When I was pretty little, my uncle ran concessions for OU Football games. So my Mom and various Aunts and Cousins and family friends made hotdogs at the home games.

Thousands and thousands of hotdogs. Maybe millions.

Mom and I were always among the first to show up on game days. We’d go into the “Hot Dog Room“, on the ground level, hidden way back under the northwest corner of the stadium.

It was open air, with no heating or air-conditioning.

In September, it could be like a sauna, without a whisper of wind. In late November or December,  you could’ve hung sides of beef in there, it was so cold.

Mom’s first job was to get out the huge steel pots, fill them with water, and put them on top of gas burners that were going full blast.

Next, she’d break open dozens of huge boxes of frozen wienies and empty them into the cauldrons.

Soon enough, there were a dozen boiling pots of wienies, giving off the magnificent smell of hot dogs. 

The other ladies would have formed assembly lines along several production tables.

It took them a while to get warmed up. But when they hit their pace, their hands were like a blur, producing hotdogs faster than you could count. 

They’d split the bun, paint on a dosh of brownish-orange mustard, slap on a wienie, and then slide the whole hot dog into a silver wrapper, all in about two seconds.

Then someone would stack, or actually squish, 40 or 50 hot dogs into the wooden boxes that vendors used.   

When I was little, watching this process was enormously exciting. And the smell of the boiling hot dog wienies was intoxicating.

I’d hang around the kitchen area for an hour or two, mooching cooked wienies from Mom or my Aunties, and occasionally earning my keep by carrying out the trash. Mom paid me 25 cents every game for my efforts, out of her own pocket, which was huge money!

When I’d done enough work, and I needed to burn off some energy – not to mention all the hotdogs I’d scarfed down – I’d race around the stadium’s dirt floor, taking in the atmosphere and the excitement of Sooner football!

When fans started streaming in by the thousands, the stadium would come alive and stir up enough dust to choke a horse.

I’d keep circling back to the kitchen every 20 minutes or so to grab another wienie, or occasionally a whole hotdog. 

Mom encouraged me to gorge, since hot dogs were free, and because there was no way she was going to cook a big dinner that night.

By about noon, I would have had my fill. I’d quit eating and strain to hear the P.A. announcer introducing the OU band as the “Puh-ride of Oklahoma”, who would belt out “Boomer Sooner” during pre-game activities.

If you were downstairs at the kick off, or when OU scored a big touchdown, the stadium shook so violently that you thought it was going to collapse.

All the screaming and clapping and stomping by 60,000 fans made the wind whip down the exit ramps, kicking up a tsunami of wienie dust.

It was the most exciting feeling a little kid could have, a total sensory overload!

Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I’d sneak up the ramp to get a glimpse of the action.

But since I was only about 3 feet tall, and there were strict rules about standing in the aisles or exit ramps, I never could see much; just a lot of grown up butts, and the occasional play.

I’d give up after a few minutes and head back to Wienie Central, then repeat the up-and-down cycle during the first and second quarters.

Usually toward the end of the third quarter, Mom and the Aunties and Cousins would have finished cooking, washed all the huge pots, and poured the cloudy wienie water down the drains (which was probably responsible for clogging Norman’s sewers for decades).

The ladies would take off their aprons and head scarves, do up their hair, put on some lipstick, divide up the leftover boxes of wienies (that they were encouraged to take home) and then race off to beat the monster traffic jam that brought Norman to its knees after every OU game.

I don’t remember the wienie smell being that bad in the car going home. But Mom always had the windows open as she puffed away on her Winstons. And, besides, by then our noses were pretty desensitized.

But the next day, when we grabbed our “hot dog” clothes and put them into the washing machine, the overwhelming aroma of Eau de Wiener could make you downright queasy.

But we didn’t shy from eating wienies for the next week or two. Because they were free, and free was good back in the day.

Mom would make countless hotdogs, vats of sauerkraut and wienies, “sausage” and eggs, beans and wieners, chili and wienies, and Lord only knows what other concoctions.

In the Seventies, I had worked my way up through the OU Concession’s hierarchy: from Wiener Central trash boy, to popcorn stand boy (working with my sisters), to selling baskets of Goobers and Cracker Jack in the stadium, and, finally, to selling boxes of hot dogs.

Not only did that make me feel like a bigshot, it also allowed me to watch OU’s home games for free.

Well, at least I could watch snippets of the games, when I wasn’t being mobbed by starving Sooner fans who would have killed for a hot dog, or angry fans who complained their hot dogs were cold or squashed, or had too much or too little mustard.

Like there was anything I could do about it, sheesh!

On a big game day, I’d sell three or four boxes of hot dogs by lugging the heavy boxes up and down the stadium stairs a million times.

It was well worth it, and how I made my Christmas money.

The pinnacle of my hot dog career was in 1971 when OU played Nebraska for the National Championship.

Even though it was a record crowd, I only sold one box of hot dogs that game.

That’s because making money was the last thing on my mind.

I hunkered down in the aisles, ignoring hungry fans, and took in every second of “The Game of the Century.”

Sports Illustrated said on its cover: “Irresistible Oklahoma Met Immovable Nebraska,” and they sure got that right. The Cornhuskers won 35-31, making me and every Sooner fan in the stadium nearly choke on our tears and hotdogs

(From "MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer: Growing ip in Norman in the 60s and 70s"", available to order RIGHT NOW on Amazon!) 

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