On A Stick

Gratuitous spearing of food with wood is a summer tradition. The stick adds portability and drama. "How much of this meal will end up on the sidewalk?" I wonder as I eat sticked food.

But back to shopping...back in the old place, when the thrift store was good, I bought a 50c record that was amazing. It was all I listened to for weeks: "Whatever You Are," by Sonny Padilla Jr.

SPJr was a self-styled teen heart throb. His LP was filled with lyric sheets and two different kinds of photographs of Sonny. One was a classic head shot. One was a photo montage, including a small portrait of young Sonny looking dreamily into space while wielding a corn dog at eye level. I became so enamored of this shot that I *almost* talked Mr Guy into having our wedding portraits taken with corndogs in hand.

Some foods are born to the stick. Candy apples, for one. I ate an amazing candy apple in the dead of winter at Coney Island. The cinnamon candy shell was so thick that in order to eat it I put the waxed paper against a filthy carney phonebooth and smacked the apple into the paper to break the candy. The most satisfying on-a-stick experience to date.

And some foods do not belong on a stick. Case in point: Montage, chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. I watched a vendor struggle to give this stuff away outside the Ferragamo store in Manhattan on a hot August day. It was either the stick or the terrible name.

The MN State Fair this year boasted no fewer than 50 different foods on a stick. And one booth which was reported to call itself "Nothin on a Stick." Hot Dish, a traditional casserole of beef, mushroom gravy and a tater tot blackout on top was somehow consolidated by unholy means and was sold on a stick.