Hot Dogs and Dachshunds

Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. Extra time off from work. Fireworks. Hot dogs. This little hot dog was getting spoiled at my house last weekend. Sumo loves to be held and needs to have a lift since he has arthritis in his feet and legs so can't scurry around the way he'd like. 

Did you eat hot dogs this weekend? The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that Americans ate around 155 million hot dogs this weekend. I didn't eat a hot dog, but I might have if somebody had invited me to a wiener roast. That's when hot dogs taste best. 

So did hot dogs really get their name from dachshunds? The term "hot dog" is credited to sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan. At a 1901 baseball game in New York, vendors began selling hot dachshund sausages in rolls. From the press box, Dorgan could hear the vendors yelling, "Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot!" He sketched a cartoon depicting the scene but wasn't sure how to spell dachshund so he took the easy way out and called them "hot dogs." The rest is history. (Info from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/hotdog1.html)

I'm thinking that the vendors grabbed that name fast. "Get your hot dogs here!" has to be easier to yell than "Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot." 

I'm right there with that cartoonist. Sometimes it's easier to think up a new word than to figure out how to spell it. For instance: "A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell." That may be the reason they usually go by the name "mums." :)

Here are a couple of photos left over from my book party last Sunday. I had so much fun talking books and laughing with my hometown readers. Wish you could have all been there. And then I got to sign books. In the first picture, I'm posing before the book party with Pauline, my almost 92 year old friend who drove up from a nearby town to get my book even though she had a different family party to go to. Pauline and I go way back. Her husband played the piano for the first quartet my husband sang in forty years ago. Pauline and I sat together at a lot of gospel singings in those days. She was a sweetheart then and she still is. She remembered to hold my book up so the title would show. 

Then Joy and Carolyn carried copies of my books home with them. Both were attending one of my Hometown Book Launches for the first time. Now I'll have to wait a whole year to maybe celebrate a new book. If I could only figure out a way to write faster. 

I'm cleaning off my desk today to get ready for a new project. Seems like I need a clean slate for that. Got to do some research for the new idea, but first I'm reviewing a book I wrote some years ago that was never published but just might find a home if I rewrite it a bit or maybe a lot. And for those of you who take time to read Jocie's Heart of Hollyhill blog posts on Monday or Tuesday, I think she's ready to start writing her book and posting a little at a time. I'll have to ask her.  

Thanks for dropping by. And next Sunday, I'm going to start a new blog giveaway. A mystery picture one I think. They're always fun even if you all are great guessers and I have a hard time fooling you. 

Stories from Book Fairs

One of the best things about book fairs are the people you meet. Yesterday the Kentucky Book Fair seemed very well attended. So well that at times people were unable to freely walk between the rows of tables. I'd like to say the aisle got so congested in front of my table because of the lines waiting to grab one of my books, but that might be stretching things a bit. But I did have a lot of readers and friends stop by. Got to do a lot of talking. More than my granddaughter behind me wanted to hear from the look on her face in this picture.

Here I'm getting ready to sign a book for someone. It was probably a person I was supposed to know and I couldn't think of her name. I may have been acting cool and asking how to spell her name and she was saying S-u-e. Not really, but I can imagine that happening to me one of these days at a book signing. I sometimes go absolutely blank on names at the worst times. I did that yesterday for one friend. I was saved by the fact she didn't buy my book. Now, was that good or maybe bad? Whichever, I didn't have to be embarrassed by asking her name when I've known her since we were both kids. 

I didn't have too many unusual stories yesterday. I did have people coming back to see me from years past. A few that have come every year since I had The Scent of Lilacs there in 2005. (Thanks Beth and Julie and Sherry.) That's always encouraging. I had a lot of people looking at my books and then buying them for their mothers. Or great aunts. I have to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that younger people can read my books too. 

But since I'm talking about older readers, I did have one beautiful 93 year old reading friend come by my table to get my book. She grew up in the same little community as my mother and I think she's still trying to sort out which parts of Angel Sister are based on true happenings. I tell her only the background of the story, but she's not wanting to believe that. She's wanting to skip back through her childhood in the pages of the book. And why not? That's what books can do for us. Take us on an adventure in living.

Probably the cutest story I've ever carried home from a book fair, was the one where the husband brought his wife to the fair as a surprise anniversary destination. He'd even bought her one of my books before they got to the fair since, never having attended a book fair before, he didn't realize the books would be available on site. His wife was so happy she sparkled - she felt that loved. 

And isn't that what most all of us want? To be loved enough that someone will make the extra effort to give us a day to remember. To have someone know us that well. That's all we want. That and oh yes, of course a good book. 

Book fairs - always days to remember. Do you like book fairs? Do you have a hard time deciding which books to buy? I had several of those stop by my table. Can a fast talking author get you to carry home a book you didn't really plan to buy?

Thanks for reading. Hope you have a wonderful week.