Jeff Foxworthy moment

[bluewhisper]

My favorite YMBARI is "if you have ever cut your grass and found a car..."

So it was today. I run the Friends of the Scioto River, and we wrangle volunteers to cut invasive honeysuckle out of a park along the river. It grows in very dense thickets and shades out everything else. It provides cover for illegal activity and makes people afraid of the parks.

So we work with a city crew, that's their chipper in the background. They chainsaw the honeysuckle and we drag it to the chipper. This work opens up whole new areas of the park, and ruins a lot of party spots.

This old forgotten grill was in an overgrown thicket. I'll bet it hasn't seen a fire in 20 years or more, but it looks like it's ready for charcoal. Time to get a bag, and some folding chairs, and confuse the park police.

FOSR: contributions welcome!

http://www.sciotoriverfriends.org/

discovered_grilll.jpg

• bluewhisper
• May 15, 2015

 

[daveomak]

very cool..... great things you and the group does......

 

[bluewhisper]

Thanks! But OH MAN am I tired and sore now! Getting out of bed in the morning will be interesting.

 

[joe black]

It's nice that you can get the city to help out. In Greenville, SC, the only projects that get done are the ones that benefit the upper crust and will give the mayor a new gem for his legacy. Must be nice.

 

[bluewhisper]

In this case I'm like a talent agent brokering between volunteers who want to make a difference, and the city whose budget doesn't allow for wish-list projects like this. It can take a lot of organizing and negotiation to make these events happen, but the result is like throwing lightning bolts.

 

[shoebe]

Great work

 

[bluewhisper]

We went back last night and fired it up, for the first time in nobody knows how long. The people in the nearby shelter house where we usually grill must have been wondering why we were carrying camp chairs and picnic stuff into what appears to be a stand of young trees.

rivergrill1.jpg

• bluewhisper
• Jun 11, 2015

Gathering firewood is prohibited in the park but we were stumbling over sticks of dried honeysuckle, so we let Nature take Her cruel but magnificent Course.

I wonder, who built this, and when? It has poured concrete sides, a brick base and a lining of firebrick. The spalling of the concrete suggests that it's maybe 50 years old, or more. Oh well, somewhere, some ghosts are smiling.

rivergrill2.jpg

• bluewhisper
• Jun 11, 2015

 

[ahas284]

HEHEHEHEHE I bet Jeff Foxworthy never thougth of that one, cleared brush and found a grill!

I love Foxworthy and the whole Blue Collar Comedy Team. A few years back when Foxworthy was more or less independent, a friend and I at work became a little bored with his routine, I mean once you've heard his list of YMBARNI a few hundred times, i mean it does get a bit old. So we began to think of different things. We live here on the Texas Gulf Coast and there's a whole different culture here of old fishing families that have made a living on these bays for over a hundred years. A lot of my family whose ancestry came here from Germany in the 1800s were and still are fishermen and Ranchers, which you may think is strange bed fellows. But there's a lot of cowboy commercial fishermen here. OK To make a long story not so long, we came up with Bay Rat Jokes.

Iffin your cowboy boots are made out of white rubber, you might be a bay rat, 

Iffin you've ever mowed your yard and found an outboard motor, you might be a bay rat, 

Iffin your pickup truck has barnacles on the under frame, you might be a bay rat,

and so on and so forth. But nobody will ever top Foxworthy. That guy's a genius.

 

[joe black]

To me its great to see something like this get a rebirth. As you said, yep, someone is smiling on this.

 

[gary s]

Yep, Neat indeed   Now it just needs to be used

Gary

 

[oldschoolbbq]

OR , a great little hide away you and a special group know of...

Great story .

 

[ahas284]

Yeah I just wish it was in my back yard. I could use a pit like that. I'd probably build up the sides and put a lid on it. Those old brick pits will flat cook meat.

 

[bluewhisper]

 
OR , a great little hide away you and a special group know of...

Great story .

It is a hide-away. There is a screen of young saplings between the grill and the park road, including an entrance to the park. But from the grill's location, you're looking down on the rest of the park, and nobody thinks to look up at you. It was always nothing but brush.