What We Saw at the Hot Dog Joint

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I had a terrible craving for a hot dog this week.

While any hot dog probably would have done the trick, I figure it’s best to go with the tried and true in a case like this. Since we were out running errands anyway, the Hub and I decided to take Kidzilla to a favorite local hot dog joint – one that is celebrating its 90th year in business this year.

This place is great. It’s a local tradition. It seems as though everyone in town has gone to school with some member of the family who owns it. The woman behind the counter has been serving up lunch there since I was in high school. The décor and the menu are both pretty much the same as they’ve always been. OK, the décor may be as modern as the ’70s, but I would hazard a guess that the menu hasn’t changed much in all the time they’ve been open.

My Grandfather loved this joint. He taught us the finer points of eating cheese dogs with “everything” chased by a cold chocolate milk and a Tastykake® for dessert. Sounds strange, I know, but if you tried it you’d agree it’s the only way to go.

The place was pretty full today, as it always is, and we grabbed one of the last open tables. As we enjoyed our lunch, Kidzilla looked around at the crowded room. She took a slug of her chocolate milk, then spoke.

Z: Mamma? Do people ever sit at tables with people that are not their own family?

Me: Well, usually when people go out to eat they sit with the people who came along with them. It could be their family or friends or maybe someone they work with…

Z: But what if there was someone who didn’t have a seat or a family and they needed to sit? Would they sit with a person they didn’t know? A person who wasn’t part of their family?

Me: I’m not sure. But if that were true, then I would hope that someone who had room at their table would offer them a seat. My Grandfather definitely would have done that if he saw someone who needed a seat.

No sooner had I said the words than a woman came around the corner of the seating area. She was smallish, with graying red hair and large eyes. She was someone’s grandmother – she had to be. She had on purple Capri pants and a flowered shirt. Her glasses were sort of a sparkly gold when the sunlight hit them through the front windows. She carried her tray in front of her and her purse on her arm, scanning the room for an empty table, but there were none. She started to walk towards us and I knew immediately that I would invite her to sit with us.

I never got the chance. As she passed the table right next to ours, she asked the woman who was eating there alone, “May I sit here with you”?

“Oh, of course,” she replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Before five minutes has passed, they were smiling and chatting like old friends. Perhaps they were old friends. Or neighbors. But no. These two women were strangers. I know because they introduced themselves and the woman who had been seated already said they recently moved here from out of state, to be with a daughter or a granddaughter who had lost her husband. They swapped stories about children and grandchildren and houses and life and towns where they had lived.

It was all I could do to keep from crying. I didn’t say anything to Zilla at the time. I didn’t want to draw attention to what I was watching unfold. Maybe I should have, but I was kind of stuck there, watching them and sneaking a listen. I’ll tell her later that the thing she worried about had happened just the way she imagined. I want her to know that people really are OK. They are nice and they are kind. They really do let strangers sit with them and pitch in the last thirty-seven cents that the boy in line behind them didn’t have to finish paying for his lunch.

It’s that kind of a place, this dog joint. It’s the kind of place where these things happen – probably all the time. I saw two of them there just today. And I did tear up a little more than once this afternoon as I thought of what I saw. I thought of my Grandfather sitting in those very booths… I thought of how he loved those dogs and how he would have done just those very same things.