The Hot Dog Man
Back in 1937, there was a Hot Dog Man who parked his red and yellow pushcart on the southwest corner of 87th across from the construction site of the new Art Deco building at 565 West End Avenue. I always stood a couple of feet away to watch and he'd frown and tell me to stand back. I never bought anything. My mother had told me that he stored his hot dogs under his bed at night and that if I ate one I might get infantile paralysis.
I didn't believe it about him storing his hot dogs under his bed, but infantile paralysis had us all scared. We knew it was contagious, but not how or from what and so everything was under suspicion. If you picked up a dime from the sidewalk and someone called out "Infantile Paralysis!" you'd drop it and blow on your fingers to get rid of the germs. Three kids on our block had had it; one was dead, the other two were crippled, like President Roosevelt, who had to use a wheelchair.
The aroma of the onions and the sauerkraut wafting out in every direction drew me to the corner where the Hot Dog Man parked his pushcart almost every day. Though I couldn't eat them, I liked watching the deliverymen or the men from the construction site eating them. They'd order "a frank" or "a dog" and the Hot Dog Man would pull out a napkin, open the sliding glass door of the cabinet on top of his pushcart, stick his two-pronged fork into a roll, take it out, lay it on the napkin, open it up with the fork, flip open the lid of his metal cooker, spear a hot dog, lay it on the open roll, flip the cooker closed, lay down the fork and pick up the top of the mustard pot at the side of his cart. The handle had a spreader that sat inside the pot and he'd slather on mustard, drop the spreader back into the pot, pick up his fork and ask, "sauerkraut or onions?"
That was my favorite part. I'd had grilled hot dogs at Nedick's and at Chock Full O' Nuts, where "nothing was ever touched by human hands." I'd had them at the stand on 89th and Broadway and later I ate boiled Harry Stevens franks at the Polo Grounds where the term 'hot dog' originated, but I never got to have one with sauerkraut or with onions in red sauce the way the Hot Dog Man served them. The sauerkraut and onions were inside the same cooker as the hot dogs but beneath a different lid--the sauerkraut in a cylindrical container, the onions in a rectangular tray. The Hot Dog Man put on one or the other, slathered more mustard on, and handed the hot dog in the napkin to the customer who sprinkled on salt or red pepper from shakers on a rack. Most would buy a slim bottle of root beer, sarsaparilla, grape, orange, or lemon and lime soda from a bin of melting ice, as well. I think the hot dogs cost a dime, the sodas a nickel.
Sometimes a deliveryman, or a man from the construction site would see me standing there staring at the hot dogs and offer to buy one for me. I would just shake my head, too embarrassed to answer. It was during the Depression and I knew they thought that I was a poor kid and that I was hungry. I didn't want to tell them that my father was a doctor and that we had plenty of money and that if one of his patients couldn't afford to pay him they would give us a Virginia ham at Christmas or bake us a pie. Above all, I didn't want to have to tell them that the hot dog they were eating might give them infantile paralysis.
The Hot Dog Man
Hot Dog Cooker
The Hot Dog Man
The Hot Dog Man
The Hot Dog Man
