Many churches have ploys of various kinds to encourage visitors to return to their congregations, but last week I think I walked right into a Grillfella trap. I was visiting a church in my neighborhood, and right there by the main entrance was a kettle: late model, black OTS, in decent shape but for a sharp dent in the lid. But oh, boy, was it ever enough to get a KettleHead twitching: leaning hard as a result of a front leg attached to the triangle with wire, with the vent tab knocked flat, the One-Touch totally locked up, no ash pan in sight, and of course completely kaddywampus. I kept my composure before church, but had to take a further look afterward, whereupon I found the thing filled with ashes all the way up to the cooking grate.
The outcome was clear: I needed to do something. Fortunately my kids broke the ice, asking the Senior Pastor if we could come back sometime and fix their grill. She seemed a little leery, but allowed that this would be possible.
So a few days later (and after being haunted by this specter), I returned with a basic tool kit. I figured the One-Touch wings were just frozen by cooking grease, so I brought my long-handled razor blade scraper to free them up. But after shoveling out the ash, the thing worked perfectly fine. I guess it was just the sheer weight of the ashes (at least 15 pounds) that were keeping it from working. I realigned the legs, got the triangle properly attached, re-bent the OT wings, fixed the vent tab, and flattened the heat-blasted bottom grate. I had brought an extra ash tray, but two of the wire clips to attach it were missing (prolly the reason the tray hadn't stayed with the kettle). I scraped out the kettle, though there was barely any cooking residue in the thing at all-- I guess all of that ash had protected the porcelain.
10 minutes later, I was on my way, and much happier. The moral of the story: if you want to get a Weber aficionado's attention, just do something very wrong to a kettle and walk away. They will be helpless to resist.
...and yes, I'll go back later to attach the ash tray. I have no choice.