Americana

Quick! Think of a food that could be termed 'All-American' - synonymous with the flag and motherhood and good times.

It's such a simple thing, light pinky-red in color, about five inches long and one inch in diamete with little pucker marks appearing at both ends of its cylindrical shape. It's got a bland texture, rather like canned pudding or instant mashed potatoes, An indescribable taste - sort of spicy, but not very. Or meaty, but not really. It's a taste all its own - it's a hot dog!

Hot dogs are almost a religion in America. Little kids love them, or at least that's what television commercials would have us believe. We've all seen that cherubic toddler sinking his tiny baby teeth into a hot dog, wrapped in a white flour, enriched bun, dripping with mustard, relish and ketchup. And we've seen the boy (of course!) and his father, enjoying a ball game with a hog dog in one hand and a soda in the other!

Mother and daughter go to town for a day of shopping and enjoy a hot dog from a street-side vendor. They're featured at parades and circuses and fairs and carnivals - everywhere!

Hot dogs are a staple fare at another all-American activity - the picnic. They're grilled over an open fire (charcoal usually, it's easier) until a thick black coating covers the pinky hue and the indescribable taste is replaced by a carbony, sooty, charred flavor. You see, everyone loves a hot dog even if he really doesn't like it.

Another plus for the All-American Hog Dog is its price, or so the women's magazines tell me. They also say there are a million ways to cook a hot dog. Boil it, fry it, saute it, chop it into pieces and mix it with anything. Pretend it's sausage. Pretend it's hamburger. Pretend it's chicken - but that's going a bit far. Smother it in spaghetti sauce, drown it in barbecue sauce. Mix it with beans. Whatever you do to a hot dog, it's still delicious, versatile and everyone's favorite.

The hot dog is readily available in numerous variations. Small neighborhood butcher shops stock them in bulk, buy one or two or even five. And the deli department of the supermarket has several variations on the theme.

The favorite place to find hot dogs is the huge porcelain and chrome case in the supermarket where they're surrounded by their cousins, luncheon meats. And it's there that I can read the label on the polyvinyl chloride bubble pack: "Contains beef and pork, water, salt, sugar, sodium acid pyrophosphate, spice, smoke flavoring, paprika, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrite with BHS and BHT added to protect flavor."

From a 1976 advertisement from Hess's Department Store in 
Allentown. At the time, I worked as a copywriter and advertising
designer at Leh's Department Store, just up Hamilton Avenue

(I wrote this piece in 1976 for a writing workshop at Lehigh Community College. The instructor commented: 'A saccharine but biting invective in the guise of a commercial monologue. A sagacious variation on a theme - satire in the Swiftian tradition. Methinks this works more journalistically than fictionally.')

Jeannette

One of my writing heroes, Jeannette (2 n's and 2 t's) Buck died last week at the age of 85.

I first met Jeannette in the delivery room at Charles Cole Memorial Hospital as she stood at Dr. George's side, offering encouragement as I labored to bring forth my firstborn. Jeannette - tender and steady, observing this young couple's joy with a mother's heart, with a writer's heart.

I recognized her when we met again in a writing group organized by Leader-Enterprise reporter Wanda Rader.  Through the years, a group of us continued writing together. Dolores with her stories of  peacocks and Virginia's china, Muriel writing of her junk drawer, my mother writing about her grandfathers, me writing about my Woodstock experience and wishbones and the old neighborhood (a piece that might become a blog post). Other stories by other women who wrote with us now and then - brought together by our love of putting words together.

But Jeannette just wrote and wrote and wrote some more. She became an activist for AIDS awareness as she wrote through her son's illness and death. She wrote about grief, what she called the "loose board" that comes up to whack you in the face just when you think you're moving through it. Her beloved life partner lost to her after the long goodbye of Alzheimer's Disease. She wrote of that, too.

Her "Words Of Gold" in the local newspaper brought a weekly dose of local history, family history and rural life to readers across the country. Former editor, Donald Gilliland spoke at Jeannette's memorial service and among other things, he mentioned that she always met her deadlines - high praise in the newspaper world!

The internet arriving in Jeannette's yellow house on Rt. 49 brought her a whole new audience of readers. I considered it an honor to be on the list to receive her weekly column in an email. Her facebook posts and comments were sometimes silly, sometimes insightful and always well written!

Filed away for a moment like this, I have unearthed our writing assignments put together in a packet all those years ago. And this morning, listening to the rain on the roof, I'm thinking about writing - Jeannette's, and mine too, and I hear her whisper to me "just do it" – and I will.

(I blogged about one shared writing experience here.)