It’s the fire in the belly, the lure of the grill

Here WE ARE, heading back to our favorite butcher shop. To Porterville, Calif., we go. The city that never sleeps.

“He was married to one of those women with no lips,” says my buddy Irv, “so her lipstick always looked crooked.”

Irv is weaving stories as we zigzag our way to Porterville, a couple of hours and 50 tall tales from Los Angeles. It’s like being on the road with a 45-year-old Tom Sawyer. The speedometer reaches 70. Irv’s mouth tops 85.

“I wonder where we could find some good obsidian,” Irv says. “I’m always forgetting the obsidian.” Like cavemen, we’re out searching for food, headed up to the little butcher shop that sells steaks as big as catchers’ mitts.

It’s a hunting trip, really, with blood lust and adventure and all the things we occasionally lack in our day-to-day suburban lives. In the back are two giant coolers to hold the kill.

“If we could only find some obsidian,” Irv says.

Along the highway, there are oil rigs, hundreds of the darned things, sculpted of Bethlehem steel, bobbing up and down in the heat. The pterodactyls of this California prairie.

“Black gold,” I say.

“Texas tea,” says Irv.

We come here every year or two to stock up on the best beef we can find. Sometimes before Christmas. Sometimes preceding some summer holiday. We have lists in our pockets: rib-eyes, tri-tips, a few slabs of pork.

“My old man, he loved pork,” Irv says.

“Whose didn’t?” I ask.

“Dads, they all have their own uniforms,” Irv recalls. “My old man, it was work pants and plaid shirts. That’s all he ever wore.”

When our mission here is done, we’ll take our prey home and throw it on the grill, the most important piece of furniture we own. The grill will hiss at us. The neighbors will smell the smoke and envy our hearty summer incense. Our smoke signals to God.

Until then, Irv will talk incessantly about summer things. Grills. Sprinkler heads. Women. He’s worried about women, not specifically but in a general way. Their behavior sometimes baffles him.

“It’s women I worry about,” Irv says as we zoom northward. “Why do they want to be like us?”

“Nobody should be like us,” I say.

“The other day, I wax and wax the car,” Irv says. “Eventually, know what I see in the reflection?”

“What?” I ask.

“Me,” he says. “For all that work, you ought to see someone a little better-looking.”

Up Highway 65 we go, past the orchards and the strawberry fields. The thermometer on the car reads 104. It’s not yet noon.

“Ever tell you about my neighbor Tony?” Irv asks.

“No.”

“He was a cop,” Irv says, “in a little town with no crime.”

We have this day trip all planned. First, we’ll stop for breakfast, at a place where the egg yolks are as bright as the orange juice, not the sickly pale hue you see in the city.

Then we’ll run over to a bar called Antlers. Finally, we’ll stop at J&R; Meat Co., where we’ll pack the coolers in time for the Fourth of July.

“Rib-eyes,” I’m telling the manager two hours later.

“How thick?” he asks.

He slices and seasons them right there in front of us. Lean, these rib-eyes. Direct from the Harris Ranch up the road.

“How are your New York strips?” Irv asks him.

Four hours later, I am back in L.A., making dinner for those people I live with, who sometimes seem to exist on soft drinks and breakfast cereal.

I fix them the first great backyard feast of the summer, celebrating the recent solstice and all the other summer holidays still ahead.

I shuck the sweet corn on the porch. I lay out the rib-eyes on a grill that’s hot as hell and almost as crowded.

“I hope they’re not too big,” I say.

“They look perfect,” says my wife, who has a good eye for sizes.

The steaks grill up quickly. Black on the outside. Pink like a valentine within. Their smoke cloaks and seasons me. Till late October, I will smell of beefsteak and sunscreen.

Hello, summer, my old friend,

I’ve come to grill with you again.

“Nice salad, Picasso,” says the boy when we all sit down to eat.

“Thanks,” I say.

Happy holidays.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.