The runaway watermelon and the mysterious smoker..

[greybeard]

Sigh...

Ya'll know me. I'm old, can really barely move about even tho I'm mostly pain free nowadays but still, my joints and muscles sure ain't what they once were.. moving fast and agile ain't in my present or future.

3 weeks ago, more or less, on a Saturday night, I decide to run to the grocery store (H-E-B) because I like to avoid crowds. The store closes at 11 and I got there about 10. Among the things I picked up was a watermelon. Just wife and I so we have gotten into the habit of getting the smaller round ones, the ones that taste like crap but have no seeds and we don't have to waste much. NOT the tiny 'personal' melons that wouldn't feed a cat, but not the giant big round 80 lb ones I remember from decades ago either.

Earlier that day, a friend of mine from down the street had called. He knew I was looking for a smoker to replace the piece of crap combination charcoal grill/offset smoker I've had for 18 months. It looks great, but, it really sucks. It leaks air and smoke everywhere. By design, the top lid is wider and longer than the bottom half, by about 2" total on the sides, and an inch in the back. Works ok for grilling steaks, burgers and cooking beercan chicken but as a smoker, there's no way to keep a steady temperature on the vile piece of junk. I have no idea which chinaman made these things but he needs to go back to tiny hibachis and fish heads and rice. You can see from this picture, what the problem is with the overhangs. The only place that kinda seals off is along the front. Oddly enough, it's branded "Expert Grill". The only thng it's expert at is wasting time and money, but i digress..




Neighbor has (had) a vertical pellet grill that I watched him use several times and it seemed to work great. He told me he is replacing it with a newer model that talks to him on his cell phone.... and If, I wanted his old one, he'd roll it out to the sidewalk and I could pick it up.
Now, I know nothing of new fangled stuff like pellet grills, wasn't even sure what kind of pellets they used. (rabbit pellets... .22 pellets?)
My youngest spawn, who IS an expert grillmaster (when he drives down the street, all the BBQ grills around Tomball bow down before him) has been goading me for months to get a pellet grill so I told friend-down-the-street (otherwise known as Bob) I'd take the smoker and would pick it up the next morning before church.

I get done shopping, go to the checkout with 1/2 a cart of Stuff-I-Need (I do 90% of the cooking in our home) there in H-E-B where they thankfully still have smiling human beings running the registers/scanners, with a young cheerful bag person that will offer old folks like me to take my groceries out to my vehicle (I always decline but do tip them a buck or 2, which they usually appear to be puzzled about.) I slip my card in the slot and am relieved to see Igot out of the store for under $100 for 4-5 bags of Things-I-Need and a watermelon for my wife. (I don't really like watermelon that much but wife loves 'em) Now about the melon...
My young son (he turned 47 today) can have his grill title, but I, am The master melon thumper. You seen Dune where they call up sandworms with a mechanical device, thumping the ground? I'm pretty sure I could do that with just a thumb and middle finger. I've never brought home a bad watermelon or cantaloupe. I know for sure, this is a good one, picked out from a big carboard crate of about 50 lesser quality pure melons from some far off place like Guatemala or Honduras.
I put the groceries in the back seat of my F150.. bought used last November and has been a great truck but one of the defects of buying a (this) used vehicle is that the light above back seat doesn't work. Not one of those lights from yesteryear where you just pop off a cover and replace a bulb in 2 minutes..it's LEDs on a circuit board from what I see on line. Just doesn't work. Not when you open the door, not when you trigger something from the key fob, not when you turn on the interior lights, not when I use my immense Jedi like powers to will it on, not even when you push the button on the light housing. The electrons don't move, that is, they just sit there in their valence orbit, happily circling their copper atom nucleus instead of jumping over to he next atom after being knocked out of their own orbit by a bit of voltage.. Not a big issue to me and I'll get around to looking in to it someday. A little light shines in there, from the front courtesy lights, eeking it's way between the tall front seat headrests..

I pull into my driveway, push the sun visor remote and open the big garage door so I can carry my groceries in to the house.
My truck sits thusly, but more in the center of the driveway.

 

[greybeard]

As you can see, the drive slopes out toward the street, but it also slopes slightly over toward the grass.. and then the grass slopes out toward the street. A year old picture with my wife's little black piece of feces Dodge Dart II parked where my truck usually sits.



In the dark, I'm pulling grocery bags from the darkened back seat, standing in a pitch black driveway after 11 pm, when I feel that watermelon hop down out of the seat, and lodges between one of my legs and the running board of the truck. I try to reach down and grab him, but he scoots over out of my grasp, drops to the concrete, doesn't bust open, goes between my feet and lazily rolls over to the edge of the grass. I see it there, stopped where I use the edger where the grass meet the driveway. Okay, I set the bags down in the back seat, and walk over toward the melon and just as I get there, for whatever reason, starts rolling across the lawn faster than I can hobble. It's one of the things I can no longer do; reach down from straight upright and pick something off the ground.
This watermelon, in blackness, makes a perfect radial roll, avoiding the mailbox, and drops down onto the street. I'm still trying to catch it, worried about falling in the dark (cell phone is till in the truck) and I step down off the curb and catch a glimpse of it, accelerating down the street.. rolling bumpily along. I can't catch it, think "well, there's $6 gone) and return to my truck to carry the groceries into the house. We have 2 refrigerators, one in the kitchen and one in the garage. The one in the garage is for frozen foods and 'extra' stuff we won't need right away like my extra gallon of whole milk and un cut watermelons.

I get everything put away and think, "well, I guess I better go find the damn watermelon before some kid runs over it on their golf cart tomorrow morning and careens off into someone's parked car".

So, I get in my truck, and I drive, and drive, and I drive all the way past the next block past the bottom of the hill. It's nearly midnight, in a subdivision full of retired military, most with hi $$ video security cams everywhere and hidden arsenals inside their homes that would make some 3rd world tyrants envious.

There's no vehicles parked on my side of the street that night and I can't find the dang runaway watermelon, so I make 2 blocks, come back and look again.
Finally at the VERY end of the hill, starting back up the next hill, I spy it. Hiding/wedged under ...the upright smoker Bob has set out on the curb for me.




I don't want to mess with the smoker that time of night but I park the truck, leave the door open, nervously pull the melon out, deposit it the passenger side FRONT seat and head for home. It isn't cracked or broke open, and other than a few soft spots, feels no worse for the little trip it made at near light speed down Blue Bird trail..



I take it to the garage refrigerator, open the door and there sits another watermelon just like it. Wife had bought one earlier that day and forgot to tell me.

2 days later, after supper, I pull that melon from the fridge, cut into the rollabout little heathen, and it's soft & bad around on the outside but the heart is firm and still tastes good. I eat more than I usually would.
Next morning early, my stomach awakens me. I find I have a case of squirts not unlike a cow that's been on fresh spring grass and I know dang well it's from that watermelon. It's revenge was served cold...

 

[1982vett]

Sorry to laugh, but it's kinda funny. We have a couple of those 3 compartment trunk organizers because I got tired of stuff hitting the ground while opening the back of the Tahoe. It corrals those watermelons and pickle jars pretty good.

 

[greybeard]

I'm pretty sure that someone on the street has at least part of it on video.
Yes, it was funny afterwards. There was a time, I could have run that little green ball down like Jerry Rice after a loose football ball.

 

[greybeard]

The mysterious part.
I get up the next morning before church, right at daylight to be exact, push the button on the wall near the walk in door by the laundry room, the electrons, (unlike the ones above the back seat of my truck) start moving back and forth, to and fro and the electric motor raises the big garage door, and right there where I sat down in my lawn chair and had my very first cup of Folgers Black Silk/Texas Pecan blend coffee. Then I remember the watermelon, and think, "oh crap, I have to go get that smoker down at Bob's."
I know Bob isn't going to be home because he told me he was leaving out early before daylight for a week down on the Gulf coast. I throw the rest of my clothes on, take the truck down in a hurry. Why? Because in this subdivision, they only pick up regular household trash on Wednesday, and bigger stuff every other Wednesday. Anything set out by the curb is there solely in an effort to give it away because the city charges extra for anything other than regular trash in the city provided cans.
The night before the smoker was standing upright on it's wheels right by the curb.

When I retrace my path from the night before, I find the smoker laid over on it's side up on the sidewalk.
I hurriedly drop my tailgate, load it noisily as something predictably rattles around behind the smoke darkened glass door and take it home. I know nothing about these things.
Unload it with the same noisy commotion as a few moments prior, roll it into the garage, open the glass door and find it empty, save one little square metal cover, that looks like a box but has the word "FRONT" pressed into one side. (Now, if you know my history, you have to understand I'm still a little leery about any contraption that says "FRONT" on it because the last ones I saw would go BOOM! and spit out hundreds of little steel pellets and they weren't for BBQing) But this was just a cover with that awful word on one side and a couple of vents on other sides.

I'm wondering now, what kinda deal i got myself into. I call Bob who just got into Corpus and ask if he decided to keep the inside parts. He says, "No, everything should be there, all the shelves, the grease pan, and heat deflector, and i stuck in a little instruction pamphlet too."

That means only 1 thing. Someone, here in the subdivision, which isn't very big, stopped sometime between midnight and just after dawn and robbed all the cooking grids and whatever else is supposed to sit down in the bottom of the thing. Flipped it over and was probably going to get the auger and motor but decided not to.
I'm stuck with it. Man card decorum dictates I can't give it back and can't roll it out to my own curb and let Bob see it sitting there when he comes back into town.

Now, I got to find or build parts for it that are probably going to cost me more than a brand new one would cost.

I know it works, because:..
1. Being a man, I just had to plug it in inside the garage. bout that time, wife called me in for breakfast and when I went back out (after telling her about the runaway melon from a few hours before) the garage was full of smoke. I didn't know the dang things lit themselves. Lucky i didn't burn the house down.

2. After i rolled it thru the house and out onto the back porch and cleaned it up (I don't think Bob had ever cleaned it) I put some pellets in it and lit it off according to directions the Great Gawd Google said and let it run over 1/2 a day at different temps and it held pretty close to each temp.






I've determined it isn't really an expensive smoker at all but the parts for it are..

 

[greybeard]

The shelves won't be much of an issue but whatever goes in the bottom may. If anyone has one of these things, if you could let me know what the bottom assembly looks like (Pics would be great) I'd appreciate it.

 

[Texas Ranch Hand]

As you can see, the drive slopes out toward the street, but it also slopes slightly over toward the grass.. and then the grass slopes out toward the street. A year old picture with my wife's little black piece of feces Dodge Dart II parked where my truck usually sits.
View attachment 46414


In the dark, I'm pulling grocery bags from the darkened back seat, standing in a pitch black driveway after 11 pm, when I feel that watermelon hop down out of the seat, and lodges between one of my legs and the running board of the truck. I try to reach down and grab him, but he scoots over out of my grasp, drops to the concrete, doesn't bust open, goes between my feet and lazily rolls over to the edge of the grass. I see it there, stopped where I use the edger where the grass meet the driveway. Okay, I set the bags down in the back seat, and walk over toward the melon and just as I get there, for whatever reason, starts rolling across the lawn faster than I can hobble. It's one of the things I can no longer do; reach down from straight upright and pick something off the ground.
This watermelon, in blackness, makes a perfect radial roll, avoiding the mailbox, and drops down onto the street. I'm still trying to catch it, worried about falling in the dark (cell phone is till in the truck) and I step down off the curb and catch a glimpse of it, accelerating down the street.. rolling bumpily along. I can't catch it, think "well, there's $6 gone) and return to my truck to carry the groceries into the house. We have 2 refrigerators, one in the kitchen and one in the garage. The one in the garage is for frozen foods and 'extra' stuff we won't need right away like my extra gallon of whole milk and un cut watermelons.

I get everything put away and think, "well, I guess I better go find the damn watermelon before some kid runs over it on their golf cart tomorrow morning and careens off into someone's parked car".

So, I get in my truck, and I drive, and drive, and I drive all the way past the next block past the bottom of the hill. It's nearly midnight, in a subdivision full of retired military, most with hi $$ video security cams everywhere and hidden arsenals inside their homes that would make some 3rd world tyrants envious.

There's no vehicles parked on my side of the street that night and I can't find the dang runaway watermelon, so I make 2 blocks, come back and look again.
Finally at the VERY end of the hill, starting back up the next hill, I spy it. Hiding/wedged under ...the upright smoker Bob has set out on the curb for me.

View attachment 46415


I don't want to mess with the smoker that time of night but I park the truck, leave the door open, nervously pull the melon out, deposit it the passenger side FRONT seat and head for home. It isn't cracked or broke open, and other than a few soft spots, feels no worse for the little trip it made at near light speed down Blue Bird trail..



I take it to the garage refrigerator, open the door and there sits another watermelon just like it. Wife had bought one earlier that day and forgot to tell me.

2 days later, after supper, I pull that melon from the fridge, cut into the rollabout little heathen, and it's soft & bad around on the outside but the heart is firm and still tastes good. I eat more than I usually would.
Next morning early, my stomach awakens me. I find I have a case of squirts not unlike a cow that's been on fresh spring grass and I know dang well it's from that watermelon. It's revenge was served cold...