On Thursday, June 23, 1898, The Spokesman-Review recounted a baseball game between Seattle and Spokane teams. The reporter noted that a Seattle fan tried to shake the confidence of Spokane's star first baseman by shouting, "Leslie Belt is a hot dog!" It's the first archived news reference to hot dogs in Spokane.
The insult is mildly offensive and downright American.
Though the national food is probably hamburgers, hot dogs have achieved unique mythical status in the country's psyche, simultaneously connotated with national independence, baseball, the American dream, and regional identity. The humble hot dog can be seen lurking in the background of nearly every national memory. July is national hot dog month, and it's time to give it the credit it's due.
Sausage is the perfect zero-waste innovation. It developed broadly across cultures as a way to use and preserve meat. Each sausage encapsulated its maker's identity — every city, butcher or grandmother had different meats and spices at their disposal, developing different grinds and flavors that taught the history of the region in every bite.
Frankfurt, Germany, claims credit for the invention of the finely ground "frankfurter," though Vienna — or "Wien," in German — fiercely debates the origins of the "wiener."
Either way, European immigrants brought their sausages to America. They also brought their favorite pets — specifically, dachshund dogs. Jokes about Germans, sausages and their long skinny dogs were conflated with the commercialization of "hot dogs," and the name stuck.
At the turn of the century, hot dog carts were the perfect vehicle for an upwardly mobile immigrant. Hot dogs were cheap and portable, a fitting meal for a nation becoming infatuated with efficiency, mass production and convenience.
Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, a disgusting foray into industrialized meat, as hot dogs took the country by storm. Hungry lunchers started to wonder, what kind of mystery meat lurked in the anonymous brown-beige grind?
Janet Riley, president of the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council and self-proclaimed "Queen of Wien," assures Americans that hot dogs are filled with exactly the quality of meat you'd buy at a butcher store.
Feel free to watch a video on the council's website to see blocks of frozen beef ground into "meat batter," a brown sludge that flows out of pipes, funnels into casing, then is smoked and sealed.
Hot dogs have survived years of bad press. In 1922, the Spokesman ran "Is Hot Dog Meat, or What?" Almost a hundred years later, NPR ran a story about researchers claiming each hot dog could take 36 minutes off the eater's life.
Throughout history, organizations have run to the wiener's defense. In 1922, the United Master Butchers of America wanted to introduce "national legislation making the calling of a perfectly respectable wienerwurst a 'hot dog' a felony ... for a wienerwurst in its natural state is cool, and there isn't even a scintilla of dog meat within 40 rows of apple trees in it."
But the hot dog doesn't need a defender. It's charming, winsome and politically savvy on its own. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt served King George VI hot dogs at a Hyde Park picnic in June 1939, the two signaled a new era of US-British cooperation — an alliance that eventually stopped Hitler.
In fact, every U.S. president since FDR has been photographed eating a hot dog, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter. (One Reddit user posits this might have been a reason Carter lost reelection.)
Japanese royalty, Miss Universe candidates, and Fidel Castro have all gotten photo ops with the beloved snack. In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ate a hot dog for lunch in Des Moines, Iowa, and is rumored to have conceded, "We have beaten you to the moon, but you have beaten us in sausage making."
Just like sausage, hot dogs are central to regional identity. Maine's favorite frankfurters are neon red, a Philadelphia dog includes a fish cake and slaw, and Chicagoans stack everything on a weiner except ketchup, which is strictly verboten.
On Independence Day alone, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that Americans eat 150 million hot dogs. During the entire "peak hot dog season" from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the council says the U.S. consumes 7 billion hot dogs — that's 818 hot dogs every second.
If nothing else, consider the friendships that have ended over a simple question: Is a hot dog a sandwich? The "Queen of Wien" weighs in: "Limiting the hot dog's significance by saying it's 'just a sandwich' is like calling the Dalai Lama 'just a guy.'"
The hot dog somehow spans culture and class, disgust and delight, poverty and prosperity, maybe even sacred and secular.
So next time you order a ballpark frank, grab a Costco dog, or microwave an Oscar Meyer wiener, ponder this delicious history of human survival, success and silliness. ♦
