Summer is for vacation, lazy days on the lake, and cooking S’mores around the fire. This summer tops them all.
In the “good ol’ days” we didn’t have the luxury of so many fine foods and dry weather. It rained a lot when I was a boy. I don’t have a memory of cooking over a fire without rain involved. As a kid, we would cook over a heating source generously called a fire. Smoke filled the air as the wet wood from the fire pit worked to produce enough heat to roast the small sugary cylinder. We used a wooden stick sharpened to a point. The rich kids could straighten out a hanger. Once heated through, the marshmallow would find its way on the soggy graham cracker and cold chocolate. If you were lucky, you could eat the combination. Usually, we just ate the chocolate and marshmallow separately and called it a night. We would throw the graham crackers on the fire to help put out the log at the end of the evening. We may not have eaten well, but we built character with each cook out.
Today’s kids have it easy. Today’s youth vacation in luxury. They have fire. They have metal roasting rods. They have marshmallows the size of a small pony.
John brought the largest marshmallows I’ve ever seen in my life. If you can keep them on the roasting stick, you create a sugary high unlike any you have ever had before. They look more like a piece of sugar cream pie than a S’more.
What happened on this vacation was nothing like my childhood memories. In my estimation, the S’more cooking that occurred this week was a travesty. In fact, it was just wrong. Honestly, this is just wrong.
The kids finished supper. They had snacked on cookies and chips all day. There is no way they were hungry. They couldn’t have been hungry. And yet, with the ravenous appetites of young lions at a kill, they dove into the perfectly formed S’mores with reckless abandon.
Sugar covered their chins. Melted chocolate was smeared on their cheeks. They reveled in the crackers, crisp and flaky.
In truth, it was just sickening to watch. How will they ever survive in the real world if they can’t even eat a S’more correctly? I pity the young generation.
