Extra Credit Questions

[Joe Di Cola]

What a hoot! We are on a Lincoln site and talking about ketchup!

Now Joe, it's an important question. Would Lincoln have eaten his hot dogs with or without ketchup? What does Eisenschiml or Sandburg say?

I'll never forget when I was in college, we were having a history club dinner at Goosenest Prairie (where Thomas and Sarah Lincoln lived in Coles County) and I was in charge of getting the food. We decided on hot dogs and beans, so I dutifully got the supplies. A buddy from Chicago freaked out when he saw two bottles of ketchup in the box, and had a conniption fit when I squirted it on my hot dog bun. You'd of thought I had shot Lincoln myself.

Best
Rob

For Eisenschiml it would all be about a Ketchup Conspiracy and for Sandburg, well he and his friend Lee Hayes from the Weavers would write and perform a folk song about Lincoln and ketchup.
Even Sicilians like me, with their fondness for tomatoes with just about everything, would take pause before desecrating a hot dog with ketchup. Yo! From where in Illinois do you hail?

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My southern relatives put ketchup on their scrambled eggs. I have a New York friend who puts it on tuna salad sandwiches. I can tolerate it on french fries, but that's about it.

Nixon put it on cottage chese.

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I've known Joe Di Cola a long time, and we hardly ever disagree on anything Lincoln.

However, I will state point blank that the best dogs came from Parky's on Harlem Avenue in Forest Park. Awesome fries, too. My wife (whom I was dating when I first went to Parky's in 1960) says the celery salt is the key. I do agree on the no ketchup part.

Parky's is great, too. And so was the late, lamented Snyder's on 99th & Western in the 1940s and 50s. Ain't nostalgia great! If "outsiders" see this discussion on a Lincoln site, they're going to think we have consumed to many poppy seeds!!