Essays From West of 98: Hot Dogs and Community
Essays From West of 98: Hot Dogs and Community
Building a high-trust community, one trick-or-treater at a time
I love hot dogs. All hot dogs, to be exact. Give me a high-quality bun with an all-beef frank and fancy garnishments. Give me a cheap frank on a piece of white bread with a convenience store mustard packet. If you give me a hot dog, I am going to eat it and love it. This year at the Splash Day opening for the Stamford City Pool, the Grand Theatre sold hot dogs. I didn’t even try to keep count of my consumption. I just wrote a donation check that would allow me to participate in my very own all-you-can-eat buffet.1 If you ask my favorite hot dog, I’ll tell you that it's the last one I ate.
Wait, sorry. This was not intended to be an essay purely about hot dogs. I digress.
But you know who else likes hot dogs (albeit not quite as much as me)? Basically everyone.
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Back on Halloween in 2022, I decided to sit on my front porch and hand out candy, rather than sit inside and wait for visitors to knock on the door. It created an enormous increase in traffic. Trick-or-treaters were more likely to stop at a house when someone sat on the front porch welcoming them with a bowl of candy.
That experience made me consider how to improve on it for 2023. I turned to the trusty hot dog. Last year, we bought about 200 hot dogs and buns. I set up my grill and a fire pit in the front yard and I started cooking away in the late afternoon. The results were…incredible. I lost about five hot dogs in the fire and I donated those burned specimens to the bottomless appetite of a trusty dog who stood around offering to assist in that very capacity. The other 195 hot dogs fed Stamfordites of every age. Children, from toddlers to middle schoolers, were thrilled to get a hot dog. They ate them in my yard. They ate them walking down the street. They took them home for supper. Teenagers stopped by specifically because they heard hot dogs were being served. Parents seemed relieved that their children might eat something with more sustenance than candy and they absolutely grabbed their own hot dog when I encouraged it. I didn’t have to tell most of them twice. Everyone loves hot dogs!
I am on record as a huge fan of trick-or-treating. I know people have mixed feelings about Halloween and that’s fine. But you know what is objectively awesome? A community where children can walk safely through the neighborhoods, where families feel comfortable taking their children to the homes of strangers, and where adults are eager to pass out goodies from their front door. That is the norm in Stamford. We should not take that for granted, because it is very special. Not every place has it. A friend of mine recently wrote on Twitter2 that door-to-door trick-or-treating is “one of the last remaining artifacts of a high-trust and safe community.” That line made me think.
Building and maintaining a high-trust and safe community is something worthwhile. It is work worth doing, to steal a phrase from Theodore Roosevelt. That work is even more essential in a world that seems ever-more untrustworthy, unsafe, and chaotic. I don’t care if it happens on Halloween night or a random Tuesday in March. We need a little more of that spirit.
This year, I will buy 300 hot dogs. At least. I would like to eat a few of them myself and I didn’t get any last year! I have heard that a neighbor is plotting to offer something complementary at his house. I hope others around town are thinking about unique offerings of their own. That is why I am publishing this essay earlier in October, to help ignite ideas from my readers inside and outside of Stamford. If you want to offer something unique at your house on Halloween, this is the endorsement you’re waiting for.
Last year, it was fast and furious. I gave away almost 200 hot dogs in less than two hours. At one point, there were at least 20 kids lined up at my grill waiting on a hot dog. Afterwards, I was exhausted in the best and most satisfying fashion. I am enthused to see what transpires this year. There will be many hot dogs. There will be other fun goodies, both at my house and elsewhere in town. And most importantly, there will be community.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the “Rural Church and State” and “West of 98” podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore with book lists for essential reads here.
This reminds me of another hot dog event at the Grand Theatre proper, where I stopped to purchase hot dogs on the way home and I showed great restraint by only eating one of them in the 1.5 mile drive to my house.
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In my neighborhood, in Simonton, Tx, there is a house that passes out Jell-O shots to parents and candy to kids. It’s GREAT.
Many good memories of trick-or-treating in Stamford growing up in the late 60's and 70's.