Africa and America in a manner that no United Nations mission or foreign aid program could hope to equal. It quickened the pulse. And reminded Amanda of John Paul's testimonial of a few days prior in which he professed that the sausage was one of the few achievements of Western technology that he could genuinely respect.
Up above that ambassador hot dog, in the night-blue sky above it, was to Amanda's eyes the most thrilling segment of the whole tableau: a skyful of vanilla stars and pastel planets and rushing comets and constellations (Jupiter was in the house of Gemini) and novae and nebulae and meteors dissolving in spittoons of fire and a tropical moon laid out against a cloud bank like a radioactive oyster on the half shell, and dominating the entire sidereal panorama was Saturn—silver and mysterious mushy omelet of ammonia and ice girded by its sharp gas rings like an avatar egg with a hip-hugger aura. And all this astronomical grandeur merely a backdrop for the mustard-draped shoulders of the cosmic colossal weenie, a sight to put a lump in the throat of the most unambitious Nebraska piglets, bar none.
The hot dog was to be erected on the roof of the road-house. Some workmen were coming from Mount Vernon with a crane. In a day or two, as soon as the paint was dry. It would be visible for miles.
The Zillers had reached no decision on the contents of the zoo. They were opposed to cages. Society was opposed to wild animals running loose in restaurants. The proper compromise evaded them. Amanda consulted the
I Ching
. She induced a trance. With no fit results. They had agreed to forget it for a while. In the meantime they could concentrate on what items they would sell in their shop, on what foods they would serve.
Something simple, they both insisted on simplicity. They had no intention of wasting their days cooking and washing dishes for tourist hordes. They shuddered at the thought. “Hot dogs,” John Paul had suggested. “Good old-fashioned hot dogs. With steam-softened buns. We'll keep our buns in a steam cabinet the way they did when men were men and the sausage was the backbone of an empire. We'll offer fresh onions, raw or fried. A variety of mustards, catsups and relishes. Bacon, chopped nuts, melted cheese, sauerkraut—optional at additional cost, like whitewalls or power steering. The sausages we will carefully select for size and flavor; 100 per cent meat sausages (a little heavier on the beef than the pork), the best we can buy, the finest offspring of German technical expertise and American ingenuity.”
Amanda was not at ease with the prospect of operating a hot dog stand. She was a vegetarian.
Due to the fact that she occasionally consumed milk and milk derivatives, she could not be considered a
strict
vegetarian. “Amanda,” purists would scold, “milk is an animal product. How can you drink milk and still consider yourself a vegetarian?” And Amanda would answer, “The label states that this carton contains activated ergosterol. Have you ever heard of a cow that activated ergosterol?” But as vegetarians are a stubborn lot, the argument was never resolved.
At any rate, Amanda protested. “I shan't impose my beliefs on other people,” she said, “but my conscience would turn purple were I, a vegetarian, to earn an income selling meat. There are limits to the decency of irony. Why, I'd feel like a Mormon.” (Not that Amanda had any particular prejudice against Mormons, but she was a curious young woman, as many persons had established, and it confounded her curiosity that a denomination of nonsmoking teetotalers like the Mormons could justify supporting itself through the operation of supermarkets and drugstores in which alcoholic beverages and tobacco are prominent wares.)
John Paul was untroubled by any undue reverence for meat. “Look,” he said, “the world is overrun with animals, great and small, fanged and feathered, all eating one another in happy harmony. Man is the party
Up above that ambassador hot dog, in the night-blue sky above it, was to Amanda's eyes the most thrilling segment of the whole tableau: a skyful of vanilla stars and pastel planets and rushing comets and constellations (Jupiter was in the house of Gemini) and novae and nebulae and meteors dissolving in spittoons of fire and a tropical moon laid out against a cloud bank like a radioactive oyster on the half shell, and dominating the entire sidereal panorama was Saturn—silver and mysterious mushy omelet of ammonia and ice girded by its sharp gas rings like an avatar egg with a hip-hugger aura. And all this astronomical grandeur merely a backdrop for the mustard-draped shoulders of the cosmic colossal weenie, a sight to put a lump in the throat of the most unambitious Nebraska piglets, bar none.
The hot dog was to be erected on the roof of the road-house. Some workmen were coming from Mount Vernon with a crane. In a day or two, as soon as the paint was dry. It would be visible for miles.
The Zillers had reached no decision on the contents of the zoo. They were opposed to cages. Society was opposed to wild animals running loose in restaurants. The proper compromise evaded them. Amanda consulted the
I Ching
. She induced a trance. With no fit results. They had agreed to forget it for a while. In the meantime they could concentrate on what items they would sell in their shop, on what foods they would serve.
Something simple, they both insisted on simplicity. They had no intention of wasting their days cooking and washing dishes for tourist hordes. They shuddered at the thought. “Hot dogs,” John Paul had suggested. “Good old-fashioned hot dogs. With steam-softened buns. We'll keep our buns in a steam cabinet the way they did when men were men and the sausage was the backbone of an empire. We'll offer fresh onions, raw or fried. A variety of mustards, catsups and relishes. Bacon, chopped nuts, melted cheese, sauerkraut—optional at additional cost, like whitewalls or power steering. The sausages we will carefully select for size and flavor; 100 per cent meat sausages (a little heavier on the beef than the pork), the best we can buy, the finest offspring of German technical expertise and American ingenuity.”
Amanda was not at ease with the prospect of operating a hot dog stand. She was a vegetarian.
Due to the fact that she occasionally consumed milk and milk derivatives, she could not be considered a
strict
vegetarian. “Amanda,” purists would scold, “milk is an animal product. How can you drink milk and still consider yourself a vegetarian?” And Amanda would answer, “The label states that this carton contains activated ergosterol. Have you ever heard of a cow that activated ergosterol?” But as vegetarians are a stubborn lot, the argument was never resolved.
At any rate, Amanda protested. “I shan't impose my beliefs on other people,” she said, “but my conscience would turn purple were I, a vegetarian, to earn an income selling meat. There are limits to the decency of irony. Why, I'd feel like a Mormon.” (Not that Amanda had any particular prejudice against Mormons, but she was a curious young woman, as many persons had established, and it confounded her curiosity that a denomination of nonsmoking teetotalers like the Mormons could justify supporting itself through the operation of supermarkets and drugstores in which alcoholic beverages and tobacco are prominent wares.)
John Paul was untroubled by any undue reverence for meat. “Look,” he said, “the world is overrun with animals, great and small, fanged and feathered, all eating one another in happy harmony. Man is the party
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