Guy Fieri

Fieri.

“I swear,” I said to my wife, pointing to the cover of the Parade Magazine that came with our Sunday newspaper.
“.....If I ever found this Fieri guy barbecuing in our backyard, I would personally grab him by his bleached frizzy hair, and escort him out!”
Fieri had made the cover of Parade Magazine, advice for July 4th barbecuing from the self-proclaimed “grillmeister.”
Is this what it takes to make it in this media-crazed world? Affect an approximation of a clown-suit?
A few years ago we attended a barbecue in Hinton, WV.
The barbecue was part of Hinton’s Railroad-Days festival.
Hinton is a railroad town. It used to be where the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad marshaled coal from mines in New River Gorge.
Locomotive servicing also took place there, and coal-trains were assembled for transshipment east.
Every Fall the Huntington (WV) chapter of the National Railway Historical Society puts on fall-foliage railroad excursions up New River Gorge.
I’m a railfan and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
They’re very scenic; we had ridden an excursion.
Hinton was our destination; we got off the train while it was being reversed — that is, the locomotives were put on the other end.
Railroad-Days is a blowout.
The barbecue was pulled pork in a giant smoking vat.
We sat at open picnic-tables in the sunshine to eat our pulled-pork.
An assemblage of pickers was on hand to play mountain music.
It was very pleasant; acoustic. It didn’t assault our ears.
The barbecue tasted great, with nary a Fieri in sight.
In fact, I don’t remember anyone that prepared it. No frizzy clown-suits.
Not even a chef’s hat.
Maybe this Fieri guy is excellent, but his appearance turns me off.