We were young and foolish and unafraid to leap into what came to be called The Rib Wars of ’83.

It began innocently enough in early summer of that year in first flush of a new romance. My boyfriend Mark, who would later become my husband, came from a family who were, despite their lives in academia, “Eaters” and every conversation eventually turned to food.

His brother Michael’s particular passion, shared with Mark, was barbecue. He had recently moved to Philly where he had a knack for unearthing the most stellar under-the-radar rib joints there. He developed a sauce recipe which included 17 ingredients — those after the dry rub.

What a scrumptious launch for a booth at the Fair we thought! Michael’s girlfriend, Cynthia, was in too.

Word on the street was that food booths, particularly the longstanding one serving tempura generated a month’s worth of income with less than a week of blithesome work. Ribs would be the star but the menu would also include barbecue chicken, cornbread made with fresh corn, a bright coleslaw with red and green cabbage, sweet potato pie and fresh-squeezed lemonade with mint.

The plan was hatched during the heyday of the Hot Tin Roof. A favorite old time R&B band, Roomful of Blues, was regularly featured there, and so we named our venture Roomful of Ribs. Together we made our booth and fashioned a massively happy wooden pig from the neck up with an enormous smile above his blue polka-dot bow tie which served as both a figurehead and pass-through window.

That summer we lived in a tiny sea-captain’s shack on Hatch Road with a kitchen barely big enough to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But we had friends — or a friend, Woody. He had been part of Mark’s carpentry crew for a few years and enthusiastically joined in, offering the use of his girlfriend Sharon’s kitchen in Edgartown.

The crew were strapping young men who wore berets, Mark in a choice Afghani hat. When they went for their early morning coffee at Alley’s the old-timers, ever present on the front porch, called them the Strange Army.

We lugged an old fridge over to Sharon’s kitchen along with a large barbecue to pre-cook the meat. But it turned out that Woody neglected to ask his girlfriend if the four of us could set our theatre there and descend and demolish it over five long summer days. Chaos ensued. Sharon glared and fled.

Mark, optimistic and ever generous, over ordered, particularly in the meat department. Then the long process of creating the marinade began. These were the days before food processors and we chopped enormous quantities of garlic, ginger, tomatoes, chili peppers and veggies by hand. We made the pie crusts, cut the ribs, peeled, sliced, cooked the sweet potatoes, squeezed hundreds of lemons. It went on and on, with Cynthia and I, in our exhaustion, breaking into uncontrollable laughing fits from time to time.

Day one of the Fair bloomed in a sweltering heat. The second barbecue session in the booth nearly cooked us alive.

Day two it poured.

Day three the serpentine line weaving towards us and our booth’s relentless porcine grin, now verging on the maniacal, was terrifying. With just two of us in the booth facing a sea of hungry and expectant faces, the possibility of a riot crossed our minds. The long wait for the guys to ferry marinated meat back and forth from Edgartown agitated the hungry mass of restive rib-lovers, despite (or exacerbated by) the blare of our groovy, bluesy play list.

To this day, poor Michael turns a bit queasy hearing the saucy slap of raw meat, and Cynthia recoils at the scent of barbecue which saturated her favorite purse until Thanksgiving. After five days of labor deep into the night, we barely broke even.

On the fifth morning, while dismantling the booth and still facing the daunting clean-up of Sharon’s greasy kitchen and the disposal of the now fetid chicken, an 11-year-old friend of Mark’s passed our booth.

Milo had, with a seeming snap of his fingers, folded up his stall which consisted of four pallets and a bale of hay. In contrast to our mighty labors, Milo’s idea was perfect simplicity: Pet a Duck; 25 cents for 2 minutes.

“Mark, wasn’t that the best three days ever,” Milo said. “The lines were long and the money good. Never too hot, or wet, to Pet the Duck! Geez, I didn’t get a chance to come over and try your barbecue. How did it go?”

We didn’t answer. We were all beat.

Susan Puciul lives in Chilmark