The next generation of glizzies

It hasn't made it to my part of the urban Northeast yet, but the word “glizzy” has emerged as something you can call a hot dog.

It seems to have come from Washington, D.C., where the hard guys call a Glock pistol a glizzy. A hot dog is about the size of the extended magazine you use in a Glock pistol.

In the beginning was the gun, and the gun was made hot dog.

I live in hot dog country. Fall River, Massachusetts, a city of 100,000 where gunfire becomes more frequent every summer, has a strong hot dog culture. The locals eat 'em with a Coney sauce made from loose hamburger. It's a spicy sauce, but a little sweet.

Fall River's been a poor town since its cotton mill days. Another locally famous food is chow mein. Something called a “hot cheese sandwich” is a classic here as well.

My father, a man of some sarcasm and a lot of truth, had a theory.

“All the really famous Fall River foods are soft, so you can eat 'em if you don't have any teeth,” he said.

He was right. This isn't a raw carrot town. Poor places never are.

I love hot dogs. Like some of the natives here, I call 'em “gaggers.” I also say “barkers” and “pups.”

I eat them with Coney sauce. I eat them with ketchup and raw onion. My father couldn't eat a barker without celery salt.

As American culture drifts away from the old ways, there are hot dog trucks that will throw anything on a pup, including macaroni and cheese, Korean slaw, barbecue sauce, pineapple, bacon and, yeah, avocado.

Good. Eat 'em the way you like 'em, but I warn you that, if the place you're in offers a gagger with crab meat on it, you're gonna pay at least $14 a dog, more if the truck is parked near any kind of music festival. The place where I get my glizzies charges $1.99 each, and if you buy five, they'll give you another one for free. That's $12 for six glizzies. Order ice water because it's free.

I haven't said “glizzy” in my favorite dog joint yet, but I'm going to, and they'll understand me because it's a street corner spot, and the waitresses surf waves of slang every day, along with heavily accented English and the mumbled orders of drunk or drugged patrons. The waitress probably won't even flutter a false eyelash when I ask for “three glizzies, Coney sauce and a black coffee.” The coffee is $3.89 a cup these days. Refills are free, but so are the refills on ice water.

It's not an easy country anymore, our America. You can either get crab meat on your hot dog because you work in IT, or you can choose between five flavors of Ramen noodles in crinkly bags because you work in a dollar store, and your rent is $2,300 a month.

All the people who work in IT can afford the crab meat glizzy. One of the things you should tell your kids is to try and go into a line of work that's referred to by its initials. You can make a good living in IT, HR and PR, but no one ever calls a part-time construction worker a “PTCW.”

That's why I stick with the $1.99 glizzy. If I get poor, I'm not going to have to sit around mourning the loss of my usual $17 sushi dog. There are no initials for what I do, and no way to vague it so people are afraid they'll sound stupid if they ask.

The important thing is that, if hot dogs have a “street name,” the poor people are eating them, so they'll be around for a while.

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