My best friend, David Szentesy, or as we call him Crazy David, has worked for Oscar Meyer/Kraft for 38 years. 
His wife Carol is a high school classmate of mine and has kept him in line for years. David was a year ahead of Carol and I in high school. They got married and rented part of my mom and dad’s house in the early seventies. Dave and Carol lived downstairs and I lived upstairs.
My parent’s had come to America in 1951 and brought little Freddy with them. They worked very hard and had not taken a vacation in 20 years. They went to Italy and took my brother and sister with them. The second night they were gone, the store was broken into and burned down. I was here because I was in the National Guard and had to fulfill my obligation. It was a hard phone call to make but eventually my dad decided to stay there for a year and have my brother and sister go to school in Rome. So Dave and Carol were renting part of the house. We had some parties and just some great hanging out together.
David and I both wanted to improve our job prospects. Every Sunday I would get up and check out the want ads. David usually relied on me to check out any leads. One Sunday there was an ad for Oscar Meyer looking for a salesman. I did not qualify because they wanted someone with a college degree. I never went to college so I had no choice. David qualified so the next day he promptly applied. After numerous interviews he got the job.
David has worked there since 1972. He has gone through all the ownership changes and now he just takes care of a few big customers and makes them very happy. Sometime in the mid 80’s, I don’t remember exactly when, little Oscar was retiring. We had his cousin for a teacher at Lew Wallace, Mr. Molchan. Little Oscar was from Gary, IN, and my dad used to make him tailor made suits. Little Oscar had no choice because he was so small he needed a special fit. One day I got a phone call from David that we were going to have an impromptu retirement party for little Oscar. David lived down the block and since I was his daughter’s godfather (makes me family), I was charged with being his assistant that day. I was surprised when David came home driving the weiner mobile. We then started driving around the neighborhood and giving kids rides in the weiner mobile. The next day we loaded all our kids in the Weiner Mobile and took them to school. Needles to say it was quite a hit. The new Weiner mobiles are much easier to drive than this one was. This was built on an old truck frame and was very cumbersome to drive.
Dave’s wife Carol was getting things together for the party. As you might guess we cooked hot dogs on the grill and had lots of snacks. We went up and down the street and invited neighbors and called our friends. It was a great time. We had parked the weiner mobile in David’s driveway and all the kids had a blast climbing in and out of the vehicle and eating hot dogs and having a great time.
At one point we looked up and to our dismay we say the weiner mobile slowly rolling backwards down the driveway. Luckily there were no kids in the vehicle at the time. One of the kids had evidently hit the parking brake and the slight incline of the driveway made it roll. We could only watch in horror as we wondered if it would roll across the yard across the street and crash into the house or hit a car. As luck would have it, it did crash into a parked car and we felt some relief that it didn’t make to the house. The car held up better than we thought and the weiner mobile didn’t have a mark on it. When the cops came it was all they could do to take the report with a straight face. We pulled the weiner mobile back in David’s driveway and this time we put some blocks under the tires. It was quite exciting and gave us a lot to talk about for the rest of the party.
Until later………………………………………ciao
Fred Cicco is part owner of John Cicco’s Menswear and ID plus Marketing in Merrillville.
You can reach him at Fred@idplus.biz