Blog Assignment #2: American Icons

My second potential American icon is the time-tested hot dog. Reaching all the way back into medieval Germanic cultures, the hot dog has so many manifestations that I only feel like talking about the American iteration.

Now I know you’re saying to yourself “Hey Kyle, hot dogs can’t be icons. They’re food!” Ha! I take your silly words and spit all over them. Of course the hot dog is an American icon! Have you ever been to a sporting event of any kind, at any location? If you haven’t, you need to get out more. But for those of you who have visited a concession stand at a sporting event, you know what I’m talking about. It might as well be illegal to omit hot dogs from the menu. They are such a staple of the American sporting event that the venues are allowed to charge five dollars for them, a price that would cause most any other food to be shunned by society.

But, to get down to a more personal level, hot dogs hold a very special place in my heart, and they’ve been holding that place since I got my very first taste of a hot dog back in the other glory days (I was a baby). When I’m hungry, I usually go straight for the hot dog bag, and the reason is that they’re so easy to prepare. It’s the lazy man’s gourmet, really. They come in all different flavors, too. What if I’m feeling like chicken? There’s a hot dog for that. Throw then in the microwave and thirty seconds later you’re feasting. It’s perfect.

Now, while they didn’t have microwaves or gas ovens back in ye olden times, I’m sure the peasants and Kaisers of Eastern Europe both enjoyed hot dogs (or Frankfurters, as they were called back then) equally as much. But life was simpler then. All they had was your good old pork dog, and that was perfectly enough. Then, German, Austrian and Polish immigrants brought their recipes for delicious sausage to America and changed our baseball games forever. Soon, Americans were realizing how amazingly tasty and easy to make the frankfurters were. Unfortunately for us, that’s when the big-wigs at the sports games realized they could charge an arm and a leg for then. But it’s worth wolfing down a five dollar hot dog every once in a while. It makes you feel like an American.