If I were to slap a title on this essay, it would be “Dead Hot dog Walking”. Many years ago, I attended a church which featured a youth service on Friday nights. We would play bible-centered versions of Charades or Twenty Questions, then perhaps have an object lesson on the wages of sin or the prospect of immediate Rapture. You know, the sort of topics that keeps impressionable twelve year old boys awake all night.

Following the service, we would all move to the Youth Center, which in our case was a refurbished tool and die shop. The adults would all grab a cup of coffee from the avocado green percolator and huddle around a communal table. The youth would play ping-pong, bumper pool or foosball. The more ambulatory amongst us would sneak off to the frozen custard stand and pig out on milkshakes. It was a good time to be alive and young in the frozen tundra of Northeastern Ohio.

But there was one part of the ritual that remains seared in my memory. The 70s were a time of great food experimentation- microwaves were common, hot air popcorn poppers were all the rage and I even remember a pre-George Foreman hamburger maker that did a great job with grilled peanut butter sandwiches. But the scariest thing of all was the hot dog cooker we used at the church. Talk about the most Vietnamese way of cooking food. The cooker featured two sets of ominous looking spikes. The idea was to impale one end of a hot dog on a spike, then gently arch it over to the other spike. After the appropriate amount of convicts had been loaded onto Old Sparky, the warden would throw a switch and the hot dogs would be electrocuted to a turn.

The lights would dim briefly, then we would pay our fifty cents and grab a dog or two. I believe cooler heads (or a few lawsuits) prevailed, and by the 80s we bid adieu to the scariest food preparation device in recent memory. I’m not sure, but I think there may be an object lesson on capital punishment in there somewhere. Who’s up for a milkshake?