The Wienermobile

Not long ago, I was driving down the highway with my kids when one told me that he just saw a really big hot dog on wheels.  By the time I looked, it was gone.  The claim was naturally questioned by the middle schooler in the back seat!  I interrupted the amusing exchange to tell them that he may actually have seen the Wienermobile.

The Wienermobile, I explained, was actually a large hot dog on wheels that traveled around north America, and beyond, essentially advertising Oscar Mayer while also performing charitable work.  The last time I had seen it was more than 3,000 miles away and over 3 decades earlier.  As I recall, it had come to my hometown in southern California and was passing out colorful whistles shaped like wieners, which I happily waited in line to receive.

We continued on our way and I forgot about it until that evening when I looked it up on the Oscar Mayer website.   It turned out, that he had indeed seen the Wienermobile and it was going to be in our area through the next day raising money for sick children.  My kids had to see this for themselves, so the next day we were off to take a look…

It was in a supermarket parking lot, not unlike the one it was in when I had seen it last.

The Wienermobile looked pretty much the same too.

Everyone was busy inspecting it and the gullwing door was particularly fascinating to all present.

As you can see, parallel parking and backing-up should probably be avoided when driving it as the result could easily be a damaged dog.

This particular Wienermobile was not as big as you would think up close, but was every bit as cool as you would expect in person!

The inside was bright with large comfortable looking seats.

Surprisingly, it also sported a state-of-the-art sound system and flat screen monitors as well.

The license plate was of course personalized and fully appropriate.

There have been many models of Wienermobile since its inception in 1936, though the overall look has remained surprisingly consistent.

The Wienermobile staff also still hand out small whistles, though these were not brightly colored, though they instead glow in the dark.

As we were walking away my youngest thanked me and said that we always went on the coolest adventures, to which I had to agree.  If you ever see a large wiener on wheels, do yourself a favor and check it out!

Waking up…

I was sleeping soundly like many of us do during the work week.  I was young and living far from home when I awoke to the sounds of a siren and a voice from a loudspeaker.  As my consciousness returned, I quickly recalled that I was not in southern California living in the college dorms at UCSB anymore.  No, I slowly remembered that I had taken a break from college to learn more about the real world and travel.  I had joined the Army, attended training in Texas and Indiana, and was now living in Germany.

The voice and sirens that I heard were coming from a military police vehicle and I was being told to report to work.  The voice also said that it was not known if this was a training exercise or a real world alert.  That is how I found out that the United States had retaliated on Libya in 1986 for, among other things, the bombing of a disco in Berlin that was a favorite hang out for soldiers like me.

This time around, my military service days are memories, which have been replaced by parenthood, teaching, and working on the east coast.  Though I found out about our latest engagement with Libya in a more mundane way, via the Internet, it reminded me of the very real threats that exist outside of our work-a-day lives.  Threats that many of us, even in a post 9/11 world, still appear to take for granted.

How this is going to end is anyone’s guess, though many, as always, are making predictions, but the truth is they do not know.  Meanwhile, most of us wake up to alarm clocks and start our days and only think about these things when we hear about them on the news or when someone brings it up in conversation.

As for me, well I am at a point in life when I am just content to be waking up to a new day, though with far less a sense of certainty about what the future will bring than I had 25 years ago…