Natural Skin Casings

Concessions

Photo by 王 大洪 on Unsplash

The hot dog stand was in the far north corner of Caledonia Beach, more rock than sand, a few carpet runners thrown in front for the more tender-footed of the patrons, not that they helped much.

If hot dogs can be beloved, they were.

Arnie Grafton offered more toppings than most, had three different color ketchups for the kids.

In Popson Shores he was Arnie the Hot Dog guy, they’d call his name, he’d wave.

People would ask “have you always been a hot dog guy, Arnie?” He’d lie and say yes, what could it hurt, who cares, yeah, I’ve always been a hot dog guy, Seminole Lake Municipal Golf Course in Florida, had the Pemberton Community Schools account in Arkansas, basically all over.

Arnie started losing his hair seemingly the night he graduated from high school, always wore an old Braves hat pulled down over his caterpillar-with-a -perm eyebrows. Stepped out of the hot dog stand, took off the hat, wiped sweat from his sevenhead with his forearm, glanced at the beach.

Guy was stepping from the water with a body board, young, too tan for a Michigan summer, zero body fat.

Arnie thought he saw a tiny speckle of gray on the chest hair. A speckle of hope.

“Interest you in a hot dog, Laird Hamilton?”

The guy looked over, looked around as though Arnie was talking to someone else.

Realizing Arnie had to be talking to him he said “oh…um…I don’t carry money on me when I’m…”

“On the house, the shack, the cart,” Arnie said.

The guy shrugged his shoulders, Arnie noticing a hint of skin creping. Maybe the guy wasn’t too young. Of course he was, Arnie thought, but maybe just old enough to take a chance on a 79 year old with a ten year lease on a beach concession.

“Ok, thanks,” the guy said, walking toward the anthropomorphic Hot Dog with the spring arm that allows it to wave in the breeze.

Arnie could feel himself stiffening, generous and mostly unnecessary doses of Cialis flowing through his aging veins.

The guy stopped abruptly, almost as though he noticed.

“Tell you what,” the guy said, “let me go fetch my mother and I’ll buy a hot dog for both of us.”

Arnie’s heart melted at the sweetness, though something else melted too.

Kinda hard to work a guy who was beaching with his mother.

Two with extra relish and sun dried tomatoes went out, as well as a discussion with a woman his age about all beef hot dogs being part beef ear, before the tan body boarder came back with his equally tan mother in tow. They were not Michigan tans. Arnie pondered the origin of the UVA kissed pigment as the guy said “I’m Travis, this is my mother Lucille.”

“I’m Arnie Grafton, the King of the Lake Huron Hot Dog Scene and…”

“Ohhhhhh, the hell you’re Arnie Grafton,” Lucille screeched as though she was a sentient seagull.

“I know exactly who you are, and you know who I am.”

Arnie stepped back onto the bottom aluminum bun rack, twisting his ankle like the curl of a storm wave.”

He opened his mouth to protest when Lucille said “You’re Freddy Friedman. Fantastic Freddy Friedman,” the sarcasm in the word Fantastic threatening to recook the already grilled dogs.

Even her son looked terrified.

“I assure you…” Arnie attempted, watching Lucille shake her head no angrily, inexplicably never breaking eye contact. She turned to Travis.

“You know the story of the worst day of my life.”

“The day dad took you nude hang gliding in Nepal?”

“The other story. The TV show.”

Frederick Arnold Grafton Friedman reached into the relish tray and shoved a handful of neon green in his mouth.

He was looking at LuLu Parneval, his gorgeous, often scantily clad hostess on Fantastic Freddy’s Frolic Factory, Honolulu community access cable television 1982.

Freddy had met a few zoology students in a Marriott bar and they convinced him they had taught a hippopotamus to skate.

He rented the Honolulu Municipal Ice Arena, promoted the show for weeks, put LuLu in a minidress on top of the skating hippo.

His memory played the scene as Lucille stepped forward , reached into the hot dog cart and slapped the relish out of Freddy’s mouth, the greatest spit take in the history of TV, untelevised.

“That poor creature”, Lucille bellowed and hobbled down the beach, her hot, shocked son following.

The zoology students were poachers who couldn’t peddle the hippo.

It didn’t know how to skate. It sprawled on the ice, crushing Lucille’s leg and ending her modeling career.

Freddy did 19 months for cruelty to animals and his TV career was over.

In prison, he thought the hot dogs were awful and set out to correct it.

His cheek still stinging from the slap, Frederick Arnold Grafton Friedman heard someone say “ two with everything”

He looked up.

“Read the sign, “ he said. “I offer thirty-eight different toppings. Six maximum per dog.”

“I want one with everything,” the customer said.

Arnie rubbed his cheek.

“I promise you pal, you can never have everything.”

******

{This was written as part of the Keyboard Catharsis Writing Program I created at Passenger Recovery Community Center in Hamtramck, Michigan. The story was written in less than two hours.}