I was in mid town today, driving through a short cut residential type street on the way to an appointment. I do this some times looking for old kettles. I kid you not, I often tell my disinterested passenger (today it was my younger son) that "there are webers near by, my kettle sense is tingling". In fact I said it earlier on this car trip. So as I drove by an intersection and rolled away from the stop sign, I saw what I was pretty sure was a brown 26 er sitting in front of a some what sketchy old duplex, but I could not stop. Plus, there was nobody around and this was not a place I wanted to door knock frankly, especially not knowing which unit this possible graill belonged to.
After my appointment, I decided to take the same some what circuitous route home to see if I could confirm it was a 26er. Originally, I had my doubts and thought it might just be a beat brownie with replacement lawnmower wheels. Not only was it pretty clearly a 26 as I drove by for the second time, but there were some dudes sitting on the porch of the duplex.
Now, I don't judge, but these were sort of rough looking guys, and I was not sure how this was gonna go but it was certainly worth a shot.
I pulled in to the lot next to the duplex, got outta the car and said, "Hey guys, is that your brown grill there?".
"Yeah man."
"You wanna sell it?"
"Sure, how much?"
Now this is where I failed. The last thing I wanted was to start negotiating. I pointed out that the handle was destroyed and told him "I have really been looking for one of these"
Him: "You mean an old round one?"
Me: "I'll give you 40 bucks for it."
He immediately said "Sure" and took the lid off to start dumping out the ashes for me. "Let me run the wire brush over this grate for you man" as he started to scrub it while his pal dumped the ashes. I took the lid to the car and came back asking "So where did you get this? It is pretty old."
"Aw, some lady was throwing it away so I told her to leave it here." He said he mostly used the (cheap) horizontal barrel that was sitting next to it.
I thanked him for selling it to me and crammed the grill in my car.
I am CERTAIN the guy would have taken 20 bucks. I think it is also likely that he would have given to me because he got it free, plus it was clear to him that i thought it was cool and was "saving" it... The guys were nice, and I am glad they did their part to save this PAT PENDING 26 inch brownie: