On Feb 26, 10:06*pm, Greg Guarino wrote:

On one such evening I passed a business named Norwegian Wood. They
apparently install hardwood flooring. There were some workers outside
who looked a shade or two darker than most Norwegians, so perhaps the
boss is simply a Beatles fan.

OK... that made me laugh out loud! Maybe they were from the coastal
areas...

They were barbecuing on one of those big
"half of an oil drum" grills and I could smell the steak and chicken a
block away. I got a better look as I walked past. The fuel? Cutoff
ends of solid tongue and groove oak.

Not much better wood to do that with, either. That clean stuff lights
easy and goes to coals very nicely a lot faster than an oak branch
with bark attached. Also, in the pit you don't get an off flavors
from wet bark, fungus under the bark, and you know for sure the wood
isn't green.

When I was a house framer about 100 years ago, we found ourselves well
out of the way of any fast food restaurants to eat at when lunch came
around. We started packing out food and meat to the job and preparing
it there, taking a little longer for lunch than the accepted 30
minutes.

We built a site grill with three layers of concrete mesh lined up to
make the holes small, and this was later changed out to an old metal
refrigerator rack. We built a three cornered square pit with the rack
in it by stacking leftover bricks. We cooked sausage mostly as it was
easy, but toasted bread, heated up beans and some guys even heated up
their lunch (tacos around this part of South Texas) on a daily basis.

Nothing like a fresh hot meal at lunch when you are in the middle of
nowhere. Construction workers are natural born scroungers, and I
think there are some guys that can make just about anything out of
about just about nothing. Our little pit went with us from house to
house for a while, and was easily rebuilt as needed.

Robert