February 22, 2005

Dean de Freitas - Men of Steel & Fire camera.gif

Ok Soph, here's a little story. Before Ray left the East Coast on his cross-country motorcycle trip, the Nevins held a farewell party at their house (aka Club Nevins) on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Nevins decided that we were going to roast a pig, which is exactly what we did. During the roasting process, the meat became quite tender. So tender, in fact, that the rod inserted throught the carcass to rotate the pig over the fire began to spin without the meat turning. We had to figure out how to get the pig rotated so that it would cook evenly, but every time we would get it turned, it would slip back down. We expended quite a bit of effort over that hot pit trying different options until we finally decided, as I recall, to just put the whole thing directly into the fire. We had to get the meat out by lifting the carcass in tandem using a couple of shovels and a pitchfork.

No meat ever tasted so good.

That was also my last visit to Club Nevins because I left DC a few days later to get married and move to Atlanta.

Ray later mailed me some pictures of that day, which I have included below. He wrote captions on both of them. While he is not in the picture on the left, he was the photographer. He labeled it "Men of Steel and Fire". The one on the right was captioned "Dean - Club Nevins - The Big Bash - July 1991".