Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. Extra time off from work. Fireworks. Hot dogs. This little hot dog was getting spoiled at my house last weekend. Sumo loves to be held and needs to have a lift since he has arthritis in his feet and legs so can’t scurry around the way he’d like.
Did you eat hot dogs this weekend? The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that Americans ate around 155 million hot dogs this weekend. I didn’t eat a hot dog, but I might have if somebody had invited me to a wiener roast. That’s when hot dogs taste best.
So did hot dogs really get their name from dachshunds? The term “hot dog” is credited to sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan. At a 1901 baseball game in New York, vendors began selling hot dachshund sausages in rolls. From the press box, Dorgan could hear the vendors yelling, “Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!” He sketched a cartoon depicting the scene but wasn’t sure how to spell dachshund so he took the easy way out and called them “hot dogs.” The rest is history. (Info from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/hotdog1.html)
I’m thinking that the vendors grabbed that name fast. “Get your hot dogs here!” has to be easier to yell than “Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot.”
I’m right there with that cartoonist. Sometimes it’s easier to think up a new word than to figure out how to spell it. For instance: “A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell.” That may be the reason they usually go by the name “mums.” 🙂
Here are a couple of photos left over from my book party last Sunday. I had so much fun talking books and laughing with my hometown readers. Wish you could have all been there. And then I got to sign books. In the first picture, I’m posing before the book party with Pauline, my almost 92 year old friend who drove up from a nearby town to get my book even though she had a different family party to go to. Pauline and I go way back. Her husband played the piano for the first quartet my husband sang in forty years ago. Pauline and I sat together at a lot of gospel singings in those days. She was a sweetheart then and she still is. She remembered to hold my book up so the title would show. 
Then Joy and Carolyn carried copies of my books home with them. Both were attending one of my Hometown Book Launches for the first time. Now I’ll have to wait a whole year to maybe celebrate a new book. If I could only figure out a way to write faster.
I’m cleaning off my desk today to get ready for a new project. Seems like I need a clean slate for that. Got to do some research for the new idea, but first I’m reviewing a book I wrote some years ago that was never published but just might find a home if I rewrite it a bit or maybe a lot. And for those of you who take time to read Jocie’s Heart of Hollyhill blog posts on Monday or Tuesday, I think she’s ready to start writing her book and posting a little at a time. I’ll have to ask her.
Thanks for dropping by. And next Sunday, I’m going to start a new blog giveaway. A mystery picture one I think. They’re always fun even if you all are great guessers and I have a hard time fooling you.