Captain Mustard

Just like my kids only eating “magic carrots” at daycare or the luxury of having fried SPAM on a toasted bagel as a backpacking delicacy over a campfire, so it is with Captain Mustard, that rare annual treat while on vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Rainy day on Cisco Lake?  No problem.  Dock the boat.  Stow skiis, kayaks, tubes, and head for town. The line of customers at noon, beneath the red canopy attached to the tiny travel trailer boasting signs painted red, yellow, and blue, is made up of tourists, locals, and laborers on lunch break. Reminiscent of the “Soup Nazi” of Seinfeld era, customers overlook the rushed, tense, and often rude Chicago expatriate, just to get to her beloved, factory-formed conglomerate of meat trimmings, fat, flavorings, and preservatives: the hotdog.

I prefer my dog with Vicki’s homemade sauerkraut and pickles (Sauerkraut Dog), with added onion and tomato.  I don’t think it behooves her much, to add extra toppings to her long-established menu items—her babies she named in 1980— like Northwoods Dog, Kosher Dog, and All-American Dog.  When my in-laws first brought me here in 1984, I didn’t have the nerve to vary from the toppings I perceived as written in stone. There seemed to be an ordering protocol–order what is on the menu, ask for nothing more, make no mistakes, make no small-talk, and move away from the window.   No way was I setting myself up for her disdain.  Any variation from the routine seemed to result in an impatient quip from Vicki that made the originator look like they just fell off the pickle wagon that morning.  I don’t doubt Jerry Seinfeld used this hot dog stand as the basis for his rigidly insistent and anal dipper of soups in the 90s.  It took quite a few rainy days before I humbly asked, with head bowed and carefully not making eye contact, “Two Kraut Dogs and add onion and tomato . . . please?”  Did I just imagine the pause in movement of pen on paper; the stall in breath?

After nearly thirty years, I now boldly look Vicki in the face (as she stares at the napkin she is writing my order on, never looking up), and almost defiantly demand my hotdogs with extra toppings, without blinking or stuttering.  We have most certainly come to an understanding over the years, she and I, at the micro-window of a rusting miniature camper trailer with ivy covering the sign once emblazoned with “Land O’Lakes Best Little Hot Dog Stand.”  Then, my hulking, six-foot two-inch, bearded husband, looking as if he and Babe the Blue Ox just walked out of the Northwoods from a long day of chopping down Tamarack, Black Spruce, and Balsam Fir with a single swing of the axe, saunters up and hands her a twenty.  Secretly, I think this man thaws the frost off her very northern bog; melts the cheddar on hot dog.  She always remembers him each year.  Once she senses everyone else is away from her window, she strikes up a conversation with Jim.  And musters a smile.  With much eye contact.  She is pretty; beautiful, in that earthy, unpretentious, hard-working, Northwoods-woman kind of way.

I giggle, sitting at a nearby picnic table with a mouthful of dog between my cheeks, very much amused.  Geez, what she might do if he had on a checkered flannel shirt with suspenders?

(This tongue-in-cheek story was written several years ago, when Captain Mustard was still open.  Today, the iconic place still sits next to the house Vicki and her father share, as she cares for him.  It looks as if she keeps the vines from covering the camper entirely, keeping all our hopes alive that she will someday open it again.  We are a lot like Pavlov’s dogs as we drive past our trigger!  A tribute from my family to Captain Mustard and Vicki, a strong, hard-working woman who knows how to run a business.)