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The Hot Dog Man
Sometime during the late sixties the amusement park
in New Haven became condos. I had graduated college
and moved to Pennsylvania by then but I never
forgot the summer nights walking the boardwalk
"cruzin' for babes." There was simply no greater
time to become a teenager than the early fifties.
No civilization before or since in the entire
history of the universe will ever have that
opportunity to live American Graffiti. None ever
had a better time.
Actually the amusement park was a bummer. It was
just a place to run '49 Mercs and '36 coupes
against the latest technical brilliance from
Detroit. We had genuine leather seats, wrap around
windshields, lowering blocks and purple dots in the
center of the tail lights. What more could a guy
ask for? If we couldn't exercise our testosterone
in a meaningful way (that being a rare enough
happening) we could just love our cars.
But there was one other thing about the
amusement park that I will never forget. I received
an important initiation into manhood there. It was
here that I discovered what commitment and
dedication to purpose meant. It was the Hot Dog
Man.
I think his name might have been Frank but it's
not important. He worked at Jimmies Drive- In.
Jimmies was world famous for its hot dogs and fried
clams.
Now I must say a bit about the fried clams here
too. We are not talking the wimpy little ulcerated,
undernourished, rejected strips of inedible and
less digestible leathery insignificance that the
world now knows as fried clams. These were New
England's own precious secret, back before the
sweet little things were over fished and poisoned
by pollution.. The whole mass of juicy and
bountiful protein, complete with full intestines
and often sand, rolled in a secret batter and fried
to various levels of perfection in semi-rancid
lard. The large order was 75 cents. It came in a
box like the one from the Chinese take-out. It
comfortably fed two hungry teenagers stressed from
hours of cruzin' for babes, with only a couple of
good stories to show for it. Unimaginable
gastronomic delight!
Actually I almost never ate hot dogs, except of
course, for Miccalizzi's in Bridgeport...his whole
stand couldn't have been as big as a Fotomat
drive-in store. He wrapped each dog in a strip of
bacon and grilled those suckers till they screamed.
There was always a line there and his daughter was
a knockout, but that's another story...back to
Jimmy's.
In order to get the clams & dogs, we had to
stand in a line that formed at noon and stayed at
least fifty people deep till 2:00 am, seven days a
week, spring, summer and fall and weekends all
winter long. That line wrapped around the building
and followed the counter to the order station for
the last ten minutes or so. This is where Frank (or
whatever) did his thing.
Basically, Frank flipped the hot dogs...but with
a speed and accuracy that would make Intel shudder;
with a slight of hand that would cower David
Copperfield's magic.One could stand and watch this
hyperactive, obsessive-compulsive wiener flipper
until hypnotized into a lobotomy-like state. On a
steaming hot grill, sweat sizzling and popping as
it dropped from his forehead to the hot grill, this
modern folk hero performed his act with relentless
bravado. Armed with a razor sharp knife in his
right hand, the blade now a well ground sliver of
its original state, he would hold the dog with the
fingers of his bare left hand, and slice the dog
down the center leaving just exactly enough skin to
hinge the two halves. He would race down several
rows of maybe twenty dogs, whip back to the
beginning and back down the rows flipping them
over. Slice and flip, slice and flip, move, adjust,
slide, twist, slice and flip, all in hyper-seconds.
Never did I see him touch the grill with his
fingers or reach to his side for the rolls. Rocking
back and forth, shifting his weight from foot to
foot in orchestrated rhythm, he would perfectly
process maybe a thousand hot dogs an hour and you
couldn't fathom how they ever got into the rolls
but there they were. He was that good!
It was here that I learned that no matter what a
man did, if he did it to the very best of his
ability, he would make his mark. Frank was a silent
mentor in my life and he never even knew me.
Mentoring in our culture is all too often an
accident. Although I respect the opinions of some
feminist writers on the subject, there are simply
many things a woman cannot teach a young man. He
must learn them from an older man. I never needed
to learn to flip hot dogs, but I did need to learn
that every hot dog is important. One never knows
who's watching and what some young man might learn
from us. I think that as men we must realize that
we are constant role models to the boys who watch
us. We must always be aware that we are teachers,
and just that awareness will help to make us worthy
of the label.
Frank, I'm sure you're long dead of a heart
attack, but just in case...I want you to know you
made a difference.
© 2008, Kenneth F.
Byers
Other Transition Issues,
Books
* * *
A permanent state of transition is man's most
noble condition. - Juan Ramon Jimenez
Ken Byers
holds a Ph.D. in psychology with an emphasis in
Men's Studies, one of the few ever awarded in the
U.S. Ken is a full time Certified Professional Life
Coach specializing in working with men in any form
of transition and an instructor of design at San
Francisco State University.
His books, "Man
In Transition" and
"Who
Was That Masked man
Anyway" are widely
acknowledged as primers for men seeking deeper
knowledge of creating awareness and understanding
of the masculine way. More information on Ken, his
work and/or subscription information to the weekly
"Spirit Coach" newsletter which deals with elements
of the human spirit in short commentary, check the
box at www.etropolis.com/coachken/
or www.etropolis.com/coachken/what.htm
or www.etropolis.com/coachken/speak.htm
or E-Mail
You are welcome to share any of Ken's columns with
anyone without fee from or to him but please credit
to the author. Ken can be reached at:
415.239.6929.
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