Hot Dogs

Okay, one more ... hot dogs ... another staple of youth--and somewhat beyond.

When I was a kid, my mom invariably boiled them for lunch. (In later years, Dad grilled them outside.) Our dog at the time, Sooner, loved the hot-dog water, which Dad would put out for him after we ate. I can still see/hear Sooner as he lapped that hot water--slurp, Yip, slurp, Yip ... Oh, the pain of pleasure! The smell and taste were so overpowering that he simply could not wait until the water had cooled a bit.

I was a Ketchup Guy in boyhood, morphing into a Mustard Guy later on.

I continued to boil hot dogs in my early years alone, before I was married. (Sadly, I had no Sooner to lap the water ... but I could hear him nonetheless.)

And when I married Joyce (December 1969), hot dogs continued to be a staple. One of our first counter-top appliances was a little toaster-oven, and we sometimes cooked the dogs with it--splitting the dogs and adding some pieces of Velveeta, which dutifully melted.

Later on, we learned about the great kosher hot dogs available at the West Side Market in Cleveland, and we would drive there now and then to buy a few thousand of them.

Even later, we tried turkey or chicken hot dogs. Not the same--but passable.

We haven't had hot dogs in quite a while--our diets proscribe them. So it goes--another Glory of Aging.

But every now and then, the urge surges, and I'd really like one (or five). But can't. And so I must console (and entertain) myself with memories of eager Sooner, lapping and yipping.

Sooner, August 1958--
a post-prandial rest?