Today I'm in charge of making dinner because my wife is working and I am off. I was left with two chicken thighs. Hmm...grilling them would be good. And I have a half-bag of kiln-dried mesquite chunks in the shed. Okay, so you know the drill: wash the grill, season the chicken, light a fire, throw it on and go away for a while. All was well until I got to the "light a fire" part. I did the old Boy Scout trick of making little shavings, lighting those and building up a bigger fire as I went along. No good. I went to the trick the old Indian guy taught me about pitch pine. There was still a nice piece of pitch pine in my Army rucksack; I cut off a piece and used it as a firestarter. No good. I even poured mineral spirits over the mesquite, waited two minutes for it to soak in, and lit that. Still no good. I have now come to the conclusion that mesquite is completely fireproof. At this point I am yelling obscenities in foreign languages. Oh yeah...I have a full cylinder of acetylene and about half a cylinder of oxygen in the toolroom. Maybe that will work. Out comes the welder. I put on a number-one tip, put on my protective gear, set my acetylene pressure to 1PSI and oxygen to 1PSI, and lit the torch. A few minutes of heating this absolutely unburnable wood with a 6000-degree flame convinced it of the error of its way and now I'm making chicken. Most people who grill with mesquite soak it in water, or Jack Daniel's, and throw it on the coals. I'm starting to understand why. -- --jmowreader