The Coonridge Digest: Annual BBQ is missing something

Greetings from the Ridge.

The annual barbecue was missing something and I don’t mean chili powder or garlic rub. The Dunbars had moved to Florida.

Like as not, your community has Frank and Emma Dunbar, although they might go by other names. Frank and Emma were the moral compasses of our town, and now that they’ve become permanent snowbirds in Orlando. Coonridge seems to be wandering helplessly with no sense of right or wrong.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Frank and Emma never actually did anything. They just criticized it once it was done.

If either of these two moral poppers ever had fulltime jobs, no one could ever remember what they were. For as long as anyone could remember, the Dunbars were regular attendees at every event and although they never lifted a finger to help, they were on the front row giving their own brand of critique.

Coonridge holds an annual fall barbecue that has begun to sorely test the limits of our manpower. The beef and fried potato consumption has gone up and up over the years, but as the local populace has died off or moved away, the number of available hands has dwindled. For two days the town is chock-a-block with cars, kids, and hungry neighbors who’ve come to enjoy two days of bingo, kiddie rides, free entertainment, and enough food to up the national weight average by at least two percent. It’s a tradition going back a hundred years, but of late the town’s manpower resources have been stretched as taut as the customers’ waistlines.

Every September, regular as rain, Frank and Emma would be too busy to help with the preparations, too tied up to man the ice cream stand, and too tired to chop a single carrot in preparation. But, come opening night of the barbecue, they would drag their aluminum lawn

chairs into Coonridge Park, be the first to hop into the food line, then plant themselves on the front row for entertainment. It was strange how their schedules always seemed to free-up in time to eat.

To Emma the barbecue was never quite as good as last year, the flies were worse, and the help seemed especially slow this year. Frank was the entertainment critic, giving his solemn reviews about the poor quality of the sound system, the beat of the band, and even the synchronization of the five-year-old tap dancers. We owed a great deal to Emma and Frank. Without them telling us that the world was run so badly, we’d never had realized the good times when they came.

But their role as professional nitpickers weren’t reserved for barbecue and bands. The Dunbars were ecumenical. They never had the time to actually serve on the pastor search committee, but they somehow found the spare hours, days, and months to criticize the committee’s choices. They were too busy to run for city council, but they seemed to eek out enough spare moments to condemn every move the board made.

The town’s most famous running battle was between Hugh Timley and the Dunbars. Hugh was the town’s prime mover and shaker. If something needed to be done, he did it. Although he had no official position in city government, you could bet that on the first heavy snowfall Hugh would wake you with the sound of his diesel and blade, cleaning out every driveway in town. (Emma complained that he messed up the rocks in her driveway.) Hugh fought to get the town a new fire truck. (Frank wrote a letter to the fire department complaining about the volume of the siren.) Hugh would stay up all night prior to the town’s fall barbecue and at about three in the morning he’d add the "secret ingredient." (The Dunbars claimed that it was oregano and that the smell would wake them up, four blocks away.)

The local newspaper considered starting a new column entitled "Another Letter from Frank and Emma," so frequent were their contributions. I read their letters for a couple of decades, and unless I’m forgetting something, I can’t remember a single instance in which they actually liked something. I imagine that if by the grace of God, Emma makes it to heaven some day, she’ll start her conversation with the Lord by reading him a list of things she’d like to have fixed. "Lord, is this eternity going to take forever? I mean, I don’t have all day…"

I suppose it shall eternally be this way – those who moan and gripe and those who actually do something about it. There’ll always be those who make a difference and those to whom it wouldn’t make any difference as long as they can complain. Of course, the good news is that the loss to Coonridge will be Orlando’s gain. Sort of like flushing.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.