BBQs on Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day. The unofficial start of summer and with it the BBQ season. I have always liked to BBQ on charcoal, and this is how I remember it from my youth. Today with propane we have a more even heat and it reaches whatever temperature you desire by the turn of a knob. I like the challenge of figuring out the temperature of the flame by waving my hand over the charcoal and looking to see their color. It makes for a more intense BBQ experience for the chef and what I believe is a tastier flavor for the food. Always use Kingsford.

A little Memorial Day history courtesy ofthe San Francisco Bay View, of which I was unaware:

"As we pause to remember the nation’s war dead, it’s worth remembering that Memorial Day was first celebrated by Black Union troops and free Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina at the end of the Civil War.

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., to honor 257 dead Union soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in an upscale race track converted into a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for two weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 3,000 Black children, where they marched, sang and celebrated.

As historian David Blight recounts in his masterful book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” (2001), Charleston was occupied by Union troops in the spring of 1865, most white residents having fled the city. In this atmosphere, the free Black population of Charleston, primarily consisting of former slaves, engaged in a series of celebrations to proclaim the meaning of the war as they saw it.