It’s one of my favorite stories, so I’m glad it’s apparently true. The Vienna Beef company makes a certain kind of hot dog that is bright red, and it has a particular smoky flavor and a particular snap when you bite into it. It was very popular, so they made it in exactly the same way year after year, decade after decade.
Eventually the company became successful enough to upgrade to a new facility, where everything was streamlined and efficient and top of the line. But they knew better than to mess with success: The hot dog recipe stayed the same.
Except it didn’t. The hot dogs produced in the new facility weren’t as good. The color was off, the texture was feeble, and the taste just wasn’t the same; and nobody could figure out why. They hadn’t changed anything—not the ingredients, not the process, not the order of operations. It was a hot dog mystery.
They finally solved it by painstakingly recreating how they had done it in the old factory—and it turned out that, at one point, the processed ground meat was slowly trucked from one part of the factory to another, through several rooms, around corridors, and on an elevator. It seems that this arduous process, which everyone assumed was nothing but an inconvenience that ought to be streamlined away, was an essential step. The meat got warmed slowly as it went, gradually steeping in the smoke and moisture of the rooms that it travelled through. When they made the production more efficient, they eliminated this part of the process. And that ruined the hot dogs.
The secret ingredient, it turned out, was time. I thought of this story as I sat chatting with an old friend, someone I’ve known online for over two decades, and we only met in person for the first time last week. When we first got to know each other, we were in the thick of having babies and wrangling toddlers, both fairly starry-eyed about the possibilities of how to build a Catholic marriage and raise a holy family.
Now we both have several adult children, and our “babies” are almost as tall as we are. We talked about what we expected our lives to look like, what we were so sure about, and how differently things have turned out. We talked about our struggles and also our successes, and how we seem to know less and less as time goes on.
And we talked about how sometimes, the secret ingredient is time…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Photo by ArtHouse Studio
I do LOVES a good hotdog, and reminding me about all the disgustingnesses (intentional and non) that get all ground together to make their fillings only whets my appetite. They’re not pure, and neither is the Food and Drug Administration nor the webs of other oversight institutions (including the rabbis who “police” the Hebrew National facilities) designed to make sure they won’t poison me (too much).
There’s nothing pure about raising (or being raised in) a family either. Every insecure moment, starting before each uncertain conception, is fraught with a pulsing number of fears, disgusts, and joys. There’s always the potential of being overwhelmed by one (or any combination) of those. So we desperately try to contain these feelings, balanced precariously against each other, so we can function and deal with the everyday muck and not be overcome by too much fear, too much disgust, or even too much joy.
Religion can offer multiple mechanisms, supports, and resources to protect families, individuals, and other valuable aspects of “culture” from destructive forces. Culture, at least in its most formal aspects, was (probably) indistinguishable from religion for all the short (and few) millennia of our specie’s brief existence so far. It’s only a very recent cultural (sinful?) phenomenon that has led influential members of just a few human generations to see many aspects of culture (artistic expression, medicine, science & technology, governmental laws, and traditions) as “separate” from religion although much of the force behind insisting on such distinctions comes from the Abrahamic religions themselves who have always been militant about distinguishing themselves from the myths and magics of older forms of religion.
The idea of “separateness” or “containment” may be at the deepest roots of “the sacred” or “the holy.” An anthropological view of religion might look at various psychological and cultural mechanisms for “setting apart” or “setting aside” what generates our most (potentially) destabilizing fears, disgusts, and joys. I’m thinking less about hot dogs and more about violence, sex, and nurturance, each of which is unavoidable or necessary in various circumstances, but horrifically dangerous if not regulated and controlled. This is why it is no joke to insist that “the family” is a sacred, holy thing—and why so much energy might be invested to keep it “set apart” and protected. The family, as every parent feels, is always at some risk from forces emerging from it and from those that may intrude.
I’ve been paying more attention to how Catholics are viewing the relationship of the sacred (the holy) to other aspects of culture (science, government, artistic expression, etc). I don’t feel I have a good grasp on it partially because there is so much diversity in the numbers who consider themselves members of Holy Mother Church. There is now an increasing number of attention grabbing Catholics making noises, asserting their view of religion’s preeminence over (and right to dominate) other aspects of culture (science, artistic expression, and GOVERNMENT). Many of them, like Trump’s chosen running mate are recent converts. As Catholics, they recognize The Holy Spirit may indeed be manifesting itself in how culture is changing and developing, but feel called upon to seize temporal power so that they, in their “humble” but “special” receptivity may be its chosen agents of godliness. Another traditional view in Catholic thinking would focus the work of the Church as a patient, forgiving intercessor in human affairs at the individual and family levels where we are all constantly compelled to judge how to accept, reject, modify, or accommodate intrusions and eruptions which are rarely ever pure either in terms of good or evil, inspiration or temptation—or of unadulterated fear, disgust, or joy.
I like my hotdogs to contain both pork and beef (in their otherwise mysterious mixture). I enjoy them most on a lightly toasted bun with mustard AND ketchup after they’ve been browned and split by the heat of a charcoal fire. But that’s just me. Once, when I was fourteen, I ate that same number of hotdogs over the course of a summer afternoon at the lake. I didn’t puke, but never tried that again. If I were (or wanted to be) more pure, I would never eat another hotdog again. But for now, a few (now and then) still seems quite forgivable even if utterly unjustifiable.
Wonderful essay.
This is exactly where I am with 2 of my kids. There’s nothing left that I can think to do, so I’m just waiting. I’m hoping time will help.
Perfect. Thanks for another great message.