I LIKE HOT DOGS

I'm thinking about the mid 1950's. I would walk to the new Northland Shopping Center with my friends. We would go to the lunch counter in the S.S. Kresge five and dime store and buy a foot long hot dog and a root beer for 35 cents. I think this is when I began to like hot dogs.

The 1950's moved on. I started going to Detroit Tiger Baseball games. I can still smell those ballpark franks. Vendors coming down the isles selling those delicious hot dogs with mustard. I could not wait to buy a couple.

My parents bought a charcoal barbeque grill for the backyard. We would grill hot dogs and hamburgers in the summer. Sometimes my mother would boil large spicy kosher hot dogs in the house. She would serve them with baked beans on the side. I enjoyed them either way.

I LIKE HOT DOGS

A couple of years Later I started to take a bus downtown with a friend usually on school breaks. We discovered the Coney Islands on Lafayette. The two most popular were next door to each other. One was called the American Coney Island. The other was named the Lafayette Coney Island. Coney Islands are hot dogs topped with chili, mustard and onions. When you gave the waiter your order for two coneys he would yell out two on one with everything. When we started to drive my friends and I would go downtown late on a Friday or Saturday night for coney islands. Sometimes after the coney's we would go to the Kinsel's all night drug store and buy a bunch of candy to eat on the way home. Those were crazy times.

I LIKE HOT DOGS.

A couple of other cities have their own recipe for hot dogs. In Chicago it's the Chicago style hot dog. These are hot dogs topped with small tomatoes, pickle pears, mustard, onions and sweet relish.

In New York they eat hot dogs topped with hot sauerkraut and mustard. Vendors sell them all over the city. In 1983 I was in Manhattan for a month as part of my training for my new job with a large investment firm. I would buy the hots dogs from a vendor and eat them for lunch while sitting on a park bench near wall street.

I still like hot dogs. But times have changed. We became health conscious. Eat healthy foods. Eat less meat. Hot dogs are not that good for you people say. They have too much sodium. To fatty people will say. Have to watch your cholesterol or blood pressure someone will remind me. {usually my wife}.

Now when I go to a Coney Island people are ordering Chicken Greek Salads or Egg White Omelets. At home we have tried low sodium hot dogs or low-fat hot dogs. Our latest attempt has been some type of organic Hot Dog. Put a lot of condiments on it and it's not bad but far from the real thing.

Real hot dogs that's where it's at. That's what I want. Am I asking too much?

Because I like hot dogs!

I also like soup!

WRITTEN BY

RON TURETT