You Know It's Spring When You're Eating Rudolph!

Some might think that living in the one long beautiful sunny day that is California might make its residents completely oblivious to the changing of seasons. If anything, though, my years spent in the sunny land have left me more heightened to seasonal details. Be it a brilliant crimson fall or a budding spring abloom with magnolias and fertility so rich you can taste it in the mud - the seasons keep life dynamic and pose excellent opportunities for renaissance.

In Anchorage, there are a few clear signs of that Spring is finally here:

1. The Park Strip starts to melt, which unfortunately unhides The Poop of One Hundred Dogs. These are the dogs who frequently made their mark in the park during our many-monthed winter.
   
2. Everyone's yard starts to melt, magically revealing The Poop of Many Moose who may have crunched away at your most expensive bushes and fruit trees.

3. Slow, dim-witted mosquitoes begin to appear. As someone who was born with the pheremone that drives these buggers wild, I can't say I am fond of this sign of spring. (Right now, the mosquitoes float slowly as if drunk, but even in this relatively harmless state, I see them only has Harbingers of Doom.)


4. Wild geese are afoot everywhere. With them, they bring their own poop, but it's fresh spring poop that seems to act as a fertilizer to help green up the Park Strip and other currently brown spaces.


5. And finally, the reindeer dog stands pop back up in downtown.

Today, I took advantage of #5 and had my first reindeer dog of the season. My decision to do so today was no coincidence. First of all, we finally got a bona fide sunny day. Second, there are only a handful of days before May. Why should this matter, you might ask?

The downtown Anchorage area is a tourist drag, lined with shops selling the kitchiest souvenirs you can think of. (While all souvenirs by definition are kitchy, this state is predisposed to hawking what might be considered exceptionally bizarre down south, such as chocolates in the shape of moose poop.) A sure mark that tourist season is warming up is the sudden proliferation of reindeer dog stands.

The reindeer dog itself isn't really as exotic as tourists might think. It tastes much like any other kind of delicious sausage; it doesn't come with antlers or anything weird like that. But for whatever reason, it seems to give tourists a lot of satisfaction to chow down on Rudolph. My suspicion is that running a reindeer dog stand in downtown Anchorage is a very lucrative business.

Like all small businesses based on shacks and stands, a lot of the reindeer dog establishments use sex to sell the goods. It's not uncommon to find a pretty lady flipping your dogs. But the locals, and by that I mean the subset of Anchorage residents who work right in downtown (and by that I could probably further winnow the pool down to young lawyers who work downtown), they seem to favor M.A.'s Gourmet Hot Dogs.

M.A. was my first and has been my only reindeer dog guy, unless you count that one giant package I bought at Costco for a camping trip (which I don't). He was introduced to me by another young downtown Anchorage lawyer, and I've been going there ever since. M.A. himself does not appear to use sex to sell his dogs. Don't get me wrong; he's a decent-looking man, but I think he wears a fanny pack which leads me to believe he is not using his body to sell his wares. The protocol at MA is to know what you want and be ready to order when you get to the front of the line. At noon, when the line winds around the Federal Building where he has set up shop, a failure to do this may incur some wrath or at least certainly a few dirty looks from more seasoned customers.

I think M.A.'s stand was recently, in the last two years, featured on TV - either PBS or the Food Network or both - and this newfound fame was no doubt responsible for the rather ridiculous price hike we saw last season. The standard reindeer went up at least one dollar, and when you're talking hot dogs, that's a material increase. I stopped ordering "the Special" (which includes chips and soda) and elect instead to devote my funds purely to reindeer. M.A. carries some other varieties of dogs - I remember the summer he started doing this and how excited he was about the expansion - but trust me, stick with the classic Rudolph.

So why do I choose M.A. over the other sexy hot dog vendors? Since I am not a man, I am immune to the wiles of M.A.'s competition. But I see other men buying high-priced dogs from M.A., so what's the draw?

Well, the devil is in the details.

M.A. sautes his onions in Coke Classic. Not some knock-off soda or RC cola, but the real stuff. No diet. Just the good stuff out of the red can. This isn't just a party trick; the Coke adds sugars and caramelization to the onions. A savvy business man, M.A. maintains a Rolodex of "Frequent Wiener" cards so that his regular customers can earn their way to a free dog. Unfortunately, you have to eat something like twelve dogs, or at least some other highly significant number, before you earn your free sausage. Surprisingly, I've never made this summit. My first year, I got very close by going very often and by treating my tourist out-of-town guests to reindeer dogs. Just when I figured I was just on the brink of getting my free dog, I could not find my card anywhere in the official Frequent Wiener Rolodex.

M.A. explained that if you don't re-activate your Frequent Wiener card in April, when he first restarts his stand, he throws the card away. It's not a mean business tactic - if he didn't, he'd have to start rolling a giant Rolodex instead of his hot dog stand. Needless to say, I was crushed by this business policy. After all of that diligent consumption of reindeer, I had to start over.

So today, April 26, 2007, I knew that I had only moments before I would suffer the same fate again. With the sun out and a friend who never had been to M.A., the stars were aligned.

I'm happy to report that the Rudolph I got today was exquisite. Just perfect. I won't say it was magical because after all, it's a hot dog, but there wasn't anything else I would have asked for with respect to this dog. Most importantly, I am now a re-activated Wiener and am looking forward to many many wieners to come.

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