Page 31 - Barbecue News Magazine August 2020

I have to give y’all a little Kael his- tory. Kael is the middle son of 3 and is one of the nicest young men you will ever meet. His parents have raised their boys to be gentlemen, and its fun to watch people's faces when they say yes ma'am, yes sir, and thank you. This kid is also very athletic. Not many kids can do 200 push-ups, 200 situps, and 100 pullups every day! Kael has also been my assistant at several of my BBQ classes. He truly is a real joy to be around. He has learned at a young age not to be afraid to work! He comes to my shop, and if I don't have anything for him to do, he gets the blower and cleans the shop and the driveway.
When we got to Anthony's, we got to
work forming up the slab for the con-
crete. We needed to add quite a bit of fill, and this young man got right to work. He got a 4-foot level and double checked everything and learned what plumb and level meant. We got everything ready to pour and took some time to go arrowhead hunting. I gave him some history of the area and explained a long time ago the Cherokee Indi- ans had been through this area and hunted and on some of these farms when you tilled the land to plant trees and farm if you had a sharp eye and a nice stick to flip rocks you could get lucky and find arrowheads. We spent several hours hunting and looking but did not have any luck find- ing arrowheads, but he did find some cool rocks to take home to his brothers.
We eventually left and went to a little country restaurant where we ate some home town country food. From white beans, cornbread, broccoli and cheese casserole, to chicken and dressing and gravy with some cranberry sauce, Kael enjoyed it all. The next morning we got up and poured our concrete slab, and Kael got his first chance to spread some mud and did an excellent job. He put his handprint and name in the concrete and will always be part of the old homeplace where I grew up. Anthony put him on a tractor, and we rolled his sleeves up to work on his farmers tan. He ran that tractor for quite a while and said it was the most fun he had ever had.
My lifelong friend Dale Lentz heard that we did not have any luck on our arrowhead hunt and said he needed to see us before we started back to Florida. Dale has worked the land his whole life and is in the nursery business, and he brought Kael some arrowheads to take home with him. I saw a smile on that boy that I don't think will ever go away. One of the rocks that he got was used for face paint a long time ago. It was to be scraped against another rock and added water to make the face paint. Kael was going to look it up when he got home to learn more about it. He was fas-
cinated.
The morning we were leaving, Anita made us breakfast of homemade pan- cakes and sausage. My boy ate good, worked hard, and learned some history from the old farm. On our trip back, we stopped to see Lonnie Smith and picked up one of his new stick burners (my favorite cooker).
I think Kael will remember his trip with his grandpa. I will remember it for the rest of my days. With all that's going on in the world today, we all need to spend family time and pray for our President, our country, and each other. I hope everyone enjoyed reading about our trip. We will be back in Mcminnville and hopefully have some
good cooking and eating stories to tell. Feed people barbe- cue. It makes them happy!
Kael’s arrowheads collection
AUGUST 2020
BarbecueNews.com - 31