View From ThE Apple House

When I was eight years old growing up on Long Island, my father was still in the learning stages of his career as a manager.  He would eventually become supervisor of various oil plants through out New York state, but for purposes of this story, it suffice to say he made enough money for my mom, sister and me to get by.

One of the things we would do that didn’t cost a lot of money was pile in the car and take a ride.   We didn’t do it much during the winter months, but as soon as springtime arrived, off we went.  We never knew where we were headed; that was part of the fun.  I am sure this is where I got my thirst for adventure and wanderlust, but back then I was happy to just be going somewhere else.

Veering the wood paneled station wagon onto the Long Island Expressway, it wasn’t too long before we veered right off again, onto a less traveled and sparsely populated area.  To us, this was ‘the country’, full of big trees and dirt roads leading places unknown.  These roads weren’t too far off the beaten path, but they were different from the suburban manicured lawns and sidewalks we had become used to after moving from Brooklyn.

We might as well have been in Kansas.

My dad would point out the potato fields growing to the right or left of us, as if he was our tour guide for the afternoon.

“Right a head up there, see that?  Well, that’s some cabbage. Take a whiff.” There was no denying the rows and rows of green heads protruding from the earth were what he said they were.  We didn’t have to breathe too deeply either.

Sometimes we’d see onion fields, and other times thousands of yellow stalked soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder and going on, for what looked to me, miles.

More often than not, he would pull the car over to the side of the road and we’d all get out, quietly surveying the scene before us.   There were no other cars around, and I wondered who had done all this.   Corn fields were always amazing to me, and the fact they sometimes they seemed to be holding each other up, rather than standing alone rooted firmly in the ground.

One afternoon, we happened to see a man on the side of the road with some kind of a cooking set up.  This was before food trucks and the like existed.  All he had was a silver Coleman stove with a big pot of boiling water and a few divided steel wells being kept warm with sterno.

The big pot held hot dogs, and the wells different toppings;  once you got closer to him, you could smell onions, peppers and sauerkraut.   Further to his left were a basket of hot dog rolls, ketchup and mustard.

But the thing that stands out most in my memories was his ‘brown sauce.’  It was the precursor to a chili sauce of today, but back then, it was a phenomenon.  How ingenious that someone would mix together hamburger beef, onions, Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of chili pepper!  Better yet, pile the concoction onto a hot dog!

Although somewhat skeptical when we first tried this culinary miracle, it became a staple of our travels.  Whenever we piled into the car after that, it was to ‘go get a hot dog’ – the unknown traveling became secondary.

As the years went by and I started to wink at my teenage years, suddenly the hot dog excursion wasn’t as fascinating or intriguing.  I had important things on my mind (boys) and I didn’t want to miss any time with my friends.

I would relent, however, and go with my family, now two additional siblings in tow.   The taste was a good as ever, but it was only, after all, a hot dog.

Whenever I am missing my family, and especially my dad, I try to make this brown sauce for my hot dogs.  It’s good, but it’s never the same.

Nothing ever is.