue. I chose to inaugurate Big Boy on a humid, somewhat breezy day. No gale force winds were predicted. As a precaution, I hosed down the backyard weeds. I found matches from the previous century and a full Sunday paper for starter fuel. The directions to stuff the bottom of the charcoal chimney can with crumpled newspaper and then load up the top part with either charcoal or wood sounded easy enough.

I chose to use the mesquite wood based on advice from Barbecue Bob, a friend of mine. I lit the chimney and soon had enough white smoke to elect the Pope. I waited the prerequisite twenty minutes for coals to appear. Nada. Nope. No coals in sight. The wood had not caught fire, although the paper left a nice white ash. Hungry, but not deterred, I re-stuffed the bottom of the charcoal chimney with more newspaper and set the whole chimney on top of a mini-Mount St. Helens pile of newspaper. I found smaller bits of wood since the lumber did not ignite. I lit the new batch of newspapers again. After a second dose of copious white smoke, miracle of miracles, the splinters of wood caught fire. Finally, it produced enough smoke for the oleanders to start talking.

“You do know it is a red flag day.” I know bushes don’t really talk, so I assumed the warning came from the owner of the fish-belly-white legs and flip-flops standing behind the tall, overgrown oleanders.

Having no clue what Flip-Flops meant, I explained that I was trying to learn how to BBQ. I asked what she meant by red flag day and she said that it was extreme fire danger in the hills. Aside from the fact that there was not a hill in sight, I told her that I had the hose at ready. I also asked Flip if BBQing was banned on red flag days. She didn’t know, however, I think I heard the word fire bug. Perhaps she just wanted to let me know that she knew who was playing with matches on a red flag day in case the fire department asked.

Reassuring Neighbor Fire Watch, I carefully emptied the chimney’s coals onto Big Boy’s smaller, lower but still sparkling clean grill. Using my mitts, I gently crowned Big Boy with the very clean, shiny huge upper grill. The sacrificial chicken had, at last, a final resting place. Whoosh! The previously white Pope smoke was now black and voluminous. Turns out olive oil makes lots of good smoke and less-than-helpful flare ups of flame. With my hands still ensconced in bright red mittens and using a very long tong, I turned the chicken. Only slightly blackened. I kept turning the chicken every five or ten minutes. More black, but not at the briquet stage—yet. I figured I had better recheck my BBQ Bible, the thick one with pictures so you can compare your results with theirs. Their advice was to cook the chicken until it had an internal temperature of 189 degrees Fahrenheit. I hoped Fire Watch was not watching because I dangerously left my BBQ unattended to go rummage through my kitchen drawers in search of an instant read thermometer. I knew that I would need it someday when I bought it a decade earlier. I inserted it and watched it slowly rise to 145 degrees. Only 44 more degrees to go but I was starving and the coals were cooling! I knew this because according to said Bible you hold your hand above the coals and count three Mississippi’s for good heat.

By the time I had counted “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . . fifteen Mississippi,” even I could tell the coals were dead. I pulled the chicken off the grill. The skin was definitely done. Delicious? No. Blackened? Yes. Delectable? No. Vaguely resemble the BBQ Bible’s picture? Not at all.

So for the lesson summary: Two hours of perseverance resulting in one hardly edible, even when finished-in-the oven chicken. Adding insult to injury I had a very dirty, sticky, greasy, too-large-for-my-sink grill to scrub.

Lesson learned: find a home for Big Boy and call take-out.

DS Briggs resides in Northern California with Moose, her very large, loving, and loud hound/lab mix. She has been privileged to contribute to Marlene Cullen’s Write Spot books: Discoveries, Possibilities, and Writing as a Path to Healing.

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