Doggone Good

It’s the sound more than the smell that takes me back. Not a loud sizzle like bacon, but quieter, softer. As a kid, when I heard a low hiss from a cast-iron skillet, I knew what it meant: supper was going to be hot dogs. 

Hot dogs - also known as tube steaks, franks, weenies, or coneys, is a food that’s so deeply American we practically wrap them in the flag and give them a seat of honor at every Fourth of July barbecue. It’s hard to believe the hot dog, which we rank right up there with baseball and apple pie, actually came from German immigrants. Leave it to us to take another country’s wurst and make it our best. 

Hot dogs established themselves as street food in New York City about 150 years ago. At first, it was a quick lunch for working men. Soon, their popularity grew to Coney Island and beyond.

Summer officially marks the beginning of hot dog season in America. But growing up, it was a year-round meal in our house.

My dad fancied himself a coney connoisseur, so the kitchen became his territory anytime hot dogs were on the menu. That meant slightly blackened wieners cooked in a cast-iron skillet. Eventually it was topped with kraut, onions, a dusting of cayenne, and his “secret sauce,” which was a concoction of mustard, ketchup, and the contents of what seemed to be every bottle on our spice rack. 

He also was a regular at several hole-in-the-wall hot dog joints scattered across Birmingham when every street corner seemed to have one.

His favorite was Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs, a local landmark so small you could reach out and touch both walls. I accompanied him on more than one occasion, and watched as he consumed a half dozen dogs like a competitive eater warming up before the main event. All of this was washed down with a pint of “sweet milk.” Don’t ask me why, lots of Pete’s customers did the same thing. I tried it too, although my favorite was Grapico. 

My mother claimed that once dad ate ten hot dogs at Pete’s but got too embarrassed to order any more, so he walked half a block down to Tom’s Coneys and finished out the dozen. That story has become family legend.

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans consume almost eight billion hot dogs - that is not a typo. That’s about 23 franks for every man, woman, and child in the country. If they were laid end to end, it’s enough wieners to stretch almost 1.2 million miles. Thats about five trips to the moon - fueled entirely by nitrates.

And honestly, I’m surprised my father wasn’t personally responsible for at least a quarter of that mileage. 

The city that consumed the most hot dogs last year was Los Angeles, which surprised me. I always heard California was full of health nuts. So, maybe they’re topping their coneys with kale instead of kraut. 

Hot dogs have never been fancy fare. Nobody lights candles and serves them on fine china. You don’t make reservations at a hot dog emporium unless your life has taken a very strange turn. Instead, it’s paper plates, paper napkins, and plastic cups. 

But maybe that’s part of the appeal.

Hot dogs belong to baseball games, church picnics, lake trips, backyard grills, and family reunions where your uncle always tells the same story year after year.

They’re tied to summers when kids ran through sprinklers barefoot and ate hand churned ice cream. When parents sat in aluminum lawn chairs, sweating through their shirts, while sipping beer or iced tea, and pretending the heat “wasn’t that bad.”

Even now, the sound of a hot dog cooking instantly sends me back to that place and time.

I can still see my dad standing over that skillet like he was preparing a five-star gourmet meal instead of browning discount wieners from the Piggly Wiggly.

And to be honest, they probably tasted better than anything I had served to me in a fancy restaurant.