A Hot Oil Tradition

Traditions are important to people. Each Spring there is one holiday/tradition that most Americans, and several retailers, look forward to with great anticipation – National Corndog Day.

I first celebrated this grand event with Alice. Even though Alice doesn’t eat swine (her word, not mine), she knows a good celebration when she sees it, plus, she had a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) ball caps so it only made sense to engage. In many ways, we started celebrating in the same fashion as the Day’s originators, Brady Sahnow and Henry Otley, did, just the two of us eating corndogs – well, just one of us, really – and playing basketball, sans the part about basketball.

Several years later it has turned into an annual event for my friends and I – made complete by the official National Corndog Day Party Pack which includes light-up pins, poster, tally sheet, PBR koozie, t-shirt and corndog mints. This year’s participation was amazing. Almost 20 of us convoyed over to our favorite fast food restaurant and, as usual, they weren’t expecting us and weren’t particularly happy to see us. We don’t mind the disdain as long as they hurry up with our Foster Farms corndogs.

We hung our tally sheet on the lattice wall of the ‘private’ room we commandeered, put our bell on the table, and started our competition. With each corndog and tater tot eaten the competitors would ring the bell, mark the tally sheet, and an angel swine would get his wings – hopefully they were buffalo wings, those are delicious.

Once everyone was in a deep-fried coma, we enjoyed a couple of courtesy cones, corndog cupcakes, and retreated to my house where we continued to tally up points, this time for PBRs.  Despite the complete gut rot, I must say, this was a very winning day and I am really looking forward to next year. Like Tevye (Fiddler on the Roof), I’m a sucker for tradition and (kosher or Foster Farms) corndogs.