After six years of faithful service, this year I had had to face the truth: Ol' Smokey was dying a slow, sad death, and it was time to put him out of his misery.

It all started six years ago when, tired of buying cheap gas grills, $100 floor specials that lasted only a year or two at a time, I decided that I wanted a big solid grill, one with cast iron grates and room for at least 20 burgers. But when I started shopping, however, I found that the really nice grills were all about 800 bucks, roughly eight times my budget.

In a moment of desperation and inspiration, I purchased a big old wood smoker, one of those hulks that looked like an oil barrel on its side with a smokestack, the kind of thing hillbillies use to cook whole pigs. I cannibalized the works out of a couple old gas grills, got out my power tools, started hacking away and, within an hour or so had my own Frankenstein-like gas grill.

The first time I lit it up, I dropped the match in the center, turned the knob and ran. Sure, there was a big whooosh and a slight aftershock as the gas ignited, but it worked. Since then, I've become more comfortable with Ol' Smokey, knowing when to step back, when to duck and when to yell for the kids to get the hose. And while Ol' Smokey was ugly and dangerous, it could char a steak like nothing else. If I opened the vents just right, it would get so hot the red dial on the thermostat circled back on itself. I learned to lean back as I opened the lid or risk losing my eyebrows in the resulting backdraft flare up.

Over the years, friends and neighbors have steadily upgraded their grills, getting nicer and nicer units, till I'm the only one in the neighborhood who doesn't have a stainless steel mega grill with two side burners and integrated beverage cooler. While they're out back of their houses looking like a page from the L.L. Bean catalogue, I'm toiling away at Ol' Smokey, looking like a moonshiner cookin' up a batch of recipe.

And as time has passed, Ol' Smokey has slowly shown signs of wear. The legs have started to rust and bend, and one side of Ol' Smokey is now kept level by some bricks. The bottom has rusted out, leaving holes where the flame shoots out in odd directions. Sometimes, fire jets through behind the control knobs, leaving them red hot to the touch. With all those BTU's going places they shouldn't, it takes forever for the grates to heat up. Last week, I tried cooking steaks and, fed up with the low flame, considered just hanging the steaks on the control knobs, which were starting to glow ominously red. Instead, I went into the house, got a cupful of corn oil, poured it into the grill and ran like crazy. The steaks charred up nicely, but the fireball is probably visible if you map my house on "Google Earth."

Afterward, as I stood waving away the smoke and cursing away at Ol' Smokey, my wife came out, stood at a safe distance, and said that she'd been planning to get me a new grill for Father's Day, but thought we might want to do it early. Father's Day, she said, would be sort of depressing for the kids if they had visit Dad in the hospital with third degree burns over most of his body.

So we drove out to the mega home store and started looking around. To my surprise, I found that in the past six years, grill manufacturers have made great advances in getting quality product to poor schlubs like me. I could get a stainless model with cast iron grates and enough BTU's to blacken a side of beef for a price I could actually afford (Well, not actually afford, but that's what credit cards are for.) I came home from the store feeling just a little guilty, knowing that Ol Smokey's days were numbered.

This summer, as I grill away like all my friends and neighbors on a respectable but numbingly predictable stainless steel unit, baked beans simmering away on the integrated side burner, I'll feel a just little sad thinking about Ol' Smokey and all the good times we had together.

On the plus side, though, this will be time in six years where I've kept my eyebrows all summer long.

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