What a wonderful wiener dog

When we write a story of strange happenings, such as the story of the petrified hot dog on the radio antenna two weeks ago, we know three things will happen:

1. People will complain the story is so stupid or so insignificant that it shouldn’t be in the newspaper. We were correct. Some people complained.

2. Others will laugh at the story and enjoy it. With the hot dog, we received calls from television stations who wanted to do the story and from Canadian Public Broadcasting, who wanted it for their national newscast.

3. Someone will call and say, “A five-year-old hot dog? I can beat that.”
Which is what Flora Zimbelman of Keenesburg did. And she brought us an even stranger hot dog story.

Floras, 89, and her sister, Rose Carlton, 90, who died earlier this year, mailed a hot dog back and forth as a gag gift through the years. They sent it to each other for Christmas, and if one would visit the other, they’d hide it in the house.

The sisters started this in 1952.

For 54 years, they mailed and hid and smuggled the same Oscar Meyer hot dog between their homes.

While Flora has lived in the same house since she married in 1936, Rose moved all over the country, living in Colorado, Arizona, California and several other places. And through all the moving and changes of address, the hot dog from Flora followed.

It all began in 1952 when Rose was visiting Flora.

“We had hot dogs the night before, and Rose’s suitcase was sitting there open, and there were some leftover hot dogs in the kitchen...” she said.

We know what happened.

When Rose got home, she discovered the hot dog (with two pieces of bread and wax paper around it), saved it and mailed it back to her sister the next Christmas.
Later, Rose made a small decorated box to carry the hot dog.

Flora said the hot dog never rotted or went bad.

“They made things pretty good in those days,” she said.

A descendant of Germans from Russia who came to the United States at the turn of the century, Flora said her family was always playing food jokes.

“Aunt Sarah and Uncle Albert sent a burned cherry pie back and forth between family members for years,” Flora said.

And Flora’s sister, Juanita Cowan of Loveland, talks about their cousin Henry: “We put a chicken bone in the pocket of his suit one time, and he never noticed. It stayed there for a long time — until we had another funeral — which was the only time he wore his suit.”

Flora is the state’s oldest survivor of the West Nile Virus. Two years ago, she spent six weeks at North Colorado Medical Center, fighting West Nile, encephalitis and pneumonia. She was 86 then, and she beat it.

Flora likes to say she’s as tough as her fabled hot dog.

Staff writer Mike Peters’ column about Weld County people appears Mondays in the Tribune. His humor column, the Gnarly Trombone, appears Saturdays. He can be reached at mpeters@greeleytribune.com