Oct. 6-A good barbecue smoker

Monday was back to California and I again found myself glued to the tube with more news of panic throughout the world’s financial system. It was getting to me, as commentators were making an excellent case for years of economic turmoil that will surely slam tourism and property sales in Costa Rica. More and more, my nascent barbecue business appeared to be a vital part of my economic future. I shopped for some bbq accoutrements, the most important of which were temperature gauges for the pit I would have in November.

Since the idea for the barbecue business originated in early 2005, I had thought about how I would build a good smoker. I found plans on the internet, and although nothing seemed exactly right for my needs, I figured I could come up with something that would provide the smoking, temperature and moisture conditions that I needed to produce genuine USA style barbecue. It wasn’t too long after my arrival that I found myself at Kaya Sol, having a beer, and struck a conversation with a guy named Billy whose long beard made him look like a member of ZZ Top. He was a surfer and former biker, having belonged to a group called the Orange County Assholes, riding not far from my aunt’s home in San Clemente. The conversation soon turned to barbecue, and he told me about the great grill that his friend Mark, a welder, had made. He invited me to stop by his house in the neighboring beach community of Playa Pelada to check it out, and we would walk over to the beach and meet Mark, who hung out there at sunset drinking beer with some other locals.

This I did the next day, and indeed it was a nice grill, with a cover that closed tightly allowing it to be used like a Weber. He took me over to meet Mark, a grizzled fellow who liked cigarettes and Imperials and worked for years as a welder in the Texas oilfields, where he had made hundreds of barbecues, he said. He had one finished now and if they guy who asked for it didn’t pick it up soon I could have it, he said.

So they next day or so I headed off to his large welding shop next to the Nosara airport landing strip. It was not pretty, with some junker cars outside and assorted chaos inside, but the grill was well made. There was also a larger bbq pit he was working on, made from a discarded hot water heater with an offset firebox and a heat shield inside the chamber, designed for true slow-smoked barbecue. He showed me the features and clearly knew what he was doing. I ended up buying both machines, this being around the beginning of the year. A friend, Jacque, helped me with his Toyota Hilux pickup truck deliver them to our third house, the middle one, where we were living at the time.

But what really caught my attention, at the back of Mark’s shed, was a barbecue pit, with two cooking chambers made from old hot water heaters, and a firebox below, all mounted on a trailer with plenty of cargo area. With its double chambers, it didn’t resemble any barbecue pit I had seen before, and I had done a lot of research. Mark said he had been helping a friend, Frank, built it. The rust all over it told me that they were taking plenty of time. It still needed a lot of detail work, but it had two decent sized cooking chambers and the wheels, with suspension and shocks, indicated it would be roadworthy.

The barbecue pit that I now had was sufficient to launch a barbecue catering service. And I would be keeping my eye on the large rig, because it was a serious commercial scale machine. I had not met Frank, who would be the owner, and need to find out more about his plans.

My own barbecue business was launched on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, with my partner Tigre. My experience with Tigre, ending with his tragic death, is recounted separately in a narrative that I will eventually reweave into one complete story.

I continued to stop by Mark’s shed to admire the pit on wheels, and it was pretty clear that not a lot of work was being done on it. Mark told me that Frank, who is a carpenter, had a new baby girl and wasn’t too focused on his pit at this point. I wasn’t in any hurry to move ahead, since it was the low season and we were just doing ground work in getting the barbecue business started, working first out of the Black Sheep Pub and then moving over to La Banana. And of course, early on, there had been the episode with Tigre’s death. Toward late summer I finally felt the time was right, and I reached Frank, who has a house high above Playa Pelada. He said he would sell it for what he had into it, and would have to figure out the cost of materials and labor. He estimated it would need about five more hours of labor to complete the work, not including the paint that it needed.

A few days later we talked again and he said he would need $1800 and Mark would need to be paid for several hours more work as well. I presented him a check for $1600, in August, with the understanding that I would pay the rest upon delivery. Mark also needed to build a trailer hitch for my Nissan Pathfinder, which required buying a piece of angle iron that wasn’t available anywhere in Nosara at the time. Anyway, I didn’t want the thing before my return in November anyway, and hope we can have it together pretty soon after my return.