The Old Coot is a hotdog connoisseur.
By Merlin Lessler
I went to the supermarket the other day to buy some hotdogs.
I like hotdogs; they were a food staple when I was a kid growing up on
Binghamton’s south side. My friend Woody (Walls) and I would hike into the
woods outside our neighborhood with WW-II Army surplus knapsacks on our backs,
metal canteens hanging from our belts, high-cut boots on our feet, decked out
in jeans (which we called dungarees in those days) and white T-shirts, the only
color available. They were undershirts after all, and back then, white was the
mandated color for under clothes. There weren’t any supermarkets in that
postwar era of the 1950’s except for the downtown A&P store. Neighborhood grocery stores provided our food
supply. My family shopped at Bill Scales’ Market on Pennsylvania Ave. It was only
a short walk from our house on Chadwick Road. Two blocks further on were three
more “mom & pop” grocery stores, clustered near the creek on Park Avenue.
Quite often, Woody and I would hike to the top of South
Mountain. It loomed over our two-block neighborhood (Denton and Chadwick Roads)
and beckoned to us whenever we stepped outside. It was a steep climb on a deer
trail through the woods; we were usually tuckered out by the time we made it to
a level spot on the first of three unpaved roads that crossed the face of the
hill. This stopping point was only one-quarter of the way to the top, and even if
it was 9 o’clock in the morning, we often decided that it was a good time for
lunch. We gathered leaves into a pile and set them ablaze. We were too
impatient to gather twigs and start a proper fire. We’d slip a hotdog on a
stick and roast it in the smoky flame. The dogs quickly turned from ruby red to
sooty black. A slice of bread served as a hotdog bun and mustard from a jar
we’d smuggled from one of our houses combined to craft a gourmet meal. We were
always accompanied by my dog, Topper, and sometimes by a neighborhood Irish
Setter named Meg. Dogs roamed free in those days and followed kids around,
offering a level of protection that most mothers rated sufficient to allow their
offspring to explore the neighborhood world on their own.
It was with that memory in mind that I strolled over to
the packaged meat cooler in a modern supermarket, to grab some hotdogs to take
home and blacken. That’s where my trip down nostalgia lane screeched to a sudden
halt. I couldn’t figure out what to buy, what might taste like those hotdogs of
my youth. There were too many choices: all-beef franks, skinless franks,
chicken, pork, turkey dogs. Every combination thereof. Plus: long dogs,
plumping dogs, short dogs, skinny dogs, bun size dogs. Dogs, dogs, dogs!
It’s like that in every aisle. Too many choices! Talk
about complicating shopper’s lives. Even staples, like milk, eggs and cereal
are complicated. A quart of milk was all we had back when Woody and I climbed
South Mountain, swigging down metallic tasting, lukewarm swallows of milk from
our metal canteens. There was no consternation at the milk cooler back then. But
not today: Quarts, gallons and half gallons are the first layer of choices.
Then comes the fat content: whole milk, 1%, 2%, no fat, skim. Does it really
make that much difference? Probably not. Egg choices are just as bad: medium eggs
(which is another way of saying small eggs), large eggs, extra large and jumbo.
Eggs from hen house chickens, free range chickens and cage free chickens. White
eggs, brown eggs, green eggs (though not at the supermarket) along with
eggbeaters, egg whites, egg mates and smart egg cups. Which is best? I have no
idea. It makes my head spin. Want a box of regular Cheerios? Good luck finding
them. The cereal aisle is 80 feet long and 6 feet high. More variations of cereal
grains than an old coot can comprehend.
We’ve become food paranoid, and quite finicky too. But,
in spite of the challenge I did finally make a hotdog buying decision. I used
the old coot method and bought the cheapest ones. It really doesn’t matter when
you burn them to a crisp.
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