[Sca-cooks] OK, since we're all kids burning food, here's another one...

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Tue Aug 29 10:51:37 PDT 2006


On Aug 29, 2006, at 1:33 PM, Saint Phlip wrote:

> On 8/29/06, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
>
>> Incidentally, you could do all sorts of cool and highly dangerous
>> stuff in big cities, once upon a time, back when people had common
>> sense, took responsibility for their own screw-ups, and fun was
>> legal. Some of these hijinks included fire use of some (theoretically
>> benign) form, and apparently people used to cook over open fires on
>> city streets somewhat more often than they do now. There was a well-
>> known NY gangster and Tammany thug at the turn of the 20th century
>> named Chuck Connors (not the "Rifleman" star) who, even after he
>> became quite a wealthy man, would still enjoy a chuck steak cooked
>> over an open fire of scrap lumber at the side of the street, for old
>> times' sake, and this was said the be the source of his nickname.
>>
>> Adamantius
>
> Well, Adamantius, one reason nowadays not to cook anywhere, including
> on city streets, using scrap lumber, is that most lumber nowadays id
> treated for rot-and-what-not resistance, and the treatments, when
> burned tend to give off lovely chemicals like cyanide- not exactly my
> preferred seasoning for a cook-out. And a lot of wood today is
> plywood, or else pressed chip board, and Heaven only knows what's in
> the various glues they use....

Yes, but the question is, did you do these things before I was born,  
at any time between the 1880's and the 1920's, say... ;-)

I hear that today, now that good, clean, dangerous fun has been  
outlawed, all the young shavers can get into is relatively safe stuff  
like filling lawn and leaf bags with oxy-acetylene. Shocking, eh? <g>

Incidentally, I've done a little Web searching, and run across a  
total of one other reference there to toasting Mickeys (Brooklyn,  
1940's, bonfire) and in addition, my mom (b. 1918) remembers this as  
something one did in a regular fire, and not in a tin can.

Adamantius



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