Wieners
Wieners. No, not that kind, you pigs. I mean the hot piping supremely greasy hot-dog kind with a fatty meat sauce and a chopped onions, mustard, and celery salt. You know the ones. Well, what about them? you ask.
What about them is that I love them, and although I can never eat them again, I think of them with melancholic affection. Many the night when I would pause at the Olneyville N.Y. System in Providence for the ultimate R.I. hot wieners. Never less than three on a plate, with everything (Three up!!!), a side of thick French fries, and naturally, a glass of the de rigeur coffee milk. Total calorie intake: about 3000.
The word wiener comes from the German Wienerwurst, a specialty of the Austrian city of Wien, which we know as Vienna. The Olneyville wieners are composed of an amalgam of the worst animal by-products and offal, maybe even human cadavers disinterred from St. Ann's Cemetery or else filched from local Olneyvillian morgue for victims of drive-by shootings.
Though the place is called the N.Y. System, New York has no exact equivalent establishments. These fat-ridden wieners are on the bottom rung of the junk food hierarchy. The concept of a "gourmet wiener" is a contradiction in terms. You just can't gentrify these little suckers. And the grossly seedy ambience of N.Y. System is about as related to fine dining as K-Mart is to Nordstrom's. Walk in at night and you will see the place staffed entirely by what appears to be a belligerent fraternity of ex-cons.
One night I was there there was actually a threat of armed assault by a counterman and a customer friend against an unseen party, but whose life was surely going to be in jeopardy later in the evening. It seems someone (not I, Lord) was screwing someone else's chick. That sort of thing. One scary guy with a hairy tattooed arm spreads a concatenation of these edible wee-wees-in-buns up the length of that arm, wipes the sweat and grime off his forehead with the other, then applies condiments and coverings to the weeny wienies with manic speed. Celery salt is tossed on with celerity and the plates are slapped on the worn-down counter or flung unceremoniously toward a nearby eater.
Within minutes of leaving this grim eatery, the stomach, intestines, and sphincter join in a chorus of wailing. Yet oddly, the soul rests satisfied. For the Olneyville N.Y. System is an instantly gratifying substitute for sex.