The Perfect S'more

 

I’m pretty sure the last s’more I ate was about forty years ago. We ate some out here on Baker’s Branch a couple of nights ago that God pretty much handed us on the wings of a storm. 

My yard, which is composed of way more trees than grass, was left littered with deadfall after last week’s latest round of near-miss tornadoes. A group effort was made to gather up all the loose limbs and logs, even, and pile them up in one place for a future removal bonfire, something still legal out here in the country.

Men and boys still pee in their own yards out here without fear of arrest, too, the ladies knowing which windows not to look out of during daylight hours. Hard to believe people are still living that way, right? Welcome to my world.

I’ve heard it’s now legal for men and women to pee in the same restrooms, back East, today; at the same time, even. You’re welcome to that world.

Anyway, we make fires out here when the wind blows right. I set fire to the pile about three hours before dark so that the coals would be about perfect for cooking on a stick at about the same time everybody was getting hungry. Pam hauled out the hot dogs, heated the chili on the stove, and somebody else fished out some big, fat, gooey marshmallows and Hershey’s chocolate bars.

There was no wind. The smoke spiraled straight upwards. The air temperature was springtime perfect with the aroma of new mulberries in the air. The whippoorwills opened up just about an hour before dark. Life was good.

Men, and women, have been coming together around campfires for uncountable eons. Campfires have a magic draw, a cohesive power that drives back instinctive fears, as well as real ones. We are better, feel better, around a controlled outdoor fire. We cook over them, savoring dripped fat and seared meat. With full bellies and warmed backsides, we lay plans for the future, which, at that instant, are guaranteed successful.

Job, reputedly the most godly man of his era, and well rewarded for it, was struck unbelievably low by life’s vicissitudes. For no apparent reason, his farms were laid waste by drought and famine; his wife and children desecrated with immorality; all of his cattle stolen by Chaldeans; all of his “friends” had abandoned him in his ignominy (predictable, right?); and, finally, his body was corrupted by innumerable sores, boils, and open lesions allowing him no sleep.

With that last straw, he drew his rags about his desiccated body, and built a small fire, out in the open, which was now his constant home. In a while, gazing into it, he found a profound truth, one true to all of us, that returned his life to its former glory, saying aloud to himself, eyes on the fire, “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.” And from that point on, it was all good.

I was full with two paramount, fire-braised chili dogs, when Pam handed me that s’more I hadn’t eaten the like of which since forty years ago.

“This s’more”, I said, “is wrapped between two cinnamon graham crackers. I never had one like this before. It’s great. Where have they been?”

“Where have you been?” Pam asked.

“To a far, far place,” I said, “where Chaldeans live,” and watched the sparks fly upwards.

Copyright © 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen