Six Hundred Corn Dogs on Opening Day

The Back Cupboard

Lacey was still standing at the window. “Mama, what do we do?”

“Get the extinguisher out from under the counter,” I said. “And the long thermometer. And the cash box.”

I opened the cupboard at the back of the trailer. Under the spare paper boats and the box of skewers, I kept two propane burners and the big stainless fry pot from our church fish fries.

I had borrowed them in May for the Memorial Day fish fry and never taken them back. Our pastor told me to keep them until fall. I said a little thank-you under my breath when I saw them there.

The burners were the heavy cast-iron kind, the ones that sit on three legs and roar when you open the valve. I had two full twenty-pound tanks on the trailer tongue for my grill, which I mostly used for warming buns.

I carried the first burner down the steps and set it on the flat grass beside the trailer, a good eight feet from the walls. Lacey followed me with the second one, holding it against her stomach with both arms.

“We can’t fry outside, Mama,” she whispered. “Can we?”

“We can if we do it right,” I said. “Go get the steel prep table from under the trailer.”

Doing It Right

I will tell you the details, because I know some of you have run a fry pot at a church supper and you are already checking my numbers.

The fry pot holds about three gallons of oil. I had six gallons in the trailer. I set the pot on one burner and a stockpot with the backup oil on the other, so I could swap if the first oil got tired.

I clipped the long thermometer to the side of the pot. I set the fire extinguisher right by my foot. I put a bucket of sand behind me, because Grandpa always kept one, and I could hear him telling me to.

Lacey set up the steel table between me and the line, so nobody could get close to the oil. She set the cash box on one end and the ketchup and mustard on the other.

The corn dogs themselves were no problem. I make my batter fresh in the morning and keep it in the cooler. The cooler was still cold. It would stay cold for hours with the door shut.

My hot dogs were already on their sticks, lined up in trays. All I needed was heat, and now I had it.

It took about twenty minutes for that oil to come up to three hundred and fifty degrees. I watched the thermometer the whole time. The line did not leave. If anything, it got longer, because people wanted to see what I was doing.

An older farmer in a seed cap leaned on the table and said, “You running a fish fry, hon?”

“Corn dogs today,” I said. “Same principle.”

He laughed and stayed in line.