Quest For Cabrito Can Produce
Fireworks On Fourth Of July

By Curt Brummett

Have you ever noticed that when you try to plan something, there is generally some outside element that wants to get your carefully laid-out plans unlaid?

For several years, the Fourth of July has been the time for some shore-nuff good eating. Plenty of barbecue, potato salad, beans (baked and normal), watermelon, cold beer (on occasion), soda pop, and then to put an end to the perfect day of dining and visiting, fireworks.

I've seen it rain out the fireworks, but I've never seen it rain out a barbecue. I've had to shut down my part of the cooking to go fight a grass fire a time or two, but that didn't stop the planned eating or the preparation for the meal.

One Fourth of July we had four goats, some chickens, no telling how many different kinds of sausage, and some ribs on the fire when we got a call to go put out a grass fire.

No problem.

We had most of the meat cooked and all that needed to be done was to finish two of the goats. All the firemen headed to the station, and I left H.L. in charge of the last two goats.

Slight problem.

H.L.'s idea of a gourmet meal was vienna sausage, carefully wrapped up in a tortilla. Not to mention the fact that his ideal barbecue sauce was a can of beer, either applied directly to the sausage or consumed with each bite and allowed to mix internally.

I left H.L. in charge of the last two goats with pretty plain instructions:

"If we are not back in two and a half hours, take the goats off the grill, put 'em in the tubs, cover 'em up and keep 'em by the fire so they will stay warm and moist.

"If we are not back in an hour, raise the lid on the pit, spread some sauce on 'em and then leave 'em alone ‘til time to take 'em off the grill.

"GUARD THE BEER."

We got back from the fire in about two hours. As we came down off the caprock into town, I looked over to my place and saw what I thought was an excessive amount of smoke coming from the area of my pit.

H.L. did pretty good, but not all that great.

H.L. had gotten to thinking.

He got to thinking maybe the fire was getting too low. He got to thinking some of the women was going to try to get to the beer. He got to thinking he might ought to do something.

He did.

He drank some more beer, raised the lid on the pit, added some more mesquite and then forgot to put the lid back down.

A shore-nuff good bed of coals, fresh mesquite, and plenty of air causes flames. He tried to put out the flames with some beer by pouring it over the flaming goat. (Didn't work.)

One of the women saw the situation and ran out and closed the lid, shut the vents and took over the beer watching job.

We had a pretty good meal after all.

This Fourth of July, there wasn't a problem with the cooking, but there was a problem with getting the "cookee" to the grill.

I haven't come across a lot of people in East Texas who know just a hell of a lot about cabrito. And them that do, don't. Some like to eat it, but few know how to prepare it.

On the other hand, I have come across quite a few tree-hugging, fern-fondling, bunny-lovin' perverts who prefer tofu and veggie burgers to real food. I'm not sure, but I think these people are Democrats and feminists. Not to mention they probably voted for Clinton. And they sure as hell don't know anything about cooking in the traditional Mexican way.

But first things first, and the first thing is that we bought a goat.

We went to get 'im Friday afternoon and get the silly thing ready to cook on Saturday. Going to pick 'im up wasn't any trouble. After we claimed 'im and headed for the pickup, we had a little trouble.

Seems like this goat was raised to be someone's pet. We bought 'im at a flea market where they sold anything from broken pipe wrenches to emus, and other things like donkeys, parakeets and pot-bellied pigs.

We had to park the pickup quite a ways from where we bought 'im. We walked in to the sales area, put a rope on "Lunch" and started leading him to his fate (so to speak).

This was a pretty cheerful little feller ‘til we walked past a food stand that had a barbecue pit going and a really good smell coming from the smokestack.

I guess "Lunch" smelled something different than Kelly and me, ‘cause he went a little nuts.

Yep, he went to bawling, squalling, slinging snot, and jumping around like he had fire ants on his belly. This attracted attention. When he figured out we were not going to turn 'im loose or just pet 'im ‘til he calmed down, he studded up and laid down, vowing to never get up until he had been hand fed some sort of sweets.

Old "Lunch" had never been exposed to the real world.

One yupette came up to us and asked what was wrong with the pretty little goat, about the same time that Kelly jerked old "Lunch" up off the ground and stood 'im up.

Now, I don't know why I say things sometimes. I don't know where they come from, and at times it scares me. This was one of them times.

I told her the goat seemed to be pretty happy ‘til we passed the barbecue place. And all I could figure out was he remembered what his dear old momma had been telling him since he was a pup.

The yuppette asked what that was.

I said (jokingly), "Son, one of these days you're gonna smell mesquite smoke, and then things is gonna warm up considerable."

Bad move ...

"MY GOD!! You're not going to eat that precious little thing, are you?"

"Yep."

Kelly and I were called a few things that I had never been called before by anyone that was still standing when I walked off.

We was followed to the pickup by a small though noisy crowd. I finally turned around and asked them to shut up, because they were making old "Lunch" nervous.

And they were. Old "Lunch" had gone bee-serk by now. He was stampeding to the end of the rope, jumping up and down and letting the world know he wasn't all that much in favor of what was fixing to happen.

When Kelly and me got 'im tied in the pickup, I got a orange paint stick out of the box and proceeded to mark off the prime cuts as I was explaining to the yuppies and yuppettes the advantages of dining on cabrito.

By now we had a little bigger crowd.

The lady that ran the parking lot suggested we get the hell out of there before we were put on the menu. We did.

Have you ever driven through a town with a goat tied in the back of your pickup that was not only visibly upset but very verbal about it? It attracts attention.

It wasn't all that bad ‘til we hit two stoplights in a row. We not only had women and little kids watching us, we had every damn dog in that town following us.

We made good our escape and stopped at the package store to load up on the liquid refreshments for the next day.

When we came out, there was four foreign exchange students wanting to know if we were going to have cabrito for the Fourth.

Kelly and me just looked at each other. After thinking about what we had gone through getting that far, we told 'em, "Nope, we're gonna make a pet out of 'im and teach 'im to be a guard goat."

You never can tell what them yuppies and yuppettes will look like ...