Straddling the slaw line
Plenty of American cities and regions have an associated hot dog, but frank pride runs especially high in the Mountain State. Emily Hilliard, the former West Virginia state folklorist and founding director of the West Virginia Folklife Program, spoke to The Food Section about the hot dog chapter of her new book, Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, scheduled for release on November 22.
Hanna Raskin: Let’s start by clarifying that this is not a book all about hot dogs. Do you want to talk about the purpose of the book and how hot dogs fit into it?
Emily Hilliard: Sure. The book draws from my work as the West Virginia State Folklorist, and each chapter [features] a different contemporary cultural tradition in West Virginia, from video games like Fallout 76 to the expressive culture of the teachers strike, nonprofessional women songwriters, a community museum, and a multiracial coal camp community.
It's really looking at the way communities are using traditional culture to create a new future, but also how those traditions become precarious in a place like West Virginia due to a number of factors: Environmental crisis, precarity, economic austerity, racism, sexism, classism, all the conditions of modern life.
HR: Maybe it's just my narrow outlook, but I would assume you knew from the start that you wanted food in there. I'm curious why you decided to go with hot dogs.
EH: When I got to West Virginia, I knew that hot dogs were an important thing. There are so many hot dog joints in the state. There are so many different hot dog opinions being expressed. And as I dug into this a little further, I realized that hot dogs serve as a cultural mirror.
There's this immigrant history of Greek, and probably Italian, immigrants who brought hot dogs to the state as the state was industrializing. It was food that was cheap and filling that laborers could eat on the go. Then there's also who's working at these hot dog joints, usually women, in usually low wage service industry jobs.
But also, it's fun. It's something you eat at a hot dog joint, rather than making at home. So, there's this community aspect to it.
All those things add to this tradition that's a little bit precarious because hot dog joints close and open all the time. It's not necessarily something you pass down a recipe for in your family like you would a pie recipe.
Anyway, I just realized there was a lot to a hot dog in West Virginia, and I like eating them, so it was fun research to do.
HR: I imagine my readers in North Carolina might have some familiarity with slaw dogs, but let's talk about what we're talking about. What is a West Virginia hot dog?
EH: Usually, a West Virginia hot dog is chili, slaw, mustard, and onions. It's a meat chili. There's no beans in it. And usually that is on a steamed bun. But there isn't really attention to the actual dog. It's kind of anything goes. And it doesn't matter if it's boiled or steamed or grilled, it's really about the toppings.
There is a slaw line that runs through the state, that The West Virginia Hot Dog Blog has mapped. About a fourth of the state, the top fourth of the state, you can't get slaw; you get kicked out of a hot dog joint if you ask for it.
I describe it as a Mason Dixon of condiments. It's like this invisible border that is a little bit fluid. But that's generally what a West Virginia dog looks like if you ask for one with everything.
HR: Is the hot dog always pork?
EH: It isn’t always specified, but I’ve definitely had all-beef West Virginia hot dogs. At one of my favorite spots in Charleston, Super Weenie, you can ask for an all-beef dog.
HR: And when you go into these hot dog joints, typically, are they making the chili and slaw from scratch, or is it like the Coney Island I used to work in outside of Detroit where every element came out of a can?
EH: Most places are making chili and slaw from scratch. Even the Dairy Queen in Hinton, West Virginia, has an old franchise license, so that they're making their own chili and slaw. And it's a beloved recipe.
HR: I suspect folks who don't have much of experience with West Virginia foodways probably know about pepperoni rolls. How do hot dogs relate to them?
EH: There definitely is a relationship between pepperoni rolls and hot dogs. In the northern coalfields, where you don't always find slaw, sometimes chili is referred to as sauce, and that serves as a topping on pepperoni rolls and hot dogs.
As far as a fast, filling, cheap food that's tied to labor and industry, both hot dogs and pepperoni rolls have that.
HR: Right. But I guess a chili dog isn’t something you're going to put in your pocket.
EH: The whole idea with pepperoni rolls is they were designed to be shelf stable, so a coal miner could take them in the mines, and they could last for a while if there was a cave-in or mine disaster. That's why you get these arguments about whether cheese belongs on a pepperoni roll or not.
HR: Well, we won't go down that path. Obviously, you write about bigger issues than just what belongs on a hot dog, such as how the hot dog is ignored because it's ubiquitous. Do you want to talk about how vernacular culture sometimes gets overlooked?
EH: People are aware of hot dogs. It's something many people eat regularly in West Virginia. But it's just so ubiquitous that it can be taken for granted, especially by cultural workers or cultural organizations.
There's also this triviality barrier, like it's just a hot dog, or it's kind of juvenile, or it doesn't get coded as being important or worthy of preserving.
Maybe this is getting too into the weeds, but folklorists are often housed at arts councils. And so things like foodways might fall through the cracks because how could you really justify that a hot dog is an art form? I could, but your board might not see it as being worthy as an art form or a creative practice.
HR: Oh, that's really interesting.
EH: Generally, there are very few systems for recognition or preservation of foodways, unless you are a restaurant owner, or a farmer and you have a business. But if you're the holder of the chili recipe in your community, maybe you would win an award at the fair or something like that. But there aren't really incentives for this kind of preservation.
HR: I imagine it’s difficult because much of what you're creating is so intangible in terms of community.
EH: Some of the people I interviewed talked about how in a rural community, a hot dog joint is one of the few places you can get a meal out, that place where you go for a first date, where you go after you win a soccer game, where you meet up with your friends. You might go there after a funeral.
So, there are all these different interlocking memories: You are interacting with community members who might be there for very different reasons.
HR: And as you said a couple times, it's not like the future of these places is necessarily secure. I wasn't sure how you were going to address the opioid crisis, which we know is just a reality for these rural areas that have been abandoned by industries. But it does come up in the hot dog chapter.
EH: Yeah, there was one hot dog joint owner I talked to. They had a little country store that was a gas station. It was also the post office. And one of the owners ran a tailoring and alteration shop out of there, as well. She made her own chili and biscuits.
There used to be a train that came through town, kind of a commuter train. They stopped that line, and they just could not get the business to make selling food viable. And they did make a comment that [locals] don't spend money on food.
This is a generalization that I don't necessarily want to...I just am careful about how I say or assert, ‘People only spend money on pills,’ but that is what she said.
HR: I certainly don't want to play into that stereotype, which is a whole other book and whole other conversation, but it does seem that it colors people's perceptions both in and out of West Virginia. She could be right or wrong, but it's interesting that's where her mind went.
EH: Definitely. I just want to honor her experience, without agreeing or disagreeing, but I do think what is real is that they were not able to make a food business viable. And she really loved being a cook and took a lot of pride in her recipes. So that was very sad.
HR: I'm so glad you brought that up because that the other thing I wanted to ask about was the collaborative approach that you discussed at the outset of the book. Can you describe how that works?
EH: As a folklorist, I was trained in collaborative ethnography. So, that tries to get around the kind of hierarchical approach that was part of anthropology, cultural work, and folklore, 50 or more years ago.
In [collaborative ethnography], the interviewee and the interviewer are both seen as experts in their own experience. You sit together, and you have a conversation guided by both parties. It involves really close listening on the interviewer's part of what the interviewer would like to talk about.
Then, whenever you are publishing, they get to see it at each stage, and talk about how they were represented, and if they feel good about it, and how they would like things to be changed. So, it's a different approach to journalism.
There might be a case where I'm really worried about one thing that I wrote, like a physical description. And often, I find it's some other thing that I didn't even imagine. I find it really helpful in that sense.
In the women songwriter chapter, there's four women featured, and three of them passed away in the course of writing the piece. I ended up sending it to their family members for proofreading.
I always wonder how to transcribe someone's speech into writing because so many people drop their g's and say ‘cause. That is just common, but when you put it in text, it can read as being too colloquial. So, one of the women, I spoke with her granddaughter, and just asked her, ‘How do you think she would like to be represented in text?’
She said, ‘Well, she always paid a lot of attention to using proper grammar and proper speech because she did not want to be seen as being uneducated.’ I don't think she had a high school education. And that informed how I transcribed her speech.
To me, that's not misleading. It's not misrepresentation. It's honoring your interviewee and how they would like to appear.
HR: Obviously, that's something I run up against all the time. This isn't about me, but I sometimes feel like if I change a quote to what would be considered standard grammar, then I'm making a judgment about the dialect that they're speaking in. I can see how asking the person would be helpful.
EH: Definitely.
HR: What else should I know?
EH: Let's see. Well, [in] the multiracial coal camp community, Scotts Run… they have crafted a specific vision for the future of their community, which includes cultural aspects and art, but also includes basic needs like affordable housing.
What I learned from them was that you can't really separate creative practice from the material conditions of a community. If a community does not have what they need to live well, then creative practices, and folk art, and music, that will all fall by the wayside.
I'm really thinking about how cultural workers can learn from communities like Scotts Run and other places in West Virginia to be more attuned to those material conditions—and see that as the basis of our work.
Thank you Hanna and Emily. I knew about pepperoni rolls but not the hot dogs. I am so intrigued by West Virginia and their food and folkways. A treasure.
Growing up in New York, a Nathan’s hot dog in Coney Island never included chili. Condiments were limited to mustard, onions, relish and sauerkraut. I am now partial to Chicago dogs.
Who knew WV has a hot dog culture? Thanks for another informative article. Glad I paid my dues.