Quick, back to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, Robin | Mark Hinson

When the Oscar Mayer Wiernermobile made a return trip to Tallahassee last rainy weekend, my former colleague Rebeccah Lutz took her 3-year-old son to see the majestic motor vehicle. It was his first time. He was properly agog.

“When he got inside, he wanted to take his jacket off and stay,” Lutz said on her Facebook page.

I know just how the kid felt.

All my life, I have had a fascination with Oscar Mayer Wiernermobile. I don’t even like franks that much, but I love the hot dog-shaped mode of transportation and everything about that tubular slice of Americana.

Sure, I have written many times before about the Wiernermobile, but it’s never enough. Please indulge me again.

Take a Tripp

My obsession with the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile started early when I was in kindergarten and hanging out with Vanderbilt Tripp.

Tripp was a leathery gentleman in his late 80s who once worked with my grandfather at the livery stable and mule barn in downtown Marianna. His parents were slaves before the Civil War. Even though Tripp had been married earlier in his life, he was a widower who never had any children. He became a member of our extended family and I loved him as an uncle. Plus you could learn a helluva lot about American history from someone with Tripp's viewpoint.

I have no idea how I found out that the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was coming to Marianna. It was going to park at Carol Plaza, which was Marianna's first strip mall, on a weekday afternoon. 

To boot, the Wienermobile was being accompanied by the real-life Little Oscar Mayer. Well, OK, I know it’s not cool to say anymore but he was a midget dressed in a chef's outfit. Nevertheless, he was a rock star in my view.

After buttering up Tripp for a few days, I somehow convinced him that we needed to drive his beaten-up pickup truck to Carol Plaza. Who cared if he had glaucoma and could barely see 10 feet in front of him. We took back streets and shortcuts through town so we wouldn't be spotted.

The Wienermobile was as grand as anything I had seen in my five years on Earth. They were giving out free hot dogs, so Tripp and I split one. Little Oscar Mayer was taller in real life.

"I thought you would be shorter," I said.

"I thought the same thing about you," he said.

As Tripp and I left Carol Plaza, creeping home in a haze of poor eyesight, mustard and the magical Wienermobile afterglow, I wondered if there could be a better job on the planet than the one held by Little Oscar Mayer?

Probably not. But I was wrong. I had not yet met The Wiener Chicks.

Here come The Wiener Chicks

In the summer of 1994, I finally got the chance to ride shotgun in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. 

The 23-foot-long, motorized, orange hot dog came through Tallahassee on a promotional tour during one sweltering July. The Wienermobile was driven and maintained by three very attractive, recent college graduates who called themselves The Wiener Chicks. I was single at the time, so this made my dream even sweeter.

"Would you like to take a spin in the Wienermobile?" chief Wiener Chick Melanie McCullough asked me when I met them in the parking lot of a convenience store out near the Tallahassee airport.

"Are you kidding me?" I said. "Fire that flippin' frankfurter up, little missy."

Even though the exterior of the vehicle was just as majestically surreal as a Pop Art sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, the interior of the Wienermobile was a bit of a letdown. It had the feel of an outdated dorm room with its dirt-brown carpet, a first-generation microwave oven, an air conditioner that did not work, a sun roof, a miniature fridge, seats for six and about 10,000 plastic whistles shaped like the Wienermobile. The whistles were still in clear bags.

McCullough told me that the Wienermobile once had a large, clunky, portable phone but it was stolen the night before when she spent the night with old roommates at an apartment building near High Road.

Gasp, someone had dared defile the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile?

"That's like a desperate cry for help in my book," McCullough said of the heinous crime.

When I met Wiener Chick Robin Gelfenbien, she told me she had once talked with the original Little Oscar Mayer.

"He lives in Orlando," Gelfenbien said. "He's got business cards that are real tiny."

She was speaking of Meinhardt Raabe. He not only played Little Oscar out on the road but he was also the Munchkin coroner in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) who sang, "As coroner, I must aver/ I thoroughly examined her/And she's not only merely dead/She's really most sincerely dead."

Ding, dong, the witch is dead, indeed.

As I buckled up in the passenger seat, McCullough pointed to a microphone that was hanging on the dash. I thought it belonged to one of those old CB radios, which were popular in the '70s.

"You know this thing has a public address," McCullough said mischievously as we pulled out and into lunch-hour traffic. "Just keep it clean."

I had to consciously focus on not squealing in delight like a little girl who just got a new pony for Christmas.

McCullough cranked up a cassette tape containing more than 20 variations of "The Oscar Mayer Wiener Song." They were done in the styles of zydeco, country, rap, Dixieland, Cajun, rock, jazz and, my fave version, Bruce Springsteen. Baby, we were born to run with relish and onions.

When we whipped through the airport terminal, I got on the P.A. and announced to the departing passengers, "We need to get these hot dogs to Chicago, pronto! Andale, andale. Out of the way!"

Back in traffic, we got stuck behind a pickup that had a work crew sitting in the bed. The poor guys were sweaty, dirty and wore matching stone faces.

Grabbing the microphone, I spoke in a very deep voice to the young workers.

"Ever get the feeling you're being followed by a giant weenie all your life?" I said. "Don't look behind you. Whatever you do, don't look behind you."

In the parking lot of a Jr. Store, I belted out to a crowd of befuddled onlookers: "Approach the slab of meat with caution. We come in peace. Klaatu barada nikto."

For months after that fun day, I got post cards from The Wiener Chicks while they were on the roads of America. We became pen pals in the days before social media. For Christmas, McCullogh sent me a pair of boxer shorts that were emblazoned with Oscar Mayer wienies. I could not have been happier.

“How well do you know these Wiener Chicks?” my future wife Amy asked skeptically as the holidays approached. “Why are they sending you underwear?”

That was the end of The Wiener Chicks.

Go out with a song

In September of 2016, Richard D. Trentlage shed his mortal coil and is singing jingles the heavenly chorus as we speak. He was 87.

Wait. You don't recognize the name Trentlage? He wrote one of the greatest ear-worms of the 20th century when, in 1962, he sat down and composed "The Oscar Mayer Wiener Song" as a contest entry. It took him an hour. It made him a millionaire. It turned Oscar Mayer hot dogs into a household name.

You know you know the song: "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener/That is what I'd truly like to be/'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener/Everyone would be in love with me."

It's up there with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Happy Birthday To You." It’s a brilliant slice of simplicity. Almost as diabolic and smart as the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile

Contact Mark Hinson at mhinson@tallahassee.com