Elliot's Hot Dogs

Describing the nuances of a what makes a hot dog good is like applying Shakespeare to Dumb and Dumber (I could; let's try. Hmm. It's a movie of Infinite Jest. There. I did it. Shakespeare to Dumb and Dumber. Yup. Well. Big Gulps). 

Maybe it was the compressed, fried and manually flattened rolls, the thin, flimsy, dripping wet sponge hot dogs they recklessly pulled from the metal vat, the relish sacked in the soggy space between the two, or the tangy, tart and lick-your-lips goodness of Ipswich Ale Mustard (available online!) that leaked over the waxen paper.  Eating an Elliot's Hot Dog was a noble cause. One of those food indulgences you suffered the slings and arrows for later on. 

I always got three Hot Dogs with the Works. "Three dogs with the works," I'd say. Whether it was at the end of a senior-year day of high school, a snack before an evening church service, breaks in-between Driver's Ed class, or at the end of a long, long out-of-the-way stop from West Virginia, I always got three dogs with the Works (Ketchup doesn't belong on a hot dog. See, someone wrote a book about it. I'm not wrong. You just don't put ketchup on a hot dog).

Best Hot Dog I've ever had. Alas, I knew them well.

Oh, and Dad, I know you didn't like Elliot's Hot Dogs. Not a bit. But if you say "Methinks I smell a rat," well, that just wouldn't be nice because I'm feeling a little lost right now because they closed my favorite place in the whole freaking universe to eat, a place where I spent a lot of my childhood eating at and now that place is gone and I'll never eat there again and so it feels like a huge part of my childhood is gone and just cast aside like it means nothing especially when it's been like two years since I last had those three dogs with the Works and it was like 10pm when I had them in a hotel room and so I don't even think I enjoyed them that much and I didn't get them from the real hole-in-the-wall by the church where I really like to get the hot dogs from the place, where, you could probably quote Hamlet at any other time and I laugh and I'd be like "Yeah, that place! Wow it was a dump!" but I'm just not gonna be like that this time because they closed Elliot's and didn't even tell anyone they were gonna close it so a lot of other people didn't get to enjoy their last Elliot's Hot Dog cause they just didn't know and I think if they knew they would've enjoyed that last hot dog and they wouldn't feel lost and really vulnerable right now. Like me. So, Dad, don't say that.