… ‘Cause everyone would wish that they were me.
C’mon. Admit it. You know it’s one of those things
you never put on your bucket list because you didn’t think it would happen.
Neither did I, but guess what—it did!
A few years ago, as my husband and I were driving on
an Interstate highway, in the oncoming traffic we saw it—a 27-foot-long hot dog
in a bun.
I figured that was as close as I’d ever come to the
Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
I was wrong.
Earlier this week, I saw a post on my regional
electric coop’s Facebook page. Rural Missouri’s note read, “The Wienermobile,
Oscar Mayer's Hot Dog of a Car, is coming to central Missouri…”
That was all I needed to hear. My bucket list is
fluid, and at that moment a new item was added.
Isn’t it something every kid wishes for, after
all—to see the Wienermobile and get his or her own whistle shaped like the
magnificent machine?
The kid in me held that wish from the time I learned
there was such a thing and put the likelihood at “highly improbable.”
Yet, here it was—the opportunity of a lifetime.
I was certain my husband would be on board for the
trip, until he uttered these words: “I’ve already seen it.”
My otherwise not-so-privileged-child hubby had done
what other kids only dream of. He’d not only seen the Wienermobile as a youngster
in Chicago in the 1950s, but he even had a hot dog-shaped whistle all his own.
If you’re a Baby Boomer, you remember how cherished
those whistles were. They were right up there with Daniel Boone coonskin hats, Betsy
Wetsy dolls, and Hopalong Cassidy cap guns and holsters.
At first when hubby told me of his childhood
adventure, I felt pangs of jealousy, then a bit of excitement.
Wow, was my man ever a lucky little boy!
At first, he led me to believe that once was enough
for that lucky boy. All evening and part of the next morning, he had me
thinking his child heart was packed in a box someplace with a tattered
cherished baseball card of the same era, that he had no desire to join me in
seeing the vehicle again.
Up early getting ready on Saturday morning, though,
I heard sounds coming from the shower.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“I may as well go with you,” came the water-garbled
answer.
We rounded curves, drove through hills and hollows,
and crossed a few bridges on our way to the capital city. After more than an
hour and fifteen minutes on the road, we came around one more curve and there
it was—a six-month-old gargantuan hot-dog-on-wheels proudly sporting license
plates that read, “Our Dog.”
Climbing the steps beneath the open door of the
Weinermobile that morning was a 60-year-old woman turned six-year-old girl
again, looking longingly into the bag of whistles Hotdogger Cookout Kelly held
in her hands.
“Do I get a whistle?” I asked.
“You know what you have to do, don’t you? Can you
sing the jingle?” was Kelly’s reply.
As I began to sing with Kelly and her fellow
Hotdogger Deli Eliot, I heard another male voice chiming in behind me.
Hubby and I both earned our Wienermobile whistles
that day.
As we stepped back out of the vessel that took us
back more than half a century without firing up its engine or moving a foot, I
think we both grew a little younger.
On the way home, I blew the whistle and sang this little
ditty:
“I’m glad I saw the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, ‘cause
all my friends will wish that they are me.”
And from the number of “Likes” on my Facebook post
when I shared the picture, where I was holding my cherished treasure in front
of a jumbo–sized dog in a bun, I’m pretty sure that they really do.
© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013
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