Barbeque - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Barbecue

Fish Report readers,

Hope you had a happy 4th of July and enjoyed a nice barbecue with friends and family. If so you may appreciate this bit of history:

On June 16, 1903, the Ford Motor Company was established by the founder, Henry Ford. This was not his first rodeo, as he had previously operated the Henry Ford Company. He left that company and took his name with him. What became of the original Henry Ford Company? It was renamed the Cadillac Motor Company, eventually becoming part of General Motors.

What does any of this have to do with the photo of a BBQ grill? Hang on for the rest of the story.

Ford’s Model T, which would number in the millions sold, required 100 board feet of wood to build. Ford despised waste. His motto was, “Reduce, reuse, and recycle.” He was also a nature-lover, an environmentalist of his time. His escape from the stress of life was camping in the great outdoors.

Frustrated by the mountains of sawdust his lumber mills created, he and his partners sought a way to utilize the scrap wood and sawdust into a useful (and profitable) product.

An idea came to him one day as he was camped with some friends in the wilds of Michigan . After his party spent a long time collecting sufficient wood for a campfire, an idea spring in Ford’s mind. Upon returning back to the lumber mill, he shared the idea with some of his partners and set to work on it.

The idea? Lumping a fistful of sawdust and cornstarch with a bit of tar to form a briquette. After charring it, it performed exactly what Ford imagined it would. He then built a charcoal briquette factory adjacent to his lumber mill where the waste from one became the fuel for the other.

A new Model T was now frequently sold with a bonus bag of Ford Charcoal Briquettes, so you could drive into the woods to camp and not worry about finding campfire wood.

So now you know. Ford not only created the modern automobile industry which takes millions to work and back each workday, but he also created the weekend grilling and camping industries.

In 1951, the Ford Charcoal Briquette Company was sold. The new company was named after Ford’s real estate partner who helped him find the land to supply wood for building the early Ford automobiles- E.J. Kingsford.

Kingsford Charcoal is the largest producer of charcoal briquettes in the world.

Now you know the rest of the story!