The best part of this experience was the restaurant itself--its menus from the many eras the restaurant has seen, one featuring 8 cent dogs, and 15 cent pig's foot, the sage green wooden cupboards behind the counter, the candy shelves that cry out for penny candies, the dusty porcelain from bygone days with Chris' spelled out along a saucer rim. The hot dog itself--GV and I split the "two weiners in one bun" (upon ordering this, a very robust female customer burst out in almost wicked laughter)--was nothing to write home about. Dear Mom, Chris' hot dog was a hot dog like many others. It's appeal was more in the atmosphere surrounding it, and the idea that in 1917, someone had been at this counter eating just about the same thing. The restaurant stands out on a block filled with empty store-fronts, most of which bore paintings representing biblical stories on their boarded up windows and doors. A man was slowly mopping the front entryways to these shuttered shops. The street stems off the intersection where Rosa Parks boarded that bus not so very many years ago, and there's a sign there. And not much else. I'm glad I went to there, glad it's still a place one can go to.
I was that robust female who laughed when you said you wanted two weiners in one bun. Love it.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to a hotdog place in Boston tomorrow called "Spike's Junkyard Dog" and I'm going to have a veggie dog with mustard and hot peppers!