Interesting item for sale… but we know what would happen if this really was used… a pan full of “stuff” from inside of the so called “hot dog wiener.” Hello, My friend who owned the 57 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop Sedan had a great paying summer job. He worked in a meat company in Long Beach near our high school. He was not able to go to the beach with us, except for the weekends. But, he liked it that he was one of the only guys with money in his pockets all of the time and could buy any hot rod part for his 57 Chevy hardtop sedan. Yes, his sedan was the most modified of all of the teenage cars in our high school group. Job/money/modifications at any time= one cool teenage car. Since it was completely stock on the outside, except for chrome wheels, it looked as if it came from the local Chevy dealer. Pristine inside and the stock 283 motor got a lot of hours of work to make it the most modified of all of our teenage cars. Yes, the 53 Chevy Bel Air hard top had the most exterior work done, white tuck and roll, custom paint and body work, yet his motor was stock and as slow as molasses. The 57 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop had many jobs… So, there were two ways to go at the time. For me, riding around in both were fun adventures. But, who would not want to be inside of a cool 57 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop with dual quads, headers, Traction Master bars, 4:11 Positraction and a custom 4 speed we installed. Then on some Friday nights, a set of Bruce Slicks fit perfectly under the rear wheel well and that made it much faster and cool looking. The sheer acceleration was fun. Not as fast as my C&O Stick Hydro modified 348 motor and 4:56 Positraction gears in the 58 Impala, but fun none the less. Jnaki He drove the 57 to his work. The meat company was in the middle of an industrial tract and as one drove up to the facility with the windows open, the aroma of cooking meat filled the air. We found out later that he was in charge of making hot dogs. What? His line of hot dogs were the kinds we usually saw in cartoons and old movies with the hot dogs all attached together in one long string about two to three feet in length. Yes, that is how they are made initially. Get a tube of whatever outside material it was… no I did not ask. Insert a handle that looked like a water hose outlet end with a commercial lever for on/off flow. Then stick the handle end inside of the tube and squirt down to the end. If it did not go down to the end, one had to squeeze the stuff and move it down the line to compact it in the end of the tube. Then once it was standard hot dog size, the end was tied in a knot. (ever wonder why hot dog have a crimping on the ends?) Then the next squirt was shot down the tube and moved to the sealed end to shape the next hot dog. And so on until the 2 to 3 foot long tube had a row of formed hot dog cylinders ready for the warmer oven. They were all draped on a rolling rack and moved inside of the tall oven. It was not baked for a long time, but just inside for a minute or two. Then rolled outside in the cooling room until taken down for the cutting machine. This is where they were washed with a squirter hose and left to dry in the room. So, the hot dog history was finally opened up to teenage inquisitive minds. Now, as we grabbed that solution of “stuff” moving down the tube, one questions, what it was and why we, as teenagers still eat it. The odd thing lit up our minds, as gooey as the whole process was, we still continued to love barbecued hot dogs until adult life. But, my friend with the 57 Chevy never ate a hot dog any time, anywhere. Not even char broiled at the foot long hot dog restaurant. He always ordered a char broiled hamburger or cheeseburger instead. So, he never ate any chili dogs, either. At Lion’s Dragstrip or anywhere else. Why? YRMV
The Jalopy Journal
