Feature article
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Boone Drug keeping hot dog tradition alive
By Fred Sauceman
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| Marilyn Farthing, fountain manager at Boone Drug, shows off a hard-to-find Appalachian State shirt. |
Boone, North Carolina, is a grilled hot dog town. The Hill Top Drive-In on Highway 421 grills crimson footlongs. Owner Karen Wood says people want them split and black.
“The more they blacken on the grill, the better they taste,” says Karen, whose father, Harold Coffey, opened the Hill Top in 1958. “Burn it” is a common command.
Downtown, adjacent to the Appalachian State University campus, Boone Drug follows a similar procedure, splitting hot dogs completely in two before they’re grilled.
A fundamental Boone Drug hot dog comes dressed with what fountain manager Marilyn Farthing calls a “pretty basic chili,” with lean ground beef, catsup, and chili powder. The surprise ingredient, and the source of the chili’s pleasing moisture, is tomato soup.
An HDMS is a “hot dog mountain style,” an extra large wiener, likewise grilled, and served with sauerkraut and mustard on a hoagie bun.
Boone Drug opened in 1919, compounding prescriptions and serving Coca-Cola. The business still does both. Hanging around the drugstore are brown and brittle stacks of paper that resemble beehives, the first filing system for prescriptions.
Boone Drug doesn’t take itself too seriously. The menu says pills are made from scratch, “just like biscuits except grandmas are replaced by a hillbilly with a degree in pharmacy.”
In its earliest days, Boone Drug sold leeches for medicinal reasons. “Now,” says the history on the menu, “we have a group of them that gather here each morning and call themselves the Coffee Club.”
When a member of that club dies, the name is etched into a metal plate and affixed to the counter.
Parson’s Choice double cheeseburgers come off the busy grill, as does liver mush, first cousin to Pennsylvania’s scrapple and evidence of the German influence on Western North Carolina cuisine.
Liver mush at Boone Drug is grilled to the customer’s desired stage of crispiness and served with mustard on a bun or toast.
“You either like it or hate it,” says Marilyn. “There’s no in between. And I’m shocked by the number of young people who eat it.”
Boone Drug has been serving liver mush for about five years. Its presence is more dominant down in the Piedmont, around Shelby, once home to a liver mush festival. But Boone Drug also serves it on biscuits and in omelets, instead of sausage or bacon.
Note: For an upcoming column, I’m seeking information from people who grow ground cherries.
You may e-mail me at sauceman@etsu.edu.
| . | “People are asking for fried bologna now,” Marilyn adds.
After the Appalachian State Mountaineers’ football victory over the University of Michigan, Marilyn said you could hardly find a T-shirt in town with ASU on it. “There were 350 copies of Sports Illustrated reserved at Harris-Teeter. I called and couldn’t get a one.”
Since that win, which many have called the most remarkable upset in college football history, customers from all over have wandered into the drugstore. Some ask about the location of Kidd Brewer Stadium and why it’s called The Rock.
“We’ve had tons of people come in here since that game,” says Marilyn, a native of Watauga County. “And it’s good to see that our home games are selling out.”
Marilyn spent that unforgettable day, September 1, 2007, as she always does, hustling milkshakes from fountain to table.
“Since the game wasn’t on television, people called in updates, which were shouted all over the drugstore,” she said.
Marilyn has been working at Boone Drug for two decades, proudly feeding students and alumni of Appalachian State. The school’s band comes in for lunch on Fridays and returns at 11:00 on home football Saturdays, after an early morning practice.
“These kids become my family,” says Marilyn. “They’re never rude. They’re good for this drugstore.”
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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