Barbecue

It's been hot enough the past few days here in the East to think it was summer. Temperatures were in the 90's. When it gets that hot most of us start thinking about cooking outside and the proverbial barbecue.

A Barbecue is generally an outdoor social gathering in which food is roasted over an open fire, unless it rains.

Today some merchandisers use the word to signify a flavor, such as a barbecue sauce. Some have even shorted the name to initials. BBQ stands for Barbecue. The word originally comes from the Spanish. It was a term for a wooden framework supporting meat or fish to be smoked or dried over a fire.

It took New York City to make the barbecue a happening. It was during the Presidential campaign of 1876.

That year, the Republicans roasted two oxen, nearly two thousand pound of meat. It took two days to cook them and 800 loaves of bread to make them into sandwiches and over 50-thousand people heard five republicans speakers tout the virtues of Rutherford B. Hayes.

It was some barbecue. Hayes won the election.