San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Blount: Prized woods burned for warmth, not brisket
that you do have a wood supply that others may not.”
But when it came time to compete in the 2021 Bulverde BBQ Battle last weekend, he had to scramble to find enough food to cook with. It took three trips to H-E-B stores before he was able to find enough wood to cook the standard chicken, pork ribs and brisket trifecta. (It was worth the effort, though, as he won the grand championship.)
He couldn’t get more wood during the storm or for days after because Texans burned everything they could find to stay warm.
Area locations of Academy Sports + Outdoors were quickly depleted of split wood by folks wanting to keep their fireplaces and backyard grills going through the power outages. Thirty-pound bags of apple, mesquite, oak, maple, hickory and other woods — all gone.
Three San Antonio-area locations I visited on Feb. 26 said they were cleaned out of inventory even before the storm, around Feb. 12, and were only restocking
that day, two weeks later.
One store manager who wouldn’t give his name likened the rush on wood to that of meat and bread at area supermarkets. “It was a madhouse,” he said.
Even guys who normally only sell to barbecue restaurants were wiped out by a frantic public. Based out of Boerne, Edward Hinesley is the main wood supplier
of cured oak wood to roughly 30 area restaurants, including San Antonio-area Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q locations and Two Bros. BBQ Market.
He sells approximately 35 cords of wood — a cord measures 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long, and is typically enough to keep the fires burning for a week or more — per week for $250 each.
But after the vortex, his supply dwindled to next to nothing after demand from restaurants, convenience stores and individuals looking for fireplace fuel reached all-time highs. He said some of his clients even reported having their wood stolen.
“We had a pretty strong supply of cut, seasoned wood as well as green wood, and just like that, it was gone,” Hinesley said. “We went through 48 cords in seven days. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Most barbecue restaurants were able to keep on smoking, although supplies got dicey.
Grant Pinkerton, owner of Pinkerton’s Barbecue in Houston and a recently opened location in downtown San Antonio, said it was hard to find enough wood for his Houston location because his supplier there also got cleaned out by storm preppers. He said staff was approached several times by people offering to buy his wood and had to turn them down to keep the restaurant running.
“We made the rounds and picked up half-cords wherever we could find them,” Pinkerton said. “But we have 42 employees who depend on us to make a living, so we couldn’t give or sell it away. We try to have about five cords on hand, and it will take some time to get those supplies back up.”
Hinesley said he cut about twice his usual weekly amount of wood last week to get his restaurant clients’ supplies back up to normal. Once they are, it will be business as usual for him, cutting his normal 2,000 cords for the year.
“We ran out because we couldn’t get out to work in those conditions,” Hinesley said. “This was just one of those fluke things.”
As for the home cooks who need to feed a fire, consider building a basic supply that is separate from the good stuff, and avoid the sad, smoky story of using your best wood to weather the storm. The next time there is neighborhood brush collection in the city, my truck will be on the prowl.
NEW YORK — Paul McCartney is finally ready to write his memoir, and he will use music — and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet — to help guide him.
“The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present” will be released Nov. 2, according to a joint announcement from the British publisher Allen
Lane and Liveright in the United States.
McCartney, 78, will trace his life through 154 songs, from his teens and early partnership with fellow Beatle John Lennon to his solo work over the past half-century. Irish poet Paul Muldoon is editing and will contribute an introduction.
“More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right,” McCartney said in a statement.
“The one thing I’ve always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs. I know that some people, when they get to a certain age, like to go to a diary to recall day-today events from the past, but I have no such notebooks. What I do have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I’ve learned serve much the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life.”
Financial terms for “The Lyrics,” which has a list price of $100, were not disclosed.
Publishers have long sought a McCartney memoir, even though he has spoken often about the past and has participated in such projects as Barry Miles’ biography “Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now.”
No Beatle has written a standard account of his life. Lennon published two works of stories, poems and drawings; he was murdered in 1980, at 40. Ringo Starr’s “Another Day In the Life” is centered on photographs and quotes, because, he has said, a traditional memoir would require multiple volumes. George Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001, issued the scrapbook/retrospective “I, Me, Mine” in 1980.
According to McCartney’s publishers, his songs will be arranged alphabetically, and will include McCartney’s comments on when and where they were written and what inspired them. The U.S. edition of the book will be broken into two volumes, contained within a single box.
“Presented with this is a treasure trove of material from McCartney’s personal archive — drafts, letters, photographs — never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time,” according to Wednesday’s announcement.
Muldoon is known for such poetry collections as “Moy Sand and Gravel” and “Horse Latitudes,” and has a background in music. He has given spoken-word performances backed by the musical collective Rogue Oliphant; published a book of rock lyrics, “The Word on the Street”; and collaborated on the title track of Warren Zevon’s “My Ride’s Here.”