Wisdom and the wiener cart

By MARY JO NELSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000

I'm getting a wiener water facial from the steamy brew of the hot dog cart. The ice that was bound in a scarf and tied around my neck as a cooling device is dripping down my back. I can't tell it from the sweat.

In case there isn't enough humidity on this St. Petersburg street corner, Tampa Bay has turned into a pot of simmering bouillon. I'm thinking about removing my shoes and standing in the soda cooler, but the Health Department might have something to say about it.

I never would have predicted a wiener water facial in my future the day I left Minnesota on a southbound sailboat. I had a wet shirt that day, too, wet with the goodbye tears of my sisters. I told them in my last letter home that I like my new job "except for having to wear the Big Wiener apron." They found that very funny.

I fish out an all-beef and load it with spicy mustard for a dapper old gent who looks like a leprechaun. The next customer, a museum docent, orders a jumbo. Dang. Jumbos always sink to the bottom. They wallow around down there like dead grouper. I have to fish one out with tongs, hanging my pores over the steam table.

Most women my age, if they are getting a facial at all, are getting the herbal steam treatment at a swanky salon. I think my Sabrett steam is probably just as good.

Summer in St. Pete, every living thing jogs, walks or crawls from shade tree to shade tree or air-conditioned office to air-conditioned car, depending on its physical condition and species. If you can move sideways enough, maybe you can get out from under it. But there is no mercy for the hot dog vendor. We scooch under the meager shade of the Sabrett umbrella; our shoes melt to the concrete.

No customers in sight. I restock the soda bin.

I left Minnesota on a cool breeze of a fall day. There was mist on the water and the river banks looked like Monet had taken a brush to them. The wind smelled like winter. The homemade sailboat was provisioned with navigation charts of the river and gulf, a savings account, a husband, a copy of Mr. Twain's Life on the Mississippi, a copy of Jonathan Raban's Old Glory, emergency supplies and enough canned goods to feed all of Pinellas County. I still have the books.

A limo pulls up to the hot dog stand from the direction of the Vinoy. The smoky back window rolls down 21/2 inches. A slender brown hand slithers out. There's a $5 bill in the hand, and the hand and arm are covered with bright red decorative swirls. Someone inside the car barks, "Jumbo with everything. Extra kraut." The voice is gruff. More groping the bottom of the bin.

I make the dog and place the St. Pete specialty in the hand of an East Indian princess, or so I imagine. She can't get the extra kraut through the tiny crack in the window. Some of it scrapes off and dribbles down the side of the limo. I watch the car glide off.

It passes three men sitting on a bench across the street. Everything they are wearing is a shade of brown or gray. Two are wearing coats. One has a backpack, one has a bundle. They have been conversing and peering over at me for an hour.

George calls to me when he's half a block away. He has something in his hand. He always has something in his hand, and he is always astonished by the beauty of the item that rests there. Today it's a crinkled leaf. "See here! Isn't this beautiful!" I nod.

George travels about town as if God has assigned him, in his retirement years, to notice all the things the rest of us miss. This makes him a very busy man. There are a lot of unsung leaves around town, not to mention sticks, rocks and people. He orders a Pepsi.

I know why George lives alone in St. Petersburg and why he will probably never see his children or wife again. People tell their dog vendors more than they tell their psychologists. More, even, than they tell their cosmetologists.

George invited me to his efficiency apartment one day. He gave me the grand tour, including seven bananas lined up on his kitchen counter -- one for each day of the week. He opened his closet. There was a half-deflated purple balloon on the top shelf. Left over from a party? Nope.

"I woke up one day and realized I didn't have a purple balloon." He said this the way some people would say they're out of milk or beer and have to rush right out and get some. Which he did.

After traveling 47 locks and four river systems, I saw the Gulf of Mexico. There was a lot of water in it. The water had a party with our boat. Some would call it a storm. The degree of my seasickness was not that I was afraid I was going to die. I was afraid I wouldn't.

One of the men from the park bench heads in my direction. He holds out $1.37. "It's all we got. Can we get a couple of dogs?" He leaves with three. They are stacked high with relish because it might be the closest thing to a vegetable they get all day. The guys on the bench are wolfing the dogs. I can't help but think: There but for. . . .

My last sale of the day goes to a courtly man in his late 50s. He has light brown eyes and a coffee-colored tan. When I hand him his change, he proposes. I decline politely. He nods and smiles. I know he'll try again tomorrow.

Mary Jo Nelson recently retired from the wiener wars. She describes herself as "between jobs."

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