The Beginning of BBQ Season
 
We call it Memorial Day, but in a lot of ways it’s just the official beginning of summer, barbecue season.  It used to be Memorial Day, May 30, a day to honor the war dead, but now it’s a three-day weekend, our welcome to summer. There are more news stories about gas prices than battlefields, more ads for beach chairs than for grave decorations.
 
Maybe the change began in 1971 when the Congress decided three day weekends were more important than days of commemoration. Or maybe it began fifty years earlier when the last generation of Civil War veterans and widows had just about faded away, and folks were no longer calling it Decoration Day. No longer did every town and village, every family, have a painful reminder of the toll taken by war. Continue Reading »