Hello Hot Dogs and Pass the Mustard

There is something about hot summer weather that makes you crave a hot dog, or maybe two. We ate hot dogs for dinner last week – twice.

Hebrew National makes our dogs of choice. With hot dogs, being kosher is a useful precaution.

My preference for Hebrew National dogs dates back to my first game in Yankee Stadium when Bob Crane introduced me to the sacred nooks and crannies of what we called The Temple. In the first of a three-game series against the dreaded Boston Red Sox, he acquired tickets in a preferred seating area where a waiter took your order. Bob ordered Hebrew National dogs with all the fixings accompanied by a tall cold one. A hot dog never tasted so good.

Nort every baseball park offers Hebrew National dogs. When we took my mother to see the Hillsboro Hops to celebrate her 90th birthday, we all munched on locally made Zenner Sausage Company hot dogs. My mother ate a regular dog; the rest of us gorged on foot longs. They tasted pretty good, too.

Like most kids, I grew up eating hot dogs, though with a bit of caution. My grandfather and father worked in an Omaha meat packing plant and told harrowing stories of how hot dogs were made. Even if they exaggerated for effect (after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, I’m not sure they did), it made me a little queasy eating hot dogs. The Wienermobile also made me queasy as I wondered who would ride around inside a huge hot dog on wheels knowing what’s inside hot dogs.

Intermittent anxieties over the imprecise or indiscriminate ingredients in hot dogs eventually led me to nosh on polish dogs. Intellectually I knew they were made the same way, but they tasted different, so what the heck.

I have little appetite for hot dogs, regardless of the weather, until after the July 4 “All You Can Eat” contests where people stuff unimaginable numbers of hot dogs down their throats. The most famous is the Coney Island contest sponsored by Nathan’s. Since its start in 1972, the annual hot dog eating contest has grown in popularity and press coverage. Even Hurricane Sandy, which severely damaged Nathan’s, didn’t postpone the festivities.

Joey “Jaws” Chestnut is the current 8-time consecutive champion of Nathan’s event. His record is chowing down 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes. He won this year’s contest with a mere appetizer of 56.

Since 2007, a parallel contest for women has been held. There now is even something called the Major League Eating, which hawks television rights. I don’t know if there is a Jumbo-tron.

The sport of hot dog gluttony chipped a tooth this summer when Walter Eagle Tall choked to death in front of a startled and apparently immobilized Rapid City, South Dakota Fourth of July crowd. Event sponsors prudently canceled the next day’s scheduled pie eating contest.

My maximum hot dog consumption at one sitting is four. It takes me a lot longer than 10 minutes to eat that many. Some of time is devoted to wondering why I’m eating that many.

With age, I now enjoy smothering my dog in a mosaic of mustard and pickle relish almost as much as eating my creation. Of course, I still love the essential companions – watermelon slices, corn on the cob, potato chips – to round out my summer sacrament to the hot dog.

An enduring appeal of the hot dog moment is the unremovable mustard stain on my shirt. I can go to the closet and mark my hot dog history with recognizable and humiliating stains. But a stain is the price you pay for one burping good time. Hail to the hot dog.