You ever wonder what it would be like to BBQ on the moon? Nobody’s ever done that before. Seems like the sort of thing a Boise gentleman ought to do.
It’s tough when you realize there’s not one, single square inch of planet Earth left to explore. Somebody’s already been there. And brought back souvenirs. Or wrote a book or made a movie about what they discovered. Maybe even claimed it. That’s how the West was won. And the East. And everything in between. I’m not here to judge. That’s just where we’re at. Now we’ve got to look beyond Earth, to the moon, and the stars. To Mars!
I’d love to go to Mars, as much as I enjoy being here in Boise. I think Mars looks a lot like Sedona, which isn’t even in Idaho. I’ve been there. You don’t need life support equipment in Sedona, and it’s too easy to get to. You can drive, or fly into Phoenix and drive from there. And no matter how good your imagination, the minute you arrive, you know you’re not on Mars. That’s not exploring. That’s traveling. Nothing against it, it’s just not the same thing.
The moon would also be cool. All that gray dust, and what a view! Again, elaborate life support needed. What fun is that?
Maybe God should start over with a creature that can handle different atmospheres. He’s done it before when things weren’t going His way.
When I think of the old explorers who have passed through the Treasure Valley, like Donald Mackenzie, who was part of John Jacob Astor’s enterprise to build a network of fur trading posts headquartered down at the mouth of the Columbia River (oh, so that’s how Astoria got its name!), I feel a twinge of regret for not having been born when there were still wild frontiers to conquer. True, he lost three Owyhees (which is what they used to call Hawaiians back then), whose names we’ll never know, but he or somebody else named the Owyhees after them. Small consolation to their families, but thoughtful, nonetheless.
And what a thrill it would have been to stand safely behind Rube Robbins making raspberries at Cherokee Bob the day Rube ended Bob’s reign of terror up in Florence! Cherokee Bob was as tough as he was bad. After Rube shot him, he clung to life for three days before finally giving up the ghost. I have no idea what happened to his companion, Red-Headed Cynth, after that. Maybe she stayed on as a cocktail waitress at The Boomerang? That’s the saloon old Cherokee Bob took by force, threatening to shoot the previous owner in the face if he didn’t hand it over. Supposedly, the old owner’s partner owed Cherokee Bob a lot of money. Maybe true, maybe not. Regardless, nobody wants to get hurt. I get it.
No places left to discover. What’s a Boise man to do? BBQ. I pride myself on being out there no matter what the weather. Sun, rain, snow. I don’t care. I’m going out there and firing up the Weber Smokey Mountain. Does it even snow here anymore?
I BBQ a lot. At least three times a week. Five years later, I’m still not good at it. Too much wood. Too few briquettes. Not enough air. Too high temperatures. Too much peeking. Always something. I’d rather struggle with BBQ than throw something in the oven. It just doesn’t taste the same.
I do like canned soup, though. It’s the sort of thing a rugged individual keeps in his back pocket to prove he can survive a crisis. If only you could get Thai or Chinese soup in a can. I haven’t seen it down at Fred’s or Albertson’s. Does that mean it doesn’t exist? Probably.
Between meals, or sometimes during, I like to read a good book. Almost never all the way through. Buying books gets expensive, which is why I finally got a library card. For the longest time, I wasn’t reading at all. I could never remember the beginning by the time I got to the middle, and by the end, I’d forgotten both the beginning and the middle. Frustrating. So I gave up. But then I figured, who cares what you remember. The act itself is satisfying.
Having a library card after so many years without one felt novel and wondrous. I kept finding books to check out. Pretty soon, there were two armloads of books on my desk, mostly unread. I made it through the one about Sonny Liston, and the one about Donald Mackenzie. I read a few pages here and there from the Bob Dylan books. The vast majority just sat there, taunting me. I started to wake up in the middle of the night, dreading the overdue notices that hadn’t arrived yet. When the first one showed up, I hauled all the books back to the library, not wanting to end up like George Washington, who once checked out a book and never returned it. It took nearly two hundred years for that book to finally make it home to the library. No wonder they canceled his holiday.
I thought it might be extraordinary to BBQ on the moon. But how? According to ChatGPT, not even a Boise gentleman can get around the local conditions. It’d be extraordinary, all right. An extraordinary pain in the backside. I decided I’m not willing to do it.
I doubt I’ll ever make it to Mars, or the moon, or anywhere no one has ever gone to before. But I’ve got my wife and a kid who lives out in Oregon, and I’ve got my home, my dogs, the cat, and I’ve got some books I can read over BBQ chicken or canned soup. That’s all you need to be a gentleman in Boise.