Hello, I’m Veronica
The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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Tale of the Little-Dog
When my son and his wife visited with their daughters last week, the consensus for dinner was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. These choices were noteworthy in that I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate a hot dog. Sweet Italian sausage? A couple of times a month cut up into a stir-fry of vegetables. Beer brats? Also delicious, hot off the grill with a little mustard. But a hot dog is child’s play by comparison. Or should I say, a “dachshund sausage”?
It’s true. The Germans, who by all accounts can take credit for the invention of the hot dog (five hundred years ago!) nicknamed their frankfurters “dachshunds” – or “little-dog” sausages because, well, they looked exactly like the dog breed. The only history Americans claim is the re-nickname “hot dog”. Even the hot dog bun – which really took hold at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 – points back to the Germans, who always ate their sausages with bread.Are hot dogs a staple in your diet, or like me are they simply a distant memory? If they weren’t hot off the grill in the backyard or at a summer picnic, perhaps you had one at a baseball game (but not so much football or basketball, go figure). You’ve probably also seen hot dogs on the midway at carnivals and county fairs. Wherever you get your franks today, they’re just not as likely to come from established restaurants.
In the 1970s, America seemed to have hot dog stands on every corner. The most popular of these was the distinctive drive-thru Der Wienerschnitzel’s, but you also had – at least from my California-based memory – Pup ‘N’ Taco, Ben Franks, Tail o’ the Pup, and the walk-up Hot Dog on-a-Stick booths you’d find at amusement parks. Today’s retail hot dog is at a Sonic Drive-In or the food court at Costco. If you live anywhere near New York’s Coney Island, you can also include “Nathan’s Famous”, or at least the annual hot dog eating contest of the same name.
A hot dog may be “a cooked sausage eaten in a long, soft piece of bread”, but its secondary meanings are less definitive. “Hot Dog!” is something you used to say when you were VERY happy about something else (“used to”, meaning sixty or seventy years ago). A “hot dog” is also a person “who makes fast, skillful movements in skiing, snowboarding, or surfing to make people notice them”. That last definition still stands.Speaking of “used to say”, we also used to sing about hot dogs, didn’t we? Oscar Mayer’s jingle convinced us we should BE hot dogs (so everyone would be in love with us). But the better song came from Armour, which asked us what kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs? Per the lyrics, “…fat kids, skinny kids, kids that climb on rocks… tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox…” Today’s version of the Armour jingle would probably be censored just for using the word “kids”.
“I wish I had a million dollars. HOT DOG!” (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and “It’s A Wonderful Life”) Hot dogs will always be a childhood memory more than a dietary preference in my book. My mother, raising five hungry boys, developed several dinner recipes when time and ingredients were in short supply. These included canned baked beans and weenies (two ingredients = dinner!), and a truly odd creation from the Betty Crocker cookbook made up of hot dogs, mashed potatoes, and cheese (three ingredients!). Whether it tasted good or not – I honestly can’t remember – dogs, mash, and cheese conveniently covered the protein, carb, and fat categories, all in one broiler-blasted casserole.
The Oscar Mayer “Wienermobile” My most vivid childhood hot dog memories are not the dinners mentioned above. Instead, I can’t forget snacking on raw hot dogs from the refrigerator (which sounds awful now, but hey, I was a kid). My mother was faithful to the Oscar Mayer brand so I ate a lot of their hot dogs raw. Speaking of Oscar Mayer, here’s the better memory. They built a motorized advertisement which to this day may be the coolest vehicle on wheels. The “Wienermobile” cruised the streets of Los Angeles, stopping every now and then in a parking lot so you could view it up close. The driver handed out tiny plastic replicas of the vehicle, appropriately labeled “Weenie Whistles”.
(Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures and “The Santa Clause”) Let me conclude with a solved hot dog mystery. Your grocery store sells most brands in packages of ten. They also sell hot dog buns but in packages of eight. Why? Because hot dogs weigh about 1.6 ounces, which makes a package of ten a convenient sale of exactly one pound of meat. On the other hand, hot dog buns are baked in trays of four, which work best with conveyor belts and processing. An odd number of buns – trays of five – is a model of inefficiency. So until one or the other manufacturer changes their standard, you’ll always have leftovers for snacks. Or better yet, for your dog.
The hot dogs I served my granddaughters last week were comically advertised as healthy: no fillers, no preservatives, and so on. They weren’t very good. Maybe the worst part of a hot dog is what makes it taste so good? Or maybe hot dogs have simply lost their appeal to me? No, wait, that can’t be true. Anything my granddaughters ask me to eat has instant appeal.
Guess I haven’t eaten my last little-dog sausage just yet.
Some content sourced from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC) website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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A Million Little Leaks
Several years ago, I worked out with a personal trainer in a bunch of one-hour sessions at my gym. She was all about proper lifting and careful stretching – and nasty core exercises I’ve patently avoided to this day. But she did give me one time-proven piece of advice: after working out, go relax 10-15 minutes in the dry sauna. You’ve already revved up your metabolism with the workout, so the sauna helps extract toxins from the body. Yes, and the sauna also helps imitate the heat and humidity of South Carolina in the summertime.
My wife & I are heading to the Palmetto State for a long-overdue getaway at the end of May. We’ll be spending a few days in the western counties before catching up with our daughter and her boyfriend in coastal Charleston. We’ve taken this trip before. The difference? Last time we were there in early April when the heat and humidity sort of caressed your cheek with a soft kiss. This time we’ll be there to kick off summer and it’ll feel like standing under a hot shower. Outdoors. Fully dressed.
I’ve always been a sweater (no, I don’t mean the extra layer you pull over your head in the winter months). After a long jog, my t-shirt and shorts are so wet they could double as sponges. My hair falls wet-stringy straight down my forehead and the perspiration runs in rivers here and streams there. Yep, I’m one handsome dude. But where most people say ick, I recognize sweating for the healthy cooling/cleansing process it is. A sign my metabolism is alive and kicking. Turn on the faucets, baby.Speaking of moisture, isn’t moist one of the most atrocious-sounding words in the English language? I’ve never made peace with those five letters and I know I haven’t used moist in a sentence in years (no matter how good my baked goods taste). The English language has such beautiful words, like chimes and delicacy and silhouette. Why disrupt the sweet-sounding party with a word like moist?
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. I’m not gonna pretend a good sweat is ever comfortable (maybe it’s because I feel moist) but I’ve certainly gotten used to the sensation over the years. And now that I live in Colorado? Zero humidity. Well, okay, there’s a little humidity here at 7,500 feet above sea level. But most of the time it’s so dry, the needle on your tank seems to be perpetually on “E”. This pathetic little voice deep inside your body pleads for, “water… water…” (think Tin Man asking for his oil can – that kind of voice).
A dry sauna room (aka a “hot box”) Let’s go back to my dry sauna sessions. Since you’re already asking the question, I don’t mean “wet sauna” (where steam is introduced into a room as tiled as a Chinese kitchen). I’m talking about that other room, with nothing but wooden benches and a nasty little blast furnace in the corner (wood-burning, electric, hot rocks – whatever heats like hell). You sit there draped in a small towel in 200º F and for a few minutes, all is quiet and comfortable. But then, almost imperceptibly, your skin develops a sheen. You begin to glisten. Suddenly droplets of perspiration pop out all over the place and it’s “open the floodgates, Poseidon”. A million little leaks.
I won’t speak for the ladies’ locker room (that mysterious country club adjacent to our locker room), but sometimes the men’s dry sauna can get a little awkward. When you approach the glass door, it’s so steamed you can’t tell how many guys are already in there. Once you enter, choose a place on the bench without hesitation or you’ll be judged. Good chance you’ll end up next to a heavy breather, which in some schools of thought is therapeutic. Other times you’ll end up next to someone with headphones, which somehow don’t block the four-letter words of his rap music. One time I was subjected to the wellness preachings of a huge Samoan-looking guy, where I thought it best not to argue with his musings. All of which is to say, you never really know what you’re gonna get with the dry sauna. It’s an intimate little sweatbox filled with semi-naked strangers. Good times, huh?
South Carolina’s “Holy City” When I’m in Charleston I won’t miss the dry sauna because Mom Nature will provide her own version round-the-clock. The heat and humidity will promote enough of my perspiration to – as the family says – “make my face rain”. I’m like one of those mysterious underground springs, where the water keeps bubbling up from the ground and you wonder if it’s ever gonna stop. Every gonna stop? Not with my metabolism. For sheer entertainment value, if you’re in Charleston later this month, keep an eye out for me. I’m the one with the million little leaks.
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Whirlybird Wonder
“Ginny” If you haven’t been following the
dog-and-ponypony-and-dog show taking place on Mars the last couple of months, you might want to break out the telescope. Not that you’ll be able to see a car-sized rover or a toy-sized helicopter from millions of miles away. But you can see Mars itself, and then you can imagine “Percy” and “Ginny” sniffing around the red dirt and rocks up there. They’re just sampling things to see if Mars can roll out the welcome mat to humans someday.
The rover “Perseverance” is the pony in this show; “Ingenuity” the dog. I want to talk about the dog. Last July Percy hitched a nine-month ride to Mars, launching from Florida’s Cape Canaveral aboard a massive Atlas V rocket. Little Ginny hitched a ride on Percy; she the steadfast little soldier clinging to the rover’s underbelly. Considering Ginny measures only a few feet in all dimensions, it must’ve been a hang-on-for-dear-life E-ticket kind of adventure.
I’d love to make this a children’s story, but Ginny is anything but soft and cuddly. Have a look. She’s about as cute as a wasp. Consider Martian atmosphere is only 1/100th as dense as that of Earth, which means Ginny has virtually nothing to grab onto to sustain flight. But she whirls at five times the rate of a regular helicopter (2,400 rpm!), and then she rises. Product safety warning: don’t go anywhere near Ginny’s rotor blades.Ten days ago Ginny lifted off Mars to a skyscraping height of ten feet. Then she hovered briefly before rotating about ninety degrees, kind of just observing the Mars-scape. Finally, she landed. The whole exercise lasted less than forty seconds. Big deal, right? Well, that little maneuver qualified Ginny as “the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on a planet besides Earth”. Way to go, little wasp. You just reserved a spot in the Smithsonian after you return home.
Will Ginny end up here? When I picture Ginny clinging to the rover Percy, then hurtling through outer space for months on end, my middle-aged mind recalled the old Thunderbirds television show. Thunderbirds featured the Tracy family (marionettes!) and their fleet of wicked-cool space vehicles. The five Thunderbirds included a giant green supersonic carrier (“Thunderbird Two”), whose massive belly carried a yellow utility submersible (“Thunderbird Four”). Kind of like Percy carried Ginny. Trust me young(er) readers, Thunderbirds was awesome television in the 1960s… even if it was just puppets getting their strings pulled.
I’ve ridden in a helicopter exactly once in my life, on our honeymoon over the Napali Coast on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. I turned to my bride mid-flight and probably uttered some not-so-nice words as I remembered how much I dislike heights. The glass of champagne beforehand certainly helped. For me, the fear has always been a toss-up between vertigo (physical) or the idea that terra firma is far, far below me (mental). No matter the reason, heights just aren’t my cup of tea.
My acrophobia probably goes back to my first ride on a Ferris Wheel, with adolescent nightmares of slipping through the metal lap bar and taking an unplanned skydive. Or ski lifts, where a little bit of fiddling with the lap bar latch could mean the end of everything. Parasailing? (No). Hang-gliding? (Never). Hot-air balloons? (Why even ask?). Sorry – airplanes aside, and only the bigger ones mind you – I prefer my thrills securely grounded.
For all the recent broadcast news on Percy and Ginny, I can’t seem to find the part of the story where Ginny returns to Percy, who then returns to the Atlas V rocket, who then returns to Earth. I’m looking for the part about splashdowns and photo ops and ticker-tape parades – the happy-ending kind of stuff. My earlier comment about a spot in the Smithsonian may have been a little premature (can you say, “Ginny replica”?). Note to reader: if you do decide to make this a children’s story you might want to edit things a bit. Just say our little pony and dog are now asleep on Mars, waiting for their human friends to get there someday. It sounds much better than, “we just left them there”.Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Springtime Rings
My daughter drops little hints on our phone calls recently, teasers to suggest her boyfriend will soon pop the proverbial question. If he does propose, her left hand will be adorned with an engagement ring and she’ll become – literally – a marked woman. She might as well sport a little neon sign on her ring finger blinking, T-A-K-E-N.
While my daughter gets excited about her potential Ring by Spring (Hallmark Channel movie, March 2014), I glance down now at the gold band I’ve been wearing for the last thirty-four years. My wife and I decided a plain ring wasn’t enough of a statement for wedded bliss so we chose one with seven inset diamonds across the top. Now that I think about it, those seven gems might as well broadcast M-A-R-R-I-E-D.
My ring Over the years, I’ve grown fond of the string of bling inside my ring. It’s a unique setting and the diamonds draw compliments. But credit to my wife, there’s purpose behind the glitter. She gives me her coy smile and declares, “When you’re walking down the street by yourself, the woman with her eye on you a block away will easily know you’re married”. A block away? That’s pushing it, but my diamond shine certainly does seem to advertise M-I-N-E.
Speaking of the opposite sex, Irwin Shaw, a playwright and author from the early 1900’s, wrote a short story that seems appropriate here. It’s called The Girls in Their Summer Dresses. Shaw puts us on the streets of New York City on a beautiful day, where a married couple is going for a walk. The husband keeps getting distracted by every pretty girl passing by and his wife calls him out on it. Their conversation over drinks after – and his closing thought – make for an interesting perspective on marriage. You can read The Girls in Their Summer Dresses here.
Claddagh ring I can’t talk about my daughter’s forthcoming engagement ring and my own circle of gold without including a ring of my wife’s. No, not her wedding band (though it’s a beaut’) but rather a Claddagh ring she’ll receive from Ireland in the next few days. As we learned when we visited the Emerald Isle (and also from the Hallmark Channel – As Luck Would Have It, April 2021), the Claddagh ring includes symbols of love (heart), friendship (clasped hands), and loyalty (crown). Wear the ring facing one way to show you’re single and looking for love. Wear the ring the way my wife will, to show you’re already “captured”.
“Eternity” ring So there’s one more ring for love out there in jewelry shops (and it’s not a “promise ring”, which doesn’t count for much of anything). Ever heard of an eternity ring? It’s a band of precious metal with little gems all the way around the circle, to symbolize “never-ending love”. Talk about a bauble. Women describe it as “cumbersome”, and rumor has De Beers came up with the concept to justify a large purchase agreement with Russia for small diamonds. My wife will never get an eternity ring from me. Our vows included a nod to her wedding ring as “a forever sign of my love and fidelity”. See? I’ve got “never-ending” covered already.
My newsfeed included a recent wedding proposal in Atlanta, where the groom-to-be took his bride-to-be on a helicopter tour of the city, then promptly dropped to one knee on top of the skyscraper they landed on. When he popped the question he opened a box of five engagement rings. Seriously? I hope the guy my daughter will marry is way more decisive than that. Commit to just O-N-E, son, kind of like you did when you chose my daughter.Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Man tops off helicopter proposal with five engagement rings”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
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Ketchup Catch-Up
At the Communion rail in our pre-COVID, in-person church days, my wife and I would sometimes laugh at the size of the hunk of bread they’d tear off the loaf. The pieces were so big I’d often be chewing all the way back to my seat (and think I should’ve asked for seconds). On the other hand, today’s “drive-in church” Communion amounts to hermetically-sealed plastic capsules handed gingerly through the car window. Peel back the plastic to reveal the tasteless wafer and half-swallow of grape juice inside. No, it’s not breakfast by any definition, but at least we’re still achieving the higher purpose.
Communion and ketchup are strange bedfellows but I’m about to explain why they belong in the same sentence. If you’ve followed the headlines lately, you know – just below the latest details of the Myanmar conflict – we’re all worried about whether there’ll be enough ketchup packets for our next take-out meal. That’s right, the world is currently lacking in – not ketchup – but ketchup packets. If we don’t address the situation soon, buildings will burn and looting will run rampant. Even worse, we might have to top everything with mustard instead.
It’s the pandemic to blame, of course. As soon as traditional sit-down restaurants shifted to pick-up and delivery, their demand for packeted condiments jumped up to the level of Wendy’s and McDonald’s. In fact, Wendy’s and McDonald’s removed ketchup packets from their front counters, not because customers were taking too many, but because other restaurants were raiding their supplies. Yep, it’s gotten that kind of desperate out there in burger land.Heinz, the undisputed king of ketchup, recently committed to increasing packet production by 25% to fend off potential mayhem in the streets. 125% of Heinz’s typical annual production amounts to, well… let’s just say there’d be enough to place a packet in the hand of every man, woman, and child on the planet. Dang. That’s a whole lot of processed tomato spread.
Speaking of processed tomato spread, here’s my favorite ingredient in ketchup: mustard (powder). It’s true. Go check the ingredients list on the bottle I know you have in your refrigerator.
Will there be enough to go around? But I digress. Let’s get back to the global packet shortage. Call me highbrow but I’m having a hard time caring, because honestly I can’t remember the last time I used a ketchup packet. The restaurants of my choosing always bring the bottle to the table when you ask for it. Furthermore – burgers aside – I don’t have a lot of use for ketchup. Not on my fries, not on my meatloaf, neither eggs nor hash browns. And while we’re at it can we all agree: mustard only on a bratwurst or a hot dog? It should be a cardinal rule.
But I digress… again. FOCUS!
If I don my eco-friendly hat for a moment (and don’t I look sharp?), the last thing I want to hear about is Heinz upping ketchup packet production to 12 billion a year. That sounds like enough plastic to Ziploc a small country many times over. But I get it. In these times of please-pass-the-virus (or better yet, don’t), we demand individually wrapped one-and-done solutions. Like ketchup packets. Like Communion elements.
Handy host Good things come in small packages, so the saying goes. Yeah, well, they come in big packages too. Like ketchup from a bottle instead of a plastic packet. Like Communion from a loaf of freshly baked bread instead of hole-punched from a sheet of Styrofoam. And seriously, who uses just one ketchup packet? Picture a baby burger you can balance between your finger and thumb and maybe it’s enough. Anything larger and you’re grabbing packets by the handful.
Let’s wrap this topic on a personal note. If ketchup packets disappear, my granddaughters won’t understand a really good bedtime story, the kind where they’ll giggle every time they talk about it. You know the story, the one where my buddies and I pocket ketchup packets from our school lunch trays, take ’em out to the playground asphalt, and stomp on ’em to give some unsuspecting kid a tomato facewash? Oh please, drop the mock horror. You know you were out there on the playground too, doing the very same thing.Some content sourced from the 4/8/2021 CNN.com article, “America is facing a ketchup packet shortage”.
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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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