BBQ bliss...

 In the early 1950s there was a popular book published called "Five Acres and Independence."  My parents bought the book, and then they bought the farm, not the whole farm, just five acres.  Our little piece of property contained an old house that needed lots of work, a somewhat newer garage and two chicken coops.  It happened that my parents knew someone in the chicken business, learned what was involved, and decided to raise chickens.  So every thirteen weeks a nearby hatchery would deliver 1500 day old baby chicks (so cute) which were put in the freshly scrubbed and sanitized coops.  Twelve weeks later the full grown nicely plump chickens (not cute at all) were sold as Fancy Flock Friers, and we got top money for them.  It was a good bit of income for a while, but eventually Mom and Dad got too busy with their real jobs (she was a teacher, he was a carpenter) to want to stay in the chicken business.  Happily for them, they got out of the business just before the bottom dropped out of the Indiana chicken market.  One of my happiest memories of that time involved those chickens.  Every year my parents would have 100 chickens butchered and held back for our own use.  We stored them in the Locker, a small town establishment where people could rent freezer space.  Then every Sunday, all year long, we had chicken for dinner.  In the cold months the chicken was baked or fried.  My mother was an excellent cook.  At that time there were four of us in the family and we each got half a chicken to eat.  We weren't rich but we never went hungry.  In the summertime, my father would grill the chicken halves in half of a barrel made into a grill.  It was so delicious.  I recently came across the recipe he used for the sauce.  I found it in a brochure titled "Hoosier Barbecue Chicken" which had been published by the Purdue University Agricultural Extension Services (extension leaflet 364), and tucked into an old cookbook.  What I really liked about this sauce is that it's vinegar based with no tomato in it.  My west coast brother, who was born after the chicken era, had not heard about Dad's barbequed chicken until today.  I shared the recipe with him by text and am hoping he will use it to BBQ some chicken while we're there.  I don't think he will need to make his own grill out of half a barrel but the brochure tells just how to do it just in case.