dog days of summer
From Wikipedia:
The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius, which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck.
One late summer night while doing the dishes at Jen's farm, the chefs and I got to talking about Korean food trends. This was at the height of the mint chocolate craze. I've always thought that Koreans are unafraid to take a flavor and run as far as they can with it. Often leading to very cursed foods, such as mint chocolate tteokbokki. If anything, honey butter, churros, toowoomba, these things are proof of that. It was late, well past midnight, and the bugs moved frenetically in the flood lights and over our heads as we hauled dishes from the truck to the 3-sink in Jen's barn. We discussed snow onion chicken, mala dry pot. But most of all (many of us being southerners or having spent a lot of time in the south), we were drawn to the corn dog.
Known as a āhotdogā in Korea, the corndog has had a true renaissance, so much so that it has returned to American soil through Korean corn dog businesses in urban centers like New York, LA, and Columbia, MD.
The corndog I grew up with was the kind you get at a state fair. A hot dog dipped in a cornmeal batter, deep-fried, and enjoyed with ketchup. I got it every summer at Celebrate Fairfax! an annual county fair with fireworks and carnival games. I remember eating my corndog while sitting on a random curb, sweating through my t-shirt, smearing ketchup all over my face while my mom and dad shared a funnel cake. I remember the ice cold lemonades in their large yellow and green plastic cups. I remember wanting to win a toy sword from the guy who ran the stall where you had to shoot a red star out of a piece of paper with a BB gun. I never won of course.
At my high school, they sold corndogs in the mornings with a breakfast sausage link and maple syrup for $1.50. It was one of the few foods I could stomach my senior year. After four years of school food, I was pretty much over everything except the Snyder's honey mustard pretzels and that corndog. It was sticky before I even got the maple syrup involved. Sometime through my junior year they changed the stick they used to skewer it and the wood would splinter more easily. When I graduated high school, I didn't realize it would be a long time before I had another corndog at all.
I had caught that bug that afflicts so many college students: productivity. I felt the pressure and anxiety of "real life" encroaching on me and felt the urge to go out and "do something" with my summers. No time to visit home, and if I did, certainly no time for county fairs. I jumped at opportunities to write over the summer. Intensive workshops, summer study abroad, trips to visit other friends' colleges. I forced myself to write poetry in these unfamiliar cities: new york, antibes, pittsburgh, san francisco, LA, lewisberg. Summer has always been a slow time for me. The heat is so distracting and makes it impossible to focus on anything else. That last summer in Lewisburg was perhaps the most challenging.
somewhere near Lewisberg, PA, June 2016
The heat was oppressive and omnipresent and due to the nature of the program, no one knew each other before attending. I tried to escape into libraries, reading rooms, but the heat seemed to find me everywhere and it stalled my writing. During one meeting with a visiting writer, I described the frustration I felt with myself. I had been trying to write about identity for the better half of a year and was caught in a crisis of not knowing if it felt right or true to write about things that are distinctly Korean as a Korean American. I had just starting thinking about Ungnyeo and the Tiger and had brought in the very first poem I had written about them.
She asked me what I thought the poem was about. I am always thrown off by questions like this so I stammered through an answer, sweating into the leather chair in her borrowed office. "Sort of about...conflating this myth with my experience? About how being in this in-between space, being not quite American...and still not quite Korean, can be difficult but interesting?"
She said, "Okay I want to tell you something, and maybe you should get a pen out, because I think you might want to write this down."
"It is difficult and interesting to be a person"
If it hadn't already been on my mind, perhaps this statement wouldn't have come as such a shock. But it was on my mind. It was oppressive and omnipresent. I was in a program that supposedly invited only 12 of "the best" undergraduate poets and 10 of them were white. All of my undergraduate writing programs' workshops were majority white. My professors, the MFA students, whom I admired and looked up to were almost all white. This woman, in this office, on this campus named after a white man, was white.
This was the same week that my friend got bitten by a feral stray cat. The week before, T and I got false positives on the TB skin tests required for entry into the program because our home countries used the BCG vaccine. I had to go to the hospital because the rash was so bad. In a few weeks, I would break up with someone I loved because I felt an immense pressure to move more quickly than I felt comfortable. And that same person decided to get back at me by kissing my roommate and best friend just days later. It was a troubling season.
I spent the whole school year trying to purge myself of that summer, all the mad heat and betrayal. I made new friends, Korean friends, I took a break from workshops. I kept my head down and read poetry by people of color in the deepest coldest floor of the library until it closed at 3am. Then moved to the 24 hour study space until I was falling asleep at the desk.
the campus library at 5am
I like to believe that this "productivity" led me to go to grad school for poetry right out of college. Finally out of that horrible living situation, I took my foot off the gas. And because I had gotten into a "prestigious" (still mostly white) program, I let my summers become more leisurely.
During my 2018 trip to Korea, I saw that the corndog had experienced a real glow up in my time away. There was a new fancy corndog spot on the corner I walked by every day to get to my grandmotherās house. Complete with an Instagram ready faux-greenery wall with a neon sign. The restaurant was sleek and modern, a far cry from hitched concession trailers and public school cafeterias in Virginia. The corndogs, too, while conceptually the same, were all dressed up: kielbasa instead of a wiener, sprinkles and sugar in addition to ketchup. There was half dog-half mozzarella stick, full mozzarella, potato-covered, āCajun style,ā and even a battered-and-fried jumbo prawn.
Relaying the details of these corndogs to the chefs in Jen's barn had them curious and a little appalled, particularly the prospect of sprinkles. We were all raised in the states, but different degrees of Korean American. Me, born in Korea. A, Korean parents, born here. K, one Korean parent. And AG, not Korean American, but dating one at the time.
The air was humid and it had threatened to rain all through service. For me, it had been a long day of explaining that ramen is "noodles in soup, not noodle soup," and gently correcting pronunciations of "karaage." The conversation reached a lull and I could tell they were all still thinking about corn dogs. I know when they get that way itās best to let their ideas stew. So we finished off the rest of the dishes and A and I drove back into our apartment in town.
A week later, there was the K-dog special. An Autumn Olive sausage, cut up, then skewered with alternating pieces of mozzarella cheese dipped in kimchi pancake batter. After itās fried, itās topped with pork floss and scallion, finished with spicy mayo. A corn dog that bridges old and new. The Autumn Olive dog is the star of the show. Itās fatty and meaty enough not to lose out to the density of melted cheese and gives the perfect satisfying chew that you want when youāre eating a corn dog. The pork floss is an ideal topping, calling back both to the state fair nostalgia and Korean new wave sugar topping. A corn dog for those summer days that feel impossibly cruel and slow. It announces itself: what a joy it is to be in-between, difficult, and interesting.