Hotdogs

A friend sent me a line to suggest that I write something about hotdogs. She had no idea that I am an aficionado when it comes to that particular food.

When Jim and I were too young to attend school, we stayed home with Mother. She worked as a seamstress for several women, and one of the hardest parts of the job was dealing with two hungry children. On more than one occasion, I recall her answering our cries for food by reaching into the refrigerator and pulling out a hotdog from the package. She’d half the weenie and hand the pieces to us. Jim and I jammed them into our mouths and walked away satisfied for at least a little while. The thoughts of eating a cold hotdog makes my skin crawl, but then I remember that Jim and I also would eat a half a stick of margarine—no guilt, no shame, no conscience.

During our high school years, Earl’s Market was just up the road from the school. Earl supplied the teenaged boys with smokes when they couldn’t afford a whole pack. Three for a dime would get us through. What the proprietor offered that was more popular than anything were hotdogs. They were skinny little things. Earl slapped them on a short bun on top of a bed of mustard. He smothered them with chili and onions. People bought them by the hundreds every day.

When a part of Karns High School was destroyed by fire, students and faculty no longer had a cafeteria. They had to bring lunches from home. Countless stories were told about kids and teachers sneaking off campus to buy a bag filled with Earl’s dogs. Those items became as much a part of high school memories as did ball games, proms, and graduations.

Meals were sometime lean during college, at least after Dal and Brenda moved to Nashville, and I was left to fend for myself. I ate plenty of bologna and cheese sandwiches and washed them down with tea. However, sometimes I bought a special treat from the sandwich machine. A thick piece of light bread that passed as a bun wrapped a hotdog that was covered with relish. I’d tear the cellophane in which the food was packaged. I could have warmed it up, but the concoction tasted better cold. It was a treat to which I looked forward.

For a few years I coached football at Doyle High School. I was a freshman coach and a spotter for the varsity on Friday nights. Fortunately, the teams the school fielded had plenty of success. When we won a game, Jim Pryor, Mike Wheatley, and I would make our ways down Chapman Highway to Smoky Mountain Market. There we were given free hotdogs as rewards for winning. On those occasions when we fell in defeat, I’d still make the trip for a hotdog to soothe the pain of losing. My nephew wrote and sang the jingle for Smoky Mountain back then. I still hear Steve singing “Smoky Mountain…Market” and can recall how good those little hotdogs tasted.

Ask doctors about those dogs, and they’ll tell you that they’re “heart attacks in a sack.” No doubt, good hotdogs have little nutritional value. However, sometimes we need something that tastes good, whether it might clog an artery or skyrocket HDL, LDL, and EIEIO levels. When I’m eating a hotdog like those I’ve mentioned, my concern is focused on not dropping chili down the front of my shirt, not whether what effects are on my health.

These days, I eat hotdogs at EZ Stop on Oak Ridge Highway. They are good impersonations of those hotdogs from Earl’s and Smoky Mountain Market. I leave off the onions, first because the odor lingers for days on my breath and second because acid reflux is so bad that even Nexium can’t blount an onion’s effects. I hope that when I pass from this world that I go to heaven. I also hope that God allows us to enjoy the foods that we so much enjoy in this life. If so, I’ll have plenty of chili dogs there, and they’ll be smothered with chili and onions too.