After This Weekend I Will Never Smoke A Ham Again

  I invited some friends over to a get together for a Super Bowl game years ago. The plan was just to hangout, drink some beer and eat a pretty large meal. I wasn't going to do tailgate type food but rather regular food that you'd typically sit down to eat. So, I half-assed planned a menu to have ready for the night before--all ingredients on hand and ready to go. No sweat! What the hell could go wrong...?

  The main course was to be a fresh hickory smoked ham from my own smoker and not from some barbeque smokehouse that charges a pile of money for something I could do for nothing. Hell, I'd smoked whole chickens and turkeys without a hitch...big deal. So I went ahead and made the potato salad the night before. I had a few other things that I could get together before the ham went into the smoker that evening.

  About 6:00pm the eve before the big game I put the ham inside of the already hot and awaiting smoker. The wet hickory logs and apple wood went in next on the hot coals. Shit, I could smell it already. 18 lousy hours later and we were going to be chowing down on magnificence ala carte! Crisp and dark on the outside and smoking, juicy tender on the inside...! Hell, I was already getting a hard on from the fucking anticipation.

  After stoking the smoker a time or two before going to bed, I set the alarm to get up about 3am to go reload the smoker if need be. I wake up about 2:00am to go to the bathroom and look outside at the smoker. Shit, it's still smoking like a champ. I crawl back in bed awaiting the 3:00am alarm to go off and add more wood to the coals.

  I woke up about nine the next morning. The fucking pisser alarm clock failed to go off. I step out in frigid weather to feel an ice cold smoker. Sometime between my early morning piss and 9:00am, the whole damn smoker went cold. Even the ham itself felt cold. There was no damn way it could be ready in time for us to eat. I just stuck it in the oven to let it go on cooking that way, but it was going to take forever. I mean this fucking pig's ass was big!

  I figured a bunch of guys and gals were coming over to get some hardcore smoked ham so I did the only thing I could do in such a short time. I went to Wal*Mart. I got some luncheon meat! It wasn't even ham. They were all out and I was too pissed off to keep driving all over the damned place trying to find some. What the hell's wrong with luncheon meat? Damn ole fucking smoked ham is not good for you anyway. I wouldn't hit a bull in the ass with a really fresh smoked ham. Hell, who wants it when you can get Oscar Mayer meat Goddamn it? I didn't believe that shit either.

  I've never attempted another smoked ham. Never! I've kept to proven things such as the smoked chickens and turkeys and such. Next time I have people over for a Super Bowl meal, it's going to be from the oven, but I'll keep a couple of packs of luncheon meat on hand just in case the electricity goes out-Don.