The Hot Dog and Us...

"a hot dog makes her lose control..."
Patty Duke Show Theme 1963-66

News that Scrantonians eat lots of hot dogs wasn't exactly a shocker to me. News that Terre Hautians probably love hot dogs isn't much of a headline either.

Americans love hot dogs.

While most all of the world's cultures have some sort of ground meat and spice stuffed into casings or otherwise shaped and formed, the hot dog is pretty much ours. You can call it the German-sounding frankfurter until you're chili sauce red in the face, but the hot dog as we know and love it is as American as corporate greed. Without bun, it's simply a type of sausage.

Once on or in a bun, it's a hot dog. I'd guess that what we now know as a hot dog became such because you could stuff it into some sort of bread, then cover all its inadequacies with mustard, onions, relishes, and even ketchup. Many consider ketchup on a hot dog a misstep demanding some sort of bloodletting punishment. Not me. I love ketchup on a hot dog. Ketchup up one side, mustard down the other.

I'm American. I love a hot dog.

Before we work on that dog, grill, fry, or boil it, then dress it, let's explain what happened right before Labor Day: Ball Park brand franks released its Top Ten Hot Dog Eating-est cities in the country and Scranton came up #8, a slot it was forced to share with Harrisburg. What's that all about?

NYC was #1, LA #2, and you can fill in the blanks by clicking on Top Ten above.

Here's a big problem; we deep-fry our hot dogs. Yep, Ball Park says we do. Again, what is that all about?

We don't deep-fry, of course. Now, now, wait, hold it a second. A deep-fried hot dog might be right fine, but it's a stranger to us. Flat-top fried is likely the method we all know best, because those Coney Island and Abe's dogs are done on the griddle. In the world of short order cookery, insiders call it a flat-top.

We can now go back to the best hot dog.

I've long had this theory, one with which I am not alone. Other hot dog lovers agree that, while some hot dogs may be better than others in terms of what's inside, and you really never do want to know what's inside, the proper combination of ingredients makes most any hot dog taste good.

Should a decent bun and basic condiments be the delivery system for that dog, heck, cheaper is better. That's the theory.

Kidding? Not a chance, buy the cheapest hot dogs you can find. I have a pack or two of cheap dogs in the fridge right now. Both cost roughly a buck per pack - one dollar American - a single chlorophyll George. Eight in a pack, we're talking a little beyond a dime apiece, a bargain at twice the price.

Sitting alongside those cheap doggies is a pack of rather expensive German-style franks complete with natural casing. When going bun-less, and we often do, those pricey franks are delightful. Then again, no bun, no hot dog, right? It's having a hot dog that really isn't a hot dog. Now the situation is getting complicated, and the hot dog is the very definition of simplicity, which is where we shall keep it.

While being thrifty about it, buy buns on sale, which they usually are, they kind of add to the cheap charm of the hot dog. It's a ton of taste for so very little.

I bet you now want a hot dog, right? Yeah, me too. Just don't rat me out to your doctor.

Go cheap.

Merciful Mother of Us All, It's Labor Day Already...

Labor Day. Summer is over. Many schools are back in session. Halloween's traces are beginning to show.

Thanksgiving Dinner times and places are being discussed.

Could the dread over being behind in making Christmas cookies be just around the corner, can placing those precious Christmas kielbasi orders be far behind?

While we're at it, how about a Lackawanna County kielbasi maker winning the Plymouth Keilbasa Festival again? Adjudged "best" one more time was Bosak's of Olyphant. Luzerne Countians, mostly Wyoming Valley-ites really, are pretty smug about having the best when it comes to ethnic dishes, and they are largely correct, yet a northerner takes home the prize repeatedly. Born and raised in Lackawanna County, now making my home in Luzerne County, I am not about to take a side here, except to say that I spell it kielbasi and pronounce it the same way.

La Festa Italiana also rings a bell this weekend, telling us all that a season has ended. Huge crowds on Courthouse Square, the aromas of countless great Italian dishes in the air, so many aromas that I could likely gain a few pounds just by breathing heavily at the corner of Linden and Adams for a half hour. Once again the ever-popular and never-stopping Poets will be a key draw. These guys are good. These guys have been around since I was in high school. Just how old are they?

The telethon of all telethons is this weekend, another signal that summer came, was, and went. The Jerry Lewis telethon really is the telethon of record in the USA. Sure, there are others, all worthy, but Lewis and MDA essentially created, defined, and continues to define, what a telethon is.

The dogs got a bath today. Out on the deck, in the still warm sun, they got a rub, scrub, a rinse, then dried with a nice fluffy towel. Carol did the work. I watched. There, that was easy.

I had a chat with a local fruit grower just a few days ago. Summer fruits are still abundant, he tells me, but the apples are starting to come on strong. Apple fans, this could be a year to remember. Apples love water. This summer's rain will bring big and very juicy apples. Apples, pumpkins, both signs of the turning seasons. Dried cornstalks are another. For whatever reason, you need to stand a few by the front door, that way, I guess, everyone will know that you know that these are autumnal days.

Finally, Steamtown's Rail Fest was held again this Labor Day Weekend. Swinging by for a half hour or so, the big shocker was the crowd. The place was jammed. Good to see, it's very good to see. Again in town for Rail Fest was Amtrak. An Amtrak train-set in Scranton sends my imagination spinning some, if only for a few seconds. We should have Amtrak service here, rail options to NYC, Buffalo, Syracuse. This time around, a scrap of news that might prove apocryphal - some day. Amtrak's president and CEO, Joseph Boardman, spoke to a small crowd while standing before his employer's locomotive and handful of passenger equipment. Mr. Boardman made the claim that Scranton deserves Amtrak "connectivity" and that Amtrak is studying that possibility and is ready to make it happen, that all it takes is money. Come to think of it, that's really not much in the way of news, now is it?

Back to The Litter Box...

J. Garcia neck wear: Many have seen J. Garcia ties. J. Garcia was Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, which he is, at least the dead part. While never a practicing Deadhead, I was acutely aware of their enormous success since they first emerged. Each time I look at a J. Garcia tie, I wonder just how it is that one of his legacies is a line of neck ties. Garcia is effectively the very antithesis of the neck tie, of suit and tie, of being "dressed." It truly is absurd. Garcia painted some and was pretty good at it. That said, J. Garcia ties are really decent. I own two. I've never owned a Grateful Dead LP, eight-track, cassette, CD, or MP3. I have never deliberately listened to anything Grateful Dead.

Were the flashers really necessary?: Like millions of other Americans, I watched quite a bit of Ted Kennedy's funeral, both in Boston and in Washington. As the funeral procession made its way through the streets of DC and on over to Arlington, I was struck by the odd fact that all vehicles in the procession had their flashers on. Was that really necessary? Did security types think Senator Kennedy's cortege might be mistaken for something else, that no one would notice it was his funeral?

Butterflies are indeed a no-show: Over the last couple years I've lamented the scarcity of butterflies in my backyard. Now, finally, there is some research to indicate that there is indeed a problem. Cause? As of now, unknown, although a wet summer may be to blame.

Michael Vick: We fielded a lot of "What does the SPCA think?" type questions regarding Vick's return to the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles. Not being an attorney, the intricacies of NFL by-laws and codified rules and regulations governing "membership" are both unfamiliar and uninteresting to me, but my guess is that Vick could have successfully sued the NFL for reinstatement. It may have taken years and cost millions, and it might have failed, but it was an option. Reinstatement by the NFL didn't mean the Eagles, or any other NFL franchise, had to sign him. Shame on them both. What Vick did was unspeakable. You want tougher animal cruelty laws? Your state senator and your state representative are the people to contact. Tell them how you feel. You should know how we feel.

Research about Facebook: OK, just a dumb question that will likely never be answered - how long does it take the average individual to tire of Facebook and stop posting there multiple times each day? How much time passes before most realize that there really is no substantive benefit to social networking on the internet, that the more you conduct your social life on-line, the less you conduct it in person? If you don't have one-on-one personal contact with others, it's not really a social life. Proud to say, Twitter amused me all of about nine seconds.

Les Paul and Woodstock: Did anyone else catch the irony of Les Paul's death occurring as this country, maybe the world, prepared to celebrate Woodstock's 40th? No Les Paul, no Woodstock. No Les Paul, no electric guitar as it we've known it since the earliest days of that damned rock&roll nonsense. The Beatles, nah, they didn't change music, Les Paul did. Without Les Paul, it's entirely possible that George Martin, Beatles producer, would never have been able to create the sound that even kids in grade school still love today. And, of course, no Les Paul, no eight-tracks. Snicker all you like, but the clunky old eight-track and Les Paul were the very beginnings of sound-on-sound, of multi-track recording. It's likely most legitimate musicians today, especially rockers, all know the importance of Les Paul.


Crop Circles: They're still out there, new ones. Guys with boards on ropes made them all with their feet. That's the scientific dismissal of the phenomena. We just discovered a planet that spins in the opposite direction of all others. Probably guys with boards, too. We are clueless as to who and what we are.

Out of the litter box...

L'Osservatore Scrantonio...

Pardon my mangling the Italian language and kindly overlook the liberty taken with the localization of the name of the Vatican's official newspaper.

L'Osservatore Romano is the Holy See's weekly newspaper, available in myriad tongues.

I've never read it. I should. It's always good to get all sides of any given story, and you if you can't count on L'Osservatore for solely one side, heck, who can you count on?

Recent developments, emerging developments, in the Diocese of Scranton are such that observing them at present is left to the individual, since "officially" no one seems to know what's really and truly unfolding here. Whatever it is, suffice to say it's unprecedented.

Unprecedented is the resignation of a bishop not under any Curial injunction to do so, meaning the man is not yet of resignation age. By the Church's yardstick, he has years to go, miles to travel, much to accomplish before Rome demands he submit his resignation. Apparently, he has done just that.

Unprecedented is a bishop moving from the traditional home of diocesan ordinaries, which would be next door to St. Peter's Cathedral on Wyoming Avenue in Scranton. He has moved to the former Pius X Seminary in Dalton. Though no longer a seminary, the buildings and property have not been abandoned by the diocese and offered for sale.

Unprecedented is a bishop strolling around downtown Scranton without benefit of a Roman collar and smiling with warmth and sincerity at passersby. We've seen the photos.

Published reports claim Joseph Martino has suffered "a near nervous breakdown." As to that, I have neither substantiation nor opinion.

What I do have are observations of my own, my L'Osservatore Scrantonio.

It's established that Bishop Martino is about to become the former Bishop of Scranton. Precisely why, I feel safe in saying, we will never know. There are three possibilities in my view;

1) He collapsed beneath the stress and weight of doing what he felt the need to do here. Subsequent to following orders, he became the target of severe criticism and contempt across the width and breadth of the diocese. All of this took an awful toll. Toll taken, he resigned.

2) Those who sent him here to do what needed to be done realized that the emotional damage and the emptying pews far outweigh the pecuniary benefits of shuttering churches and abandoning neighborhoods that are in need of the stabilizing effect of an open church. It's the flaw of "Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing..." Damage done, perhaps far overdone, he was asked to go with as little fuss as possible.

3) What is now playing out has been the plan all along, meaning this man was sent here to do seriously unpopular work which, once finished, he could leave behind and go elsewhere. Drama done, curtain down, no bows, houselights up, go home.

It could be any of the above, it could be a combination, it could be all three.

Monday's news conference will shed scant light on the situation, it's a strictly controlled affair not open to the public. Shocking? Hardly.

I'd love to be there. I'd love to ask a question, just one question:


"Bishop Martino, sir, considering your shutting down dozens upon dozens of churches due to the weighty burden of expense, just why is a 'closed' seminary still in use by the diocese? How can the diocese justify the upkeep, including grounds maintenance, of this expansive piece of property in a very pricey neighborhood?"

Is there an answer to the question. Sure.

Will it ever be revealed? Of course not.

The Mighty Potato Chip...

Each time I crunch down on a potato chip, I think of mother.

Mother and her beloved potato chips. No, no, Mom never made potato chips, she just adored them.

(Mom and my gram, mom's mom, did make outrageous fish and chips, however, and that's a story for telling another time.)

Divinely simple, the potato chip is an American invention. History seems sure of itself in saying that one George Crum, then chef at a high-end resort in New York, Saratoga Springs in fact, invented the potato chip in 1853. Crum grew irritated with a paying dinner guest who griped about his french fries being too thick. Chefs can be a testy lot, so Crum decided to make a fry so thin that his unhappy diner would surely walk out in a snit. No snit. No walking out. It was love at first crispy bite.

Do I speak for all when I say we understand why?

Potato, oil, salt. In the basic form, that is it. Sure, we Americans can never leave well enough alone, so over the century plus since Crum's insolence changed the snack world, maybe even created the snack world, we've tinkered and toyed with that which might be close to perfection.

That whole "I was born on a diet..." thing is always over there in the shadows, so I need to make the disclaimer that, should I eat seventeen potato chips a week, that's pushing the limit. Since so few are consumed, each bite assumes greater and greater importance. Savor, I do believe, would be the best word. Linger is another good word. The potato chip is to be lingered over while being savored. Such is the potato chip's appeal, nay, its near euphoric delight, that it must be slowly and deliberately enjoyed.

Or, if you're skinny, you can plow them down by the handfuls several times a day.

Mom spoke often of her love for the potato chip, going so far as to declare that should things deteriorate to where there might be one food left on the planet, her fondest wish was that it be the potato chip. That about covers it, don't you think? She never mentioned brand or style.

You could make mine Herr's Sour Cream and Onion Ripples.

Mr. Spellman's Roses...

Things began with a hot and steamy Monday off from work. It's August.

In an August not long after the end of WWII, you see my grandfather Sweeney holding my sister in our backyard. It was August of 1952 in fact, and there's a rose in bloom to his right. Remember that rose.

My occasional days off are pretty much spent being a housebound layabout. I nap a bit, catch up on email, take another nap, get the dogs out to pee, catch another nap. It has a pleasing drowsy rhythm to it.

This past Monday, though, I had a nagging urge to drive to Scranton, to poke around some neighborhoods unpoked by me in one whole heck of a lot of time.

After lunch with my wife in Tunkhannock, Scranton it was.

I was particularly interested in the Pine Brook section of the city, and for a couple of reasons; it's where I'm from, and it's a neighborhood about to be changed forever by the arrival of TCMC a few blocks away.

This is the house in which I was "born."

When the folks brought me home from Mercy Hospital, also but a few blocks away, home was right here in Pine Brook. A double, we lived on the left side at 1008 Monsey Avenue. On the other side at 1006 lived Mr. Spellman, William Spellman.

The photo is fresh, taken just Monday from my truck as I sat across the street. Mr. Spellman, an elderly gentleman, was our landlord and just a really nice man. To the left of the house is an auto parts store, where some guy, maybe an employee, started eyeballing me as I fired off a few frames of the old place. He stared. I stared back. I'm betting he made me for a real estate agent.

I have vivid memories of Mr. Spellman. Some mornings I'd toddle - that's what toddlers do, right? - on over and sit with the kind and gentle Mr. Spellman at his breakfast table. The aroma of fresh brewed or perked coffee reminds me of him to this very second.

My parents were very fond of the Spellmans, staying in touch over the decades until most all of their generations had expired. Mr. Spellman kept a very nice backyard, had himself a green thumb. Even though we moved from his house in 1953, I do remember the backyard and the flowers in bloom. There was also a small vegetable garden up in the left corner of the yard.

Not that you'd be inclined to go in search of it, I'm here to to tell you that there is no 1008 Monsey Avenue today in Scranton. The house is there, the 1000 block of Monsey is long gone, as is the 900 and 1100 of Monsey. While Monsey Avenue surely exists nearby, those three blocks of it were renamed Sanderson Avenue somewhere back in the late 50s. For whatever unknown reason, the city changed the name.

When I memorized my address as just a little kid, it was 1008 Monsey Avenue - and that would Ten-Oh-Eight. The brand new Mr. and Mrs. Vincent T. Sweeney are seen here on their wedding day in the front room of that house on Monsey. My father and mother in the middle, flanked by my uncle and godfather, Jack Sweeney, and my late aunt, Betty Davies. Dad looks like he was working on some Kramer hair long before the world knew what a Kramer was. My mom, Nancy, was the last survivor of that bunch then so young. She was the last to go.

I hadn't even driven past the front of the old house in what has to be at least ten years now. The pleasant surprise is its condition, which isn't half bad at all. My guess is that the property is no longer occupied. Oddly, however, it looks like it hasn't been all that long since someone was performing at least minimal maintenance on the place. Over the 56 intervening years, I have no clue as to its history of residents and/or owners, but it's still there, complete with unbroken windows, in itself remarkable.

Back to Mr. Spellman. There's an alley behind the old house named Spellman Court, which takes its name from his family, so I swung up Ash Street and around and through the alley to get the back view of the once 1008 Monsey Avenue.

Straight ahead, I could see the back doors that I honestly remember as a three year old. In between those doors, there's a set of "Bilco" doors leading to a split basement, one for each side of the double house, or as they've come to be called, double-block houses.

The backyard should be far more overgrown for an abandoned house, which increases the mystery and my curiosity as to just what's going on here. Lacking only a pass or two with a mower, the lawn looks like one that lots of guys spend every weekend babying. It appears to be doing fine all by itself.

I'm sitting there in Spellman Court, staring into a backyard I haven't so much as glanced at in what could be over fifty years. A flood of memories sounds a little corny, so let's just say there was a slow trickle. Right at the head of that trickle were thoughts of Mr. Spellman's roses, which were pretty much smack in the middle of the yard, closer to the house than the alley.

That's when I saw what I really didn't believe I could possibly see.

Right there, still pretty much smack in the middle of that very same yard, roses. White? Cream? Without trespassing, and it was a brief consideration, there was no real way of knowing.

Is it possible? Could the roses I first thought I saw, then racked out my lens and did indeed see, could they be from the same rosebush my grandfather stood near in 1952, the same rosebush I ran around in my shorts in 1953?

Wishful thinking, I suppose. A bit of whimsy as I look back on life in the realization that far more is behind than ahead of me. One thing not capable of being blamed is imagination. Roses, apparently of the same color, are in approximately the same place as were roses nearly 60 years ago.

Consider that there are rosebushes in this country whose documentation verifies them as being 250 years of age. Click and enlarge this small collage. See what you see. See if it might be the same as me.

It was a hazy, hot, and humid day with nothing to do.

I did do something. I saw Mr. Spellman's roses again. I really think I did.

Me and Woodstock...

If you look real hard at the photo over there on the left, you could find someone who might look like me. It's not. I was nowhere near Woodstock.

Claims that Woodstock defined my generation never sat right with me. Undeniably, such has been said countless times by those who observed the phenomena, either first-hand or through the reversed looking glass of time in film, photos, on vinyl, and by legend, truth, and pure myth. Not to be ignored when discussing Woodstock is the fact that, if everyone who said they were there was there, we'd be looking at several million bodies minimum, rather than the factual half million tops. Still, that is one whole lot of people.

Forty years ago, driving to Bethel, New York, to stand in the mud without food or water wasn't high up there on my short list of things to do for the weekend.

I couldn't really tell you for sure where I was most of that weekend in 1969. But it wasn't in Sullivan County, New York. And it most assuredly was not in Woodstock, because Woodstock wasn't held at Woodstock. Woodstock's in another New York County, Ulster, and is almost forty-five miles from what was officially called The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and subtitled, An Aquarian Exposition. Let us give proper acknowledgment that the The Fifth Dimension had told us with great excitement and anticipation that "...this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Aquarius."

Somehow, and no matter how hard I try, The Fifth Dimension and Woodstock don't make much of a fit. And, do tell, just what became of the Age of Aquarius?

Woodstock's town fathers, mothers, and others, had told concert organizers to get lost, they didn't want the headaches of all those hippies in their backyard for a weekend. So, they took it down the road to Bethel.

Wherever it was, I wasn't there. Yeah, I know, it's been said a million times; if you remember the '60s, you weren't really there. Really, I wasn't there, there at Woodstock.

If you were to push the following statement in front of me in any form capable of being signed and witnessed, I'd never make it to the notary. All I can swear to is that I can't swear to this being true. Forty years has blurred much, the summer of 1969 is fuzzy. Elusive memories or not, here's how I remember me and Woodstock.

Like most all of us in our teens, I had this circle of friends which sat inside a broader circle of acquaintances. I can tell you that about all I recall about Woodstock as it unfolded was that a handful of us talked some about going and actually began to drive in that direction. We didn't get very far.

As I sit here forty years past, I can't help but wonder how it was we all knew about Woodstock. No internet. No MTV, VHI. No blogs. TV coverage, while surely existent, couldn't have been all that huge, the networks weren't big into flower power or the children of the flower or promoting any of their gatherings, at least not until after the event. A good guess would be that news of a pending mega-event spread via that underground which ran through every college campus in the country.

That we all knew it was coming is a certainty. We even knew where. I just don't think any of my pals were keyed up enough to make sure they were there.

We set out upon the journey from Scranton to Woodstock.

Somewhere around Hamlin Corners one among us started whining about how he had to be home that night for his grandmother's birthday party or some such, so around we turned and home we came. Any excuse, clearly, was compelling enough. Cutting grandma's birthday cake demanded respect enough that no one was going to challenge the need to be there. I don't recall any sigh of relief. I'd speculate there was one. We might have stopped in the Hamlin Diner for a bite, then popped a Canned Heat tape into the eight-track for the fifteen minute drive home.

For us, the drive to Max Yasgur's farm would have been maybe ninety minutes on a normal day if, say, you were going to Yasgur's to pick up some 'lopes and wax beans. The weekend of "a generation's defining event," driving there from here was likely a five to six hour experience, with a goodly piece of it spent walking or clinging to the roof of a VW bus trying to get closer to the center of the universe, which that weekend was right there in upstate New York, right over the state line.

It's long seemed to me that Woodstock wasn't really Woodstock until it was over, and maybe long over. The sense that something cataclysmic had happened didn't much occur to the mass of sweat-soaked, mud-splashed, and manure-caked, stoned and/or soused young men and women until after they'd gone home, cleaned up, and returned to the banality of their normal lives.

Whatever happened at Woodstock was meaningful, if only because nearly a half million people peaceably gathered in one place without any major problems.

Personally, I know no one who can verify they were there. Unless you were on stage, I suppose no one can really verify being there.

Just today I read a quote from one who swears he was there, in which he says, "I don't remember anything, but 'the vibe' is still with me."

Like, wow, man.