Size 10 Wide, Medium Rare

One great thing about families is the way they keep you alive until you're old enough to ask for nonpoisonous food.  As soon as we had fully cooperative vocal cords, my parents let us choose our own birthday dinner menu - a tradition that stuck until we somehow got access to information about lobster.

My birthday fell in December every year, but I always wanted a barbequed-sparerib-corn-on-the-cob cookout.  Our freezer held more wild game than tame pig, and frozen corn-on-the-cob had not yet been invented, so instead I had antelope-deer-elk-something, chocolate cake, and presents.

Yum.  Presents.

I have always loved barbeque, but I accidentally turned vegetarian in college because I could only afford Sugar Pops and generic beer.  (I was a slow learner where nonpoisonous foods were concerned.)

Whenever an unsuspecting Visitor Family strayed within fifteen feet of our dorm, we'd cram as many students as would fit into whatever they drove and help them find a restaurant offering the delectable "Any Food Not Served on Campus," delivering a rousing a capella rendition of the Cowboy Joe Fight Song at the tops of our lungs along the way.

We were ravenous, wildly uninformed tour guides.

If the restaurant served Barbequed Anything, I took a little Vegetarian Vacation.  And since germs had not yet been invented, I stashed leftovers on the shelf in my dorm room, obviating the need for Sugar Pops between teeth-brushing and my first class the next morning.

My first mistake was bringing a big, fat spiral notebook to this week's "Barbeque Legends" class.  When I signed up I thought it was story legends, as in:  Finally!  The true revelation of barbeque - bring the big, fat notebook!

I was way off. 

The Legends turned out to be two men who love to Barbeque Anything.  I dubbed them Quiet Legend and Loud Legend as they regaled us with lists of their accomplishments, including a disturbing Family Fact:  Their wives and children had moved out, unable to compete for space in the sea of trophies the Legends had won.

Our class met in Quiet Legend's garage, which opened onto a driveway lined on both sides with the hulking remains of several 55-gallon drums perched on metal legs.  Smoke wafted from the hulks, carrying the unmistakable smell of yum and a vague hint of presents.

It's a cooking class!  I retrieved my notebook from where I'd stashed it in mild embarrassment at my feet.  Everyone else had thought to bring their favorite lawn chair and something to catch the drool.

I opened it to the first big, fat page and wrote the heading:  Post-Retirement Hobby:  Becoming a Barbeque Legend.  I placed the first bullet point on the second line and looked up to find a shocking sight:  the largest uninterrupted piece of actual animal I'd seen since the last deer I hit on my way home from Red Canyon sometime in high school.

This carcass looked funny.  In high school they just looked like dollar signs plastered across dented hoods, but this one looked more like a person with weird feet.

A tiny squeak sounded.  I think it came from me.

One Legend stood over the most-of-an-animal with a small saw - saying words I couldn't hear over the buzzing in my eyeballs.  This cow had so recently been frolicking somewhere that I half expected it to hop off the comically large butcher block and continue frolicking down the driveway, flipping open hulking metal containers to free its buddies as it went.  All it needed was skin.

I wrote beside my first bullet point:  Please let there not be something cute in those smoking things.

When we lived in Phoenix, my girlfriend Joan and I went to a new seafood restaurant one night.  I asked our waiter about a dish called mahi-mahi.  He told me it was a dolphinfish.  I cringed.  Oh, no thanks, I could never eat Flipper.

The waiter laughed and said, "Oh, it's not that kind of dolphin.  It's a real ugly fish."

That perked me up.  Yay!  Okay, then, I'll have the mahi-mahi!

What - what - WHAT was that about?  I have thought of that night so often - especially when my daughter Abi was young and I needed a quick Mom Speech that riffed off the nobody-can-help-how-they're-born theme.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm in a barbeque class - praying there is something unattractive in the metal cookers.  I'm used to ordering restaurant barbeque, then looking confidently at my plate to find a bun looking back.  Animals love buns, right?  Sometimes the buns even have little sesame seeds.

I heard Loud Legend answer a classmate:  "Yes, you can put anything in the smoker and, given enough time, it will come out tender and juicy."

There is a story about a 15th-Century traveler who single-handedly invents veganism by tricking an entire village into contributing their meager vegetable stores for his Stone Soup.  In hobo camps, the main ingredient in the soup pot was somebody's boot.  I used to think it was the stone and the boot that made those stories sad, but the travelers and the hobos don't need meat.  They just need to hear, "It's your birthday!  Come home and tell us what you want."

The Legends asked if we had questions.  I closed my notebook.  The true revelation was that this post-retirement hobby would give me bad dreams.  I stared at my Birkenstocks, at one time cows themselves, and my hand shot up in spite of my feet's insistence that we just leave.

I asked the men why they don't live together.  I mean, paying two mortgages seems silly, and all animals need companionship.

They chuckled, mumbling something about room for their extensive collections of pig towels and dishes and statues and bottle openers and cookie jars....  It seems pig-knacks are those adorable things that keep you company after your family leaves.

I am still a slow learner, but have signed up for a class called "Raw Foods."  Perhaps it will bring clarity - but until then, living in Cowtown may be an especially aromatic challenge.

Bring on the ugly vegetables.

(Believe it or not, I have another class about cows next Friday - teaching you how to make beautiful, functional items from leftover scraps of hide.  I will be the star attraction in Bovine Hell!)