The last time I had a hot dog was at a cookout in the summer of 1987. I knew it would be my last dog because my college girlfriend at the time, Zoe ("Meat is murder!") was coming to visit the next day. In honor of Zoe's imminent arrival, and my growing love for her, I vowed that the hot dog in my hands, my third that day, would be my last.
Zoe dumped me long ago, but I hadn't bitten into a hot dog since. Until November 1999, that is, when an innocent evening of pinball at Shorty's turned into another historic moment. I ended up offing three dogs doused in mustard and onions.
My hot dog history of denial and liberation actually goes back much further than the story of Zoe. As a Jewish kid, I grew up on Hebrew National hot dogs: boring, flavorless -- something to do with God and his laws. Most annoying of all, these so-called hot dogs, which my dad embarrassingly called frankfurters, had nothing to do with baseball games, swimming with girls, or that kid on the Oscar Mayer commercials. In short, they were not American hot dogs. They were not the hot dogs of "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet."
I started eating real hot dogs with a vengeance sometime in high school. These were the real deal -- they tasted great with Coke. They gave you a happy stomachache. I was fondest of Oscar Mayer wieners, which struck me as the all-American antithesis of my dad's dull dogs.
So, when I came back to hot dogs last year, I gravitated toward the hot dogs of my teenage rebellion: plump hot dogs at Sonics games, messy hot dogs from Capitol Hill street vendors, and even those chemically enhanced Ball Park franks. But hey, I'm an adult now -- a little more comfortable with my parents and my identity. So, I figured, as long as I'm a carnivore again, maybe I should throw some Hebrew National frankfurters in the frying pan. (Frying dogs in a pan is the best way to achieve the summer grill effect.)
Cooking them up, I was a bit nervous. Did I want to experience a smell I hadn't breathed in since childhood, a smell I assumed would make me angry? Biting into one, I waited to get hit with the oppressive flavor of Thursday afternoon Hebrew school lessons. However, none of those sensations came. My Hebrew National hot dog tasted a lot better than the tofu pups I had been eating for the last 12 years, though not quite as good as an Oscar Mayer wiener.
