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Growing up in Niagara Falls during the Cold War, I learned that each season brought with it samples of the joys and disappointments of life that would help define the destinies of thousands of boomers who would leave our homes there to travel the world in search of our fortunes.
As kids, during the school months we could easily find our way home from anywhere in Niagara Falls by following our noses and our ears. The static crackle of multi-lingual radio programs mixed with the savor of European cuisine and chicken cooked a million different ways, mapped our nasal passages, guiding us to our own separate, unique neighborhoods.
During the summer months, it was another story.
The aroma of back-yard barbecues, and the distant beckoning chimes of ringing ice cream trucks were everywhere; no borders, no boundaries. Burnt hot dogs, hamburgers and steaks smell the same, no matter what side of the tracks you're on, but barbecued spare ribs cast a unique spell.
The source of intense family rivalries and famous family feuds, the wizardry of the barbecue sauce, the secrets of generations, kept locked away from public consumption, except to be enjoyed as a culinary delight at the right time in the right place by the right people, remain safe. Most of the very best recipes for the greatest barbecue sauces in the world were buried with their inventors. But some can be recreated from memory. Trial and error can get you close and after years of experimentation and travel to the farthest reaches of the world in search of "the sauce," I may have discovered the basic ingredients left on a hand-written note from my mother to me nearly 25 years ago.
Her recipe was handed down to her by word of mouth, from her mother, who never wrote it down, and never told anyone exactly what was in the sauce. She learned it from her father, who got it from his mother, who also left out some of her secret ingredients.
My father had his own recipe for barbecue sauce but, more than the ingredients, his secret was in the technique of the cooking of the ribs. He believed that most of the flavor comes from the smoke. Selecting the right fuel for the fire, and getting it to the exact right temperature was the key for him. Finding the right wood, burning it down to charcoal embers, and putting the ribs on the grill at the right time, on the right side, and turning them periodically was the most important part of the ritual to him, aside from the actual physical construction of "the pit."
No back yard in Niagara Falls was complete in the 1950s and '60s without a hand-crafted stone barbecue pit complete with a chimney stack and a pile of carefully selected wood sitting somewhere nearby. The barbecue pit was the focal point, where thousands of families spent hundreds of hours together watching over the ribs, burning the hot dogs and hamburgers, and sharing the stories of their lives, plotting their futures and just being together.
On some rare occasions, usually a major holiday, my parents and two or three other families would pack up the cookout gear and parade us to Beaver Island, where we'd run around the park chasing each other and meeting other kids from far away places like Tonawanda.
Once or twice a year, we traveled the long distance to Canada to the biggest, most fun place in the world, Crystal Beach. Though I was terrified of the "Laughing Lady," a mechanical wooden monstrosity that stood 50 feet tall in a cage, laughing loudly, hysterically, for no apparent reason, I loved the place. To me, it was a child's paradise, a permanent carnival with the world's fastest roller coaster and the best cotton candy on the planet.
Crystal Beach also was the site of one of the first race riots of which I had ever heard. When tensions between the blacks and the whites began to rise, we stopped going there. Dad would drive us, instead, over to the Whistle Pig and treat us to custard cones and a ride or a few games before we'd have to leave there, too. We were too young then to understand what he was trying to protect us from, why we were the ones who always had to leave when someone else started trouble.
Somehow, over time, we traded our back yards for theme parks far from our homes and our neighbors, and we cannot hear the stories any more unless we travel to the movie complexes where someone else, in exchange for a ticket, will tell us whatever they want us to hear.
Too bad.