When we were kids, the Fourth of July was a really big deal. The City of Lawrence put on a huge whoopdedoo down at the nearby O’Connell Playstead—which we called the South Common—consisting of a raft of different athletic events broken down into age groups to keep the competition equitable. It was at these revelatory contests that we first discovered that while we might be swifter, stronger and smarter than a passel of other kids, there was always a passel of other kids that were swifter, stronger and smarter than us.
“I know I can beat up Robert Finnegan,” said my friend, Jackie Mercier, “but with boxing gloves, he beat up me.”
Jackie neglected to remember that in boxing they don’t allow you to tackle people, sit on their stomachs and bang their heads into the concrete. Boxing must be for sissies.
It was also at these affairs we boys first took note of the fact that girls could perform athletic feats other than jumprope, not that jumprope wasn’t impressive enough. Oh, we knew that Joycie Lavery and Irene Chaff could play a little tag football, each having a million brothers, but we didn’t know Kathleen Carroll could run that fast or that her sister, Elaine, might be stronger than we were. Best to make a mental note.
At the end of the competitions, there was a huge spread of food offered up, largely consisting of the healthy alternatives, soda (we called it “tonic”), hamburgers and hotdogs. Since everything was free, all the kids ate as much as they could, bloat and indigestion notwithstanding. It is my opinion that it was at such affairs the clever Mr. Nathan (of Nathan’s Coney Island) came up with the idea for his now-famous, if regrettable, Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Fourth of July night, we would all faithfully troop on over to the Lawrence Memorial Stadium for the fireworks. Before we were allowed to partake of fireworks, however, we were forced to endure a few comments from virtually every alderman, representative and senator extant, which inevitably brought out the same evaluation from my cynical father: “They’re all full of…(looking at us)…bull.” My father only liked one politician in his life, a convicted tax cheat named Tommy Lane, who did his time and was reelected after he got out. “Tommy looks out for the little guy,” advised my dad, who also appreciated the fact Tommy was Irish. Eventually, the band would play the regular litany, the armed forces songs, Stars & Stripes Forever, the National Anthem. Eons later, we got to the fireworks. Half the little kids in the place were asleep by then but not for long. Babies wailed, older kids oohed and aahed at the display and children somewhere in the middle (like say, me) tapped their parents on the shoulder and nervously asked, “Uhm, Ma—any chance those sparks from the fireworks could come down on us?” Those silly kids’ fears were jauntily laughed off by their worldly parents until one unfortunate evening those sparks DID come down on them, causing frantic consternation if not much injury. I always sat a little further away from the fireworks after that.
July 4th, 2014 Fireworks Over Boston
The Golden Gullet
The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest has been held at the original location on Coney Island every year since 1972 on the Fourth of July. There are tons of old wives tales about how the thing got started early in the century, but none very convincing. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the competition was dominated by Japanese contestants, especially a guy named Takeru Kobayashi, who won six consecutive eatoffs between 2001 and 2006. In 2001, Kobayashi shocked the world by actually eating FIFTY of the things, breaking the old record of 25.5. Asked his secret to greater eating, the Asian Assimilator spoke of mysterious advanced eating and training techniques. He didn’t say what they were but simple face-stuffing on a regular basis is a good bet, combined with a lot of sleep. In 2011, Sonya Thompson brightened up her dating resume by gobbling up FORTY hot dogs in ten minutes, winning the inaugural Pink Belt, not to mention 10,000 Big Ones. Just the kind of gal you want to bring home to mom….or at least to Ralph’s Diner on All You Can Eat Night. See how much old Ralph will pay you to stay away next time.
ESPN, having nothing to broadcast in the summer save baseball, began covering the contest in 2003, to their great disgrace. If glugging down hot dogs is a sport, I am Madame Defarge. Like it or not, the 2004 eatathon brought 926,000 viewers. Sadly, by 2011, the total had more than doubled (1.949 million poor fools with nothing better to do). From 2007 to 2014, a goober from San Jose named Joey Chestnut has won the contest. This year, after a fierce battle with some character named Matt Stonie, Chestnut ingested 61 dogs (to Stonie’s pitiful 56), hopefully cleansed his palate and went on to propose marriage to his bouncing Asian girlfriend, who promptly accepted. They will honeymoon at the Oscar Mayer plant in Davenport, Iowa, with, we can only hope, full use of the Weinermobile. Ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner sends congratulations.
How does a single human being eat 61 hot dogs at all, let alone in ten minutes? First of all, just about nobody does. In small-time local affairs imitating Nathan’s contest, the winners are lucky to choke down fifteen….oh, and PLEASE show us your tongue again when you’re through, we can’t wait for that. What the premier players resort to is “dunking.” Because buns absorb water, many competitors dunk them and squeeze them to make the critters easier to swallow. Other tricks include the “Carlene Pop,” during which the competitor jumps up and down while eating, the better to force the food down to the stomach. “Buns & Roses” is a similar stunt, with the eater swinging from side to side. Personally, I subscribe to the practice of “Julieting,” in which a player simply throws the hot dog bun over his shoulder, though this rarely flies in well-supervised events. Having a light breakfast consisting of nothing might also be a good idea.
On the encouraging side, after years of soaring totals, the ESPN viewership for the 2013 Hot Dog Eating Contest unaccountably stumbled and fell to a mere 1.15 million (we don’t have the 2014 totals yet). What happens in cases like these to explain the Great Plunge? Did television viewers suddenly acquire, dare we say it, good taste? Are hot dogs, for some reason, now out of vogue? It happened to the hula hoop, right? And the slinky, don’t forget that. Who’d have thought cigarette smokers would ever diminish to today’s numbers, where even the bravest hide behind rusting dumpsters to feed their habits? You never know. Maybe it’s time for a NEW event with which to celebrate the Fourth. Anybody up for Pie-Throwing?
Early Pie Eaters
A Brief History Of Eating
You probably didn’t know this but eating contests have been around for awhile. In a thirteenth century collection of Norse myths called the Edda, such an affair is described between the wise-ass god Loki, who was always pestering Thor, and one of Loki’s servants. The servant won the contest by actually eating his plate! Take that, Loki.
In 1919, New York Yankees outfielder Ping (don’t ask us) Bodie competed against—get this, now—an OSTRICH in a pasta-eating contest. I don’t know about you, but I’m not competing against an ostrich in anything, let alone a pasta eating contest. Maybe if I was Italian. Surprise, surprise, Ping won the contest when the ostrich passed out after eleven delicious bowls, leading several defeated gamblers to opine that the fix was in. The ostrich was carefully examined for signs of drugging but none were found. Ping was never challenged again and, as far as we know, still holds the championship belt.
In 1958, a pair of wrestlers, one from the U.S.A. and one from the Soviet Union fought their own version of the Cold War by eating eight lobsters and six squab in front of 250 onlookers at a New York restaurant. For some reason, these pikers didn’t even touch the dozen lamb chops and ten steaks set aside to decide a tie, leaving the eating grounds calling themselves “failures.”
In 1963, Eddie “Bozo” Miller ate 27 chickens at a Trader Vic’s restaurant in San Francisco to win the Guinness Book of Records title of “World’s Greatest Trencherman.” Eddie thanked his parents “for bringing me up right,” God, and Trader Vic, in that order and took the trophy of an eviscerated hen home to Grandma’s otherwise pristine mantel.
We think everybody is forgetting the old county fairs where PIES were routinely placed in front of bibbed contestants who blasted through the poor pastries with reckless abandon. There is still an event called the World Pie Eating Championship held every year at Harry’s Bar on Wallgate, Wigan, Greater Manchester, England. Unlike the affairs in this country which largely featured the proper fruit pastries, the English version involved meat and potato pies. This, of course, outraged the English Vegetarian Society, which successfully lobbied for a separate contest in 2006. In the 2007 competition, entries included a participant’s dog named Charlie, who had eaten 20 pies and damaged another 10 the night before the competition, nearly deep-sixing the whole event.
There are, among other wonders, currently eating contests around the world involving bratwurst, burritos, chicken sliders, lutefisk, pickles, potato latkes and pulled pork. We’d like to go on in detail but we have to run. Don’t want to be late for the lutefisk shenanigans.
We’re Leaving On A Jet Plane
We hope so, anyway. Tomorrow, it’s off to California to see the Golden Gate, Big Sur and Alice (the Republican). That means that next week you get a Golden Oldie (sorry, Irana) if all goes well and Austin Li, the computer wizard, doesn’t screw up. We’ll be back on the 24th with tales of derring-do, whatever that is, and photos of the Left Coast. In the meantime, Cosmic Flash is scheduled to run at Gulfstream on Sunday, barring another in a long series of untoward incidents. Brave gamblers will get a good price….a modest across-the-board bet might be in order. If any of our San Francisco fans would like to send a band to the airport, we’ll be in at three p.m. on Friday. I’ve always been partial to “Happy Days Are Here Again!”
That’s all, folks….
