After this I started cooking almost daily on my one of a kind keg grill. I heard rumors my great uncle Tom was selling his custom smoker that was built by my cousin Steve. I don't exactly know what year it was, but sometime in the mid 80s I went to fetch up that smoke from my uncle and there it was sitting on a "whodo" trailer, the smoker I still have today.
I spent many nights staying up learning to cook on an off pit stick cooker and finally I entered by first competition, the Annual Canoe Festival at Bowling Green's Beech Bend Park. Throughout the 70s and 80s this was the largest party Bowling Green ever held, with numerous big Rock n Roll bands. The local Elk Lodge was throwing this kick ass party, BBQ competition and canoe races to raise money for charities. To me, of course, this sounded like more fun than Disney World. What more could I ask for, beer, BBQ and kick ass music!? I'M IN!!! This competition was not a sanctioned contest but was judged with local celebrities, the sheriff, chief of police and the dog catcher, you know where I'm going with this.
So as all BBQ contests goes, Friday night was a party. The meat that all the teams were cooking would be judged and sold to raise money while the Elk Lodge cooked mass quantities of meat to sell. They were using a 16 foot long direct heat grill to cook freshly butchered BBQ shoulders. A good friend of mine Steve Walker, nicknamed Bird, was PitMaster for the Elk Lodge on this inferno of a grill. As you can imagine all the fat drippings off that pork caught on fire! Bird jumped off the trailer to safety and luckily the volunteer fire department was on site for such an alcohol induced disaster to put the flames out and save the meat. Around 3am the Elk Lodge asked me if I would cook the meat for the local charity donations. I was able to cook 300lbs of meat for their charity and come in 2nd place in the competition. I won a trophy that was about 6inches tall and worth about a quarter that I held on to for years but is now lost. I would gladly trade ANY of my newly won trophies to have it back.
It will be over 20 years before my next competition.
<= thats me Carly who is writing this blog for Donny... look at my dad with not just one but two cups in his hand! Does that look familiar??
