Blog

Blog 10, July

Hot Dogs

By Shelley Fraser Mickle

There’s nothing like a hot dog in July. In fact, July is the birthday of the hot dog. And while its ancestors might have been just an old everyday German sausage, the hot dog became clearly American in l906. That’s when a Chicago cartoonist Thomas Dorgan at the age of 29 drew a picture of a dachshund dog inside of a frankfurter bun. And that was it—the idea stuck and American hot dog was born.

Easy to store, quick to cook, the American frankfurter started off leading a good life. But in l917 a rumor started on Coney Island. A fellow named Nathan Handwerker was selling hot dogs for 5 cents, and other hot dog dealers spread the word that a five-cent-dog could make you sick.

But that Nathan Handwerker was no slouch. He simply hired people to stand around his hot dog stand wearing white jackets with stethoscopes hanging out of their pockets, and all the while eating his 5 cent hot dogs as quickly as he could slap them in a bun.

Actually that didn’t exactly help the reputation of the hot dog—for soon it became known that the American weenie was a staple in the pantry of poor folks. In fact, when I was growing up in a little cotton town in Arkansas, if your mother served you more than one hot dog a week, you knew your father was out of work and your mother was having a nervous breakdown and wasn’t up to doing anymore than boil a dog and stick it in a bun.

Back in June of l939, Eleanor Roosevelt worked on the reputation of the hot dog. She decided to serve it to King George the 6^th on his royal visit on June 11, l939. Eleanor’s decision nearly gave Franklin’s mother a heart attack. For she was sure that the king would be insulted at being served what many regarded as a poor man’s food.

Grilled, boiled, covered in chili, resting on sauerkraut or attending a cocktail party as a pig in a blanket, Americans are now eating 20 billion hot dogs a year.

Personally, I like them roasted on a stick on an open fire, just as I cooked them in my childhood. But if I don’t drip mustard on my shirt, I know the dog wasn’t half the dog I intended it to be.