Month: July 2024

I had a very unusual experience at my favorite fast food outlet this morning and I am trying to determine what it means. 

For many years I have used McDonald’s as a key economic indicator.  I don’t review the financial performance.  I don’t care if revenue is up or down.  Profits and market share are not part of the analysis.  The main indicator I use is the response from the person who takes my order at the “drive thru”.  If I can clearly and easily understand the person taking my order, the economy is in trouble.  If the Valedictorian from Penn is working at a fast food franchise until they find a better job, we are in a recession.  Lately, the communications have been mixed.  I have found a few “drive thru” professionals to be very articulate and others completely incomprehensible.  So I figure the economy is treading water.

This morning, however, I had a totally unique experience after ordering a Sausage McMuffin Without the Egg.  The young lady who recorded my order said that the charge would be $2.10 and I could settle the transaction at the first window.  Having lost most of my small bills on golf bets, I had to pay the tab with a twenty.  The pleasant and helpful eighteen year old handed me my change and she said:  “I don’t think this is enough.”   I replied:  “I beg your pardon?” and I counted the change.  It was $15.86.  At this point my CPA background came to the surface and I said:  “You owe me $2.04.”  She replied that she did not have any $1s and offered some quarters.  “Oh crap, I only have two quarters.”  I said: “Okay, we are getting closer. You owe me a buck fifty four.”  “Here, take all the nickels and dimes.”  “You still owe me $.69.”  “I’m sorry, I don’t have it and I can’t pay you.”  I said:  “Hey, don’t worry.  You gave it your best shot.  However it is 8:15 in the morning.  How are you going to settle up with the other cash paying customers you encounter today?  You don’t have any money!”  She replied, “It is going to be a long day.”

Wow!  The world’s largest fast food company ran out of money.  How could this happen and what does it mean?  This is something that I never expected from my key economic barometer. In addition, this is something I never encountered before in the United States or anywhere else.  I spent a lot of time in Trinidad, a truly third world country, and never found a merchant that could not give me the right change.  To say that this makes the United States look like a third world country is an insult to Trinidad.  The Trinnies always paid their debts.

Is this a Micro economic problem or a Macro issue? 

It definitely is a Micro problem.  At least one McDonalds can’t give change to their customers.  I assume they pasted a sign in the window that says “We only accept Credit Cards” after my transaction.     

Unfortunately, it may be a macro economic issue.  Perhaps a lot or most of the Golden Arch franchises in the United States are out of money.  They address the sales issue by going “All Credit Card” but that has a lot of ancillary challenges.  For McDonalds, there is a clearing delay in processing Credit Cards and a fee from the bank that reduces their income.  Sure they can execute the current sale but they have a delay in getting their cash and they won’t get as much.  If they have a problem with their margins (the difference between the $2.10 sales price for a sausage McMuffin and the cost of making the delectable treat) things will only get worse as time passes. 

Certainly, McDonalds is feeling the impact of higher costs.  When food prices went up with inflation, they increased for you, me and Mickey D’s as well.  Then, the minimum wage increased and some very large states require a living wage for all fast food employees.  In the past, many of these jobs were part time positions for students and others who enjoyed the additional income.  A high schooler could work a few hours a week and fund his or her entertainment budget.  This seemed to work for everyone.  With the $20 an hour requirement, total wages went up but actual work hours declined.  When a $20 wage became a requirement, the fast food outlets countered by reducing staff to the bare minimum and they crunched their profit margins as much as possible.  Some vendors are reducing the number of full time employees by cutting back the number of hours everyone works. In most states, part time employees are not entitled to the same benefits as full time workers.  Paying less for benefits is a partial offset to the financial impact of higher hourly wages. 

Why doesn’t McDonalds simply adjust the sales price to their traditional profit margins?  Because a lot of their diners can’t pay the higher price. Their customers could afford stopping by on the way home and buying dinner for four for $25 dollars but they can’t afford stopping by for $50.  With the increased cost, perhaps the breakeven point for McDonalds on that order is $45 dollars. In fact, the cost increases may have driven a lot of families to peanut butter sandwiches. So a franchise in Sacramento may really be up against it.  Smaller profit margins and fewer sales.    

On a macro basis, the switch to “Credit Cards Only” also has a very negative impact on the buying power of the US consumer.  Before the jump in inflation three years ago, 60% of Americans were living “paycheck to paycheck”.  Every dollar they earned, they needed to spend to support themselves and their families.  When inflation hit, they suddenly did not have enough income to pay the bills.  There was a small rise in income but it was much less than the rise in inflated cost.  So, many of us rang up credit card debt to make it through the month.  There really were not a lot of options and we hoped the price increases were temporary.  Over the three year period, the percentage increase declined but prices were still rising.  Nothing got cheaper and the increased cost for the three years was around 20%.  The 60% living “paycheck to paycheck” find themselves getting farther behind each month and it isn’t getting any better. 

According to Forbes, the average interest rate for credit cards, in the US on July 29, 2024, is 27.62%.  When I charge $50 at McDonalds and put it on the card, the cost of the meal just increased 27.62% or $13.81.  That dinner that set me back $25 a few years ago just cost me $63.81.  What choice did I have?  I don’t have the fifty bucks and we need to eat.  After two years of my income falling short of my expenses, I have now maxed out my credit cards.  I can only pay the minimum and I have reached the limit on all my cards.  Where do I get the money to pay the cards?  I take an early withdrawal from my IRA account.  This tacks on a 10% tax penalty and the distribution is taxable to me.  Assuming I am in the 24% tax bracket, my meal is another 34% more expensive, raising the total cost to $85.51.  The real cost of my dinner has gone from $25 a few years ago to $85.51 today. 

Even worse, I am simply making minimum payments and I am going to have the same problem at the end of next month.

An equally bad outcome is that I am taking a big chunk out of my retirement savings.  The IRA mathematics works beautifully if you start contributing early and compound earnings in your account for many years.  By paying my credit card bills out of my IRA, I am destroying the ultimate value of my IRA savings.  Anyone who does this for a few years, very likely, will have to work well beyond the 67 year retirement age.

There are a lot of people in this boat.  Remember, before the inflation debacle started, 60% of Americans were living “paycheck to paycheck”.

How does this turn around? Suffice to say, it is very unlikely that prices will ever decline.  The best we can hope for is that they stop going up.  If prices stabilize and wages go up, we can get to “paycheck to paycheck” again.  Hopefully, many will progress past that point.

So, many of us are not feeling better when our politicians tell us the economy is great.  For us it is simple.  I ratcheted my credit cards to the max and I am hitting my retirement accounts.  Nothing is cheaper and it isn’t getting better for me.  Most of us have not run through the process of computing the real cost of inflation but we absolutely feel it at the end of each month when we pay the bills.

McDonalds continues to be my best economic indicator.  I was taken aback when I found that they ran out of money this morning.  I only hope the next time I order a Quarter Pounder With Cheese that the most recent Rhodes Scholar is not the person telling me, in the Queens English and with perfect timber and diction, to “Pay at the first window and please remember, we only accept credit cards.” 

Artificial Intelligence is “The theory and development of systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.”

Artificial Intelligence has changed my life.  Stephen Hawking believed that Artificial Intelligence would be the end of mankind.  I disagree. Without Artificial Intelligence, I would need to be in an Assisted Living Facility.

Somehow, as a young man, I made my way through life without any help. I woke up, showered, shaved, put on the suit and tie and made it to work with no external prompts.  I attacked the challenges of the day, made money for my employer, and accelerated through a career with my own native intelligence.  

There were the occasional blips.  As a software sales professional, I once stepped off an airplane in Philadelphia and had no idea why I was there.  I bought the ticket so there must be someone I needed to call on but I had no idea who it might be.  My client base were insurance companies.  There are a lot of them in Philadelphia and I was doing business with most of them. I called my Administrative Assistant in Atlanta who read the alphabetical lists of insurers in the city of brotherly love.  When she got to Colonial Penn, my native intelligence kicked in and I was back on track.

Now that I am retired, there are no occasional blips.  Everything is a blip.  So I have designed a number of creative, Artificial, tools that help me function at a fairly competent level.  The primary tool is the list.  At some point in my life, I found that I was a lot more productive if I started each day with a simple list of the five most important things to do that day. 

            Haircut

            Set up Golf with John

            Fertilize Citrus

            Find a Cure for Cancer

            Make Spaghetti Sauce

When I was young, I would easily remember these simple goals.  Now, after several “I thought you were making dinner.” comments quickly followed by “We are not having pizza again!”  I have employed the great AI List Tool.  Properly utilized, AI memory keeps me functioning as a competent adult.  There are two important criteria.  First, I need to put the task on the list.  Second, I must read the list at least every hour during the day.  Both of these functions require training and discipline.  I rarely hear the “NO PIZZA!” comment any more.  

As native intelligence winds down, my reliance on Artificial Intelligence has expanded.  I now have at least four lists going at all times.  One on the kitchen counter, one in the office, one on the bedroom dresser, and one in the car.  They all have different purposes that roughly relate to their locations.  The kitchen list is food oriented (menu plan, grocery list, etc.),  the car list has a lot of destinations (Walmart, Publix, Poker Parlor), the bedroom list has broad goals (find a solution to the federal debt problem, research Toronto vacation, etc.).  Usually one or more of the lists will have a task that says “Go look at the list on the dresser” or “Add this to the list in the car”.        

I am thankful that breathing is an involuntary brain function.  Otherwise, I might forget to put it on the list and I would be dead.      

Although my wife and I are retired, we have above average complexity in our lives.  We live in two different homes in Florida and spend football season in Ann Arbor Michigan.  We orchestrate at least seven world class tailgates each year.  We both enjoy cooking.  I have a passion for barbecue and frequently create dinner for 20 – 30 friends.  So now the artificial intelligence expands to include “To/From” lists to move equipment and supplies between locations, timelines for preparing barbecue feasts, and equipment lists for the diverse tailgates.  Even a healthy idiot savant could not keep track of all the variables involved in these activities.     

Through the wonders of Artificial Intelligence (often using Microsoft Word and Excel), we cope.

I know I am “losing it”.  I only take four pills a day but I have to rely on the old people’s pill organizer from CVS (a great Artificial Intelligence tool) to avoid omissions and duplications.  I have Bunn Coffee Makers in all three homes.  When I am gone for a while, I clean them and run five pots of water through each to ensure the reservoirs are clean and fresh.  This takes about a half hour and, invariably, I lose count of how many pots I have run.  Perhaps, I am analyzing one of my seventeen lists.  The coolest AI tool I have helps me with this process.  When I pour a pot of water in the Bunn, I put a sugar packet on the counter.  When I get to five packets, I’m done.  My wife watched me do this and failed to see the brilliance of the technique.  Fortunately, I passed the subsequent mental competency test.

Karel Capek and Stephen Hawking may be concerned about Artificial Intelligence taking over the world.  I am not.  In fact, AI is the only thing keeping me functioning at a somewhat adult level.  I know that someday my children are going to prop me up in a corner and shoot food at me with a slingshot.  Thanks to Artificial Intelligence I’m not there yet.   

Some professions are a little sensitive to criticism.  Gourmet chefs never want to hear you say that the Beef Wellington is simply “okay”.  That comment can win you a quick trip out the front door with a ramekin of au jus on your head.  Unless you want to spend the rest of your life looking like a pancake, never tell a Sumo wrestler that they seem to be a little chubby.  Strangely, one of the more sensitive groups of professionals are road commissioners.  In general, they feel they are always being maligned.  One pot hole, or a slow response to a 24 inch snow storm and they are besieged with complaints.  If the city’s streets are not flawless, they hear about it. They have developed the perfect revenge to these grievances.  It is called “Road Construction”.  

In fact every year the National Association of City, State and County Road Commissioners hold an annual convention where they honor the programs that have been most effective in sticking it to the whiny drivers in their jurisdictions.  The conference is called “Designing Exceptional Travel On Unfinished Roads” or “DETOUR”. 

Here are some highlights on the 2024 convention.

During the keynote address, the President, pointed out that the Granddaddy of all “settling the score” projects was the Big Dig.  This massive construction project was orchestrated by the Massachusetts Highway Department.    It hit all of the important points.  The budgeted cost was $2.8 billion.  The actual cost was $8.1 billion.  The project was targeted to finish in five years.  It took fifteen years and then required extensive reworking because the design and materials were flawed.  In essence, the citizens of Boston could get around the city faster by rickshaw than by automobile for a full fifteen years.  Very likely, no road commission construction project will ever rival the performance of the City of Boston and State of Massachusetts. 

Notwithstanding, there are several outstanding performances in 2023 that have earned recognition with the coveted “DETOUR” award.    

These road construction efforts rival the spirit of the Big Dig if not the financial impact.

The first DETOUR award goes to the road commissioner in Dayton Ohio.

Traffic patterns in Dayton are far less complex than most major American cities.  They don’t have the labyrinth of freeways that we see in Atlanta or the traffic volumes.  In fact, they simply have I-75 running through the middle of the city.  Notwithstanding, they can post world class traffic delays.  The City road commissioner, Hugo Slow, has really taken advantage of the attributes Dayton has to inflict pain on motorists.  Geographically, Dayton is a hard city to bypass.  Travelers from Michigan, western Ohio and eastern Indiana are tempted to cruise down I-75 as they head to vacations in the South.  They make it to Dayton and they are trapped.  Hugo has been a master at timing the road construction to maximize the discomfort.  With modern construction techniques, a lot of road work in Dayton could take place in the winter season.  However, Mr. Slow times nearly all the construction to the summer months when leisure travel is at its peak. 

How effective has Dayton been in creating havoc?

My most recent drive through the city flared up a red line on my GPS system with instructions to leave the freeway for an alternative route.  The lines all turned red on the alternative path and it ultimately took an hour and twenty six minutes to traverse eight miles through this Garden spot in Ohio.  Needless to say, I spent much of that time thinking about the performance of Hugo Slow, the longtime Dayton Road Commissioner.

These delays are not new to Dayton.  Since 1974, I have been travelling from Ann Arbor Michigan to Jacksonville Florida three or four times each year.  Without exaggeration, I-75 has been under constant construction in Dayton Ohio for the entire fifty year stretch. 

The second DETOUR Trophy is awarded to Jacksonville Florida.

Jacksonville has a number of outstanding opportunities to show complexity in their highway systems.  Two major Interstates intersect in the city.  A massive river flows through the town and makes at least four major turns as it works its way to the Atlantic Ocean.  There are only seven bridges over the St. John’s and they are all significant edifices. Finally, the population of the city is exploding putting a lot of pressure on highway systems that worked well for 800,000 people but not so well for 1,500,000.  Jacksonville is a critical gateway into Florida.  Tourists driving to the theme parks in Orlando from the east coast of the United States pass through Jacksonville.  In addition, tourists seeking the offerings of Tampa, St. Pete and the west coast of the state also traverse the city.

So Jacksonville offers a lot of angst for motorists without any intervention from the road commission.  Nevertheless, the Duval County Road Commissioner, Seymour Klosures, has been masterful in enhancing the frustration of driving through this fine city.  There is a very critical intersection of two interstates in Jacksonville.  The eastern terminus of I-10 intersects with I-95 right at the St. Johns River and pretty much right downtown in the city.   Three of the seven bridges over the river are woven in to this intersection.

First, the commissioner has ensured continuous road construction at this juncture for more than thirty years.  He has been brilliant in changing traffic patterns, eliminating lanes and adding lanes randomly and unannounced.   

Second the signage for the traffic patterns is terrible.  Even lifelong residents of the city frequently find themselves being routed off I-95 and I-10 onto strange and obscure roads.  After a week or so when a driver begins to understand the new patterns, commissioner Klosures changes them.

You can easily blow an hour or two trying to traverse Jacksonville during spring break.  Kudos to commissioner Seymour Klosures.

Finally, we have a lifetime achievement award for Ann Arbor Michigan

For years, the Washtenaw County Road Commission and the city of Ann Arbor have teamed up to make it very challenging for citizens and visitors to navigate this Michigan city.  Ann Arbor is a small community but they have a long history of impairing the ability of their citizens to drive around the town.  The obstacles have been very creative and very effective.  

For example, the University of Michigan hosts seven or eight football games in the Big House every season.  110,000 people flock to Ann Arbor for each of those events.  Every year, since 1952, the road commission has managed to initiate a significant construction project on, at least, one of the four main arteries to the stadium.  We talked with the current Washtenaw County Road Commissioner, Hugh Otto Staeholme, about the 2020 project.  According to Mr. Staeholme, the record evacuation time for exiting stadium occurred after the 1956 Ohio State game.  Primarily because of a blizzard, it took 3 ½ hours to travel two miles from the stadium to I-94.  Ever since, the road commission has focused on projects targeted to breaking that record.  “I thought we had it in the bag in 2020.” Said Staeholme.  “We narrowed Main Street, then a four lane road, down to two lanes with an urgent curb cleaning project.  Orange barrels for two full miles from the stadium to downtown.  This would have worked and then we were hit with a Covid outbreak.  No fans in the stadium and no highway backups.  Phooey!”

Ann Arbor holds the national record for the highest number of simultaneous detours.  Last fall, I was stopped at Hill Street and State Street.  The road commission had posted routing signs for five different Detours.  Arrows pointed in all possible directions.  One for the South Bound State Detour, one for the North Bound State Detour, one for East Bound Packard, one for South Bound Fourth and a final one for East Bound Williams.

In 2019, Ann Arbor won the award for being the most potholed city in the world.  They barely edged out Beirut and Port Au Prince Haiti.  Ann Arbor has always been pot hole challenged.  A lot of the potholes are bad.  Potential axle breakers.  Some are big enough to eat small cars.  I passed one on Traver Road that had two people rock climbing out of it.  So while you are negotiating all of the other traffic challenges in Ann Arbor you constantly have to be evaluating the danger threat of the next hundred feet of potholes.  All artfully designed by Hugh Otto Staeholme.

Finally, the road commissioner and city officials devised a plan to further frustrate citizens and visitors.  They converted five or six streets to one lane roads by adding massive bike lanes and parking lanes on each side of the road.  Although only one lane is available to cars and trucks, the streets remain two way streets.  You have to be thinking about the road commissioner when you back up two hundred feet to the first available driveway in order to let a car coming from the opposite direction pass.

So clearly, Ann Arbor deserves this life time achievement award.  They have consistently focused on maximizing the frustration of drivers in their city for many, many years.  Their schemes have been brilliant and effective. 

DETOUR 2024 was another huge success.  The hard work and ingenuity of the all of America’s road commissioners was on full display.  There were hundreds of examples of the thin skinned City, County and State officials striking back at whiny citizens. 

Always remember, if you complain about the job they are doing, you will see the dreaded Road Construction signs.  Perhaps for years on end.

It appears that the 2040 election is going to run true to form.  Much like the 2036 election debacle, we don’t expect the results to be decided by the Supreme Court any sooner than October 2041. It just isn’t possible for 313 Supreme Court Justices to make a decision on the hundreds of lawsuits in less than 11 or 12 months. 

For the third time in 20 years, the Speaker of the House will assume the role of President until a decision is made by the Court.  We are still paying for the results of temporary Speaker leadership in the past.  In 2029, Speaker George Santos issued an executive order allowing any Republican lawmaker from the State of New York to use up to 93% of their campaign funds for personal expenditures. In addition, he reinstituted construction of the Keystone pipeline.  The contract was awarded to MAGA Builders, Inc. which appears to be 97% owned by elected Republican officials.  In 2039, Speaker Pelosi ordered that all Americans are entitled to unlimited quality ice cream at no cost.  Ironically, her husband owns the Marie Antoinette Creamery that provides the high quality product (at $20 per pint) to the federal government.

Clearly, the challenge of adding up votes is magnified by the addition of 107 states since 2020.  It started with Puerto Rico, Washington DC, and Guam in 2021.  During the next cycle, to rebalance the Senate, the Republicans added the Bering Islands, Galapagos, Greater Nepal, Easter Island, and Stonehenge (generously approved by Boris Johnson).

The final element of complexity is the diverse voting regulations adopted by 157 independent states.  In 2028, California passed the Clairvoyant Voting Act which stipulates that the citizens of California can submit their qualified votes by mental telepathy.  Unfortunately, there is a dearth of qualified individuals to receive the brain to brain transfers and, even though the votes are legally cast by election day, the panel of Kreskins cannot aggregate the total in less than six months.  70 other states have embraced this form of voting and they all have the same receptor problem.  As a result, these 71 states are the last to report their vote totals.  Very often, this last minute tabulation swings the election results from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate.  Of course the lawsuits begin immediately after the 157 states finalize their results.   

The Government Accounting Office estimates that the 314 members of the Senate spend 96% of their time approving Supreme Court Justices and ratifying new states. The Executive Branch is also time challenged.  They are not in place for a year after the election which pretty much puts them in a mode of immediate preparation for the upcoming midterm election.

Meanwhile, the government printing press is running at top speed.  Governmental spending is 87% of the Gross National Product.  The liberals point out that, as long as you can print dollars you will always prosper.  The Federal Reserve, however, is a little concerned about the inflation rate creeping up to 638%.     

Throughout history, man has extoled the virtues of moderation.

According to the Oxford Reference, the Greek Poet, Hesiod recommended in 700 BC that we “Observe due measure, moderation is best in all things.”  Many years later Herman Melville eloquently noted in Billy Budd that “Yea and Nay, each have their say, but God, he takes the middle way.”  My erudite English teacher taught us that Herman was advising us to stay away from the extreme and follow a moderate path.  In his classic tune, “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, Nat King Cole suggests that you “Cool down, Poppa, don’t you blow your top”. 

I have always been impressed with man’s quest for moderation.  Even as a child I recognized that, because moderation was such a beneficial commodity, we should all strive to get as much of it as possible. 

My best friend in fourth grade lived on the edge of residential development in Ann Arbor.  He had a huge forest behind his house.  There was a lot of construction in the neighborhood.  So Jimmy and I decided to moderately build a tree house.  We fished scraps of lumber from the construction trash piles.  We combed the newly framed houses for bent and discarded nails.  After selecting a sturdy boxelder tree we went to work.  Phase one was a simple platform about ten feet above the ground.  This worked for the two of us on nice sunny Michigan days.  However, realizing that there are less than ten nice sunny days in Michigan each year, we expanded our moderate design.  We added a second floor with a plywood roof, and a third floor because a lot of friends were starting to hang out at the clubhouse.  With the wood roof, it was difficult to read comic books on rainy days.  So we scavenged tar paper and shingles from the trash piles and nailed a very functional roof to the tree house.  Moderation was really picking up steam.  Like all young boys in the fifties, we became huge Rin Tin Tin fans.  We decided that we could make the tree house look like Fort Apache if we surrounded it with a stockade of 20 foot tree logs.  Using Boy Scout hatchets we downed 80-100 trees.  We trimmed all of the branches and buried the logs in a circle around, what now became, a tree fort.  Talk about great moderation!  For years we patrolled the fort with BB guns.  The stockade proved to be excellent protection during chestnut fights that ensued every fall. 

Eventually, Jimmy and I outgrew the tree fort.  We simply quit using the facility but we never took it down.  Today, the three most significant historical sites in Ann Arbor are The Cobble Stone Farm, The Frank Lloyd Wright House on Pill Hill, and The Mike and Jimmy Tree Fort.  

My childhood penchant for substantial moderation stayed with me through adulthood.  In fact, my mantra has become “Moderation is great as long as you can get a lot of it.”   So I migrated to pastimes that had great opportunity for rampant moderation.  Golf and fishing for example.  Any real fisherman has sufficient tackle to switch from fresh water perch fishing to deep water black marlin fishing in minutes as conditions change.  Golf requires constant updating of equipment, physical conditioning, and swing technique.  Springing $1,000 for the new driver that was developed using the remnants of metal found in a crashed alien spacecraft is totally reasonable.

But, perhaps, the best example of leveraging extreme moderation in my life is barbecue.     

I fell in love with barbecue because I love to eat barbecue.  My wife and I spend football season in Ann Arbor Michigan and most of the remainder of our time in Jacksonville Florida.  World Class Barbecue is available but not abundant in Jacksonville.  In Ann Arbor Michigan, great barbecue is sparse.  So to ensure that we can enjoy spectacular fare whenever the urge strikes, I acquired the skill and tools to make excellent smoked meat, fowl and fish on demand.  This has been a pursuit that requires an incredible amount of moderation.     

Creating great barbecue can be simple.  Let’s assume we are preparing a feast of ribs, sausage and barbecue beans.  We go to the big box hardware store, buy a fifty dollar charcoal bullet smoker, a bag of hickory chunks and some charcoal.  We head to our favorite grocery store and pick up two racks of ribs, a commercial pork rub, some hickory flavored baked beans, a few pounds of Italian sausage in casings, and a brand name barbecue sauce.  Friday evening, we put the hickory chunks in a pail of water and season the ribs with the commercial pork rub.  On Saturday, we fire up the smoker, smoke the ribs for about seven hours, smoke the sausage for three hours and put the beans in the oven for an hour.  Certainly, more work than baking a pot roast but not very complex by barbecue standards.  Most importantly, we can enjoy a high quality barbecue feast of ribs, Italian sausage and baked beans.

High quality is nice but I want one of the finest barbecue meals ever prepared on planet earth.  Over the years, applying massive moderation, I have developed and documented procedures to nail spectacular barbecue every time I fire up the smoker.    

If you are truly committed to ultimate moderation, the process goes like this. 

On Thursday, you buy a pork shoulder and three racks of ribs.  You double grind the pork shoulder in your small commercial sausage grinder.  Using the Toledo meat scale that you purchased to make your own sausage, you measure the ground pork into 3 lb lots.  You pull out your custom made, 36 jar, spice rack and measure out the spices required for 3 lbs of Italian sausage and 3 lbs of Kielbasa.  After years of experimentation and tweaking, you have developed unique recipes for both types of sausage.  Two of the spices you use for the sausage, dehydrated orange peel and dehydrated red bell pepper, you manufactured using your small commercial dehydrator.  You form the bulk sausage into smokable rolls using a PVC tool invented by you and your barbecuing friends and you wrap the rolls in cheese cloth.  On Friday evening you soak some hickory chunks in one bucket and apple chunks in another.  You mix up a batch of your award winning pork rub.  You mix up a batch of injectable marinade.  Using the fine needle injection tool purloined by one of your physician friends from a hospital surgery unit, you inject the marinade into the meaty portion of the ribs between each bone.  You season the ribs with the award winning rub and put them in the fridge overnight.   You return to the cupboard and spice rack and mix up a batch of tomato based barbecue sauce and a batch of mustard based barbecue sauce.  Both recipes are proprietary and, again, developed by you after years of experimentation.  On Saturday, you fire up the large Weber smoker.  We could have used the small Weber smoker, Weber kettle or Traeger pellet smoker but we decide on the large Weber.  On Saturday you smoke the ribs for six hours and the sausage for three hours. You are careful to use exactly the precise amounts of hickory and apple wood to create the perfect smoke flavor.  The ideal portions were passed to Christopher Columbus by the Taino Indians when they feted the first visiting Europeans with Barbacoa after their arrival in the New World.  You whip up a batch of “Big Deal” barbecue beans.  You start with basic beans, add a half dozen spices, chopped ham, diced onion, and carefully measured Grand Marnier.  The beans must moderately be baked in a cast iron Dutch oven for an hour at 350 degrees.

It is important to understand that, in keeping with our drive to maximize moderation, I just smoked three racks of ribs and six pounds of sausage for my wife and me.  We certainly had enough for dinner on Saturday but what did we do with the extra fifteen pounds of smoked pork?  After dinner, we cut up the extra two racks of ribs into three bone servings and vacuumed sealed them with our small commercial vacuum sealer.  Similarly we broke the sausage into ¾ lb lots and vacuum sealed them.  The entire larder was then transferred to our freezer.   For the next six months we will pull individual servings of ribs and sausage from the freezer whenever the urge for World Class Barbecue strikes.    

I know you are thinking, is reconstituted barbecue from the freezer very tasty?  It is if it has been vacuum sealed and reconstituted using your small commercial Sous Vide machine.  In fact, you cannot tell the difference between fresh smoked barbecue and barbecue that has been brought back up to temperature in this fashion.

It is hard to imagine a process that employs more moderation than barbecue.  The net result of outrageous moderation is a dozen great barbecue meals.  How can life get better than that?                          

Over time, I have expanded my concept of excessive moderation to include collecting antique clocks and watches.  I still have more than 300 train cars and operating stations from my 1950’s Lionel Train layout.  I have expanded moderation techniques to include all aspects of Tailgating for Michigan football games.

So I am a fanatical practitioner of moderation.  No doubt, Nat, Herman and Hesiod were spot on.   “Observe due measure, moderation is best in all things.”