THE VIEW FROM HERE - This Week from Cheshire, Connecticut

THE VIEW FROM HERE — WEEKEND SERIES

This week from Cheshire, Connecticut — right on the Waterbury line.

Today is shopping with my two sisters, then Blackie’s. A drive-up hot dog stand slinging the same order since 1928, close enough to Waterbury to count as home turf.

Blackie's is closed every Friday. That started as a no-meat-on-Friday rule nobody much remembers the reason for anymore. Nobody's bothered changing the sign either.
Cash only. The dogs are a recipe made just for Blackie's, kissed in hot oil for a snap in the casing. The real draw is the hot pepper relish — thick, no pickles, quiet at first, then it builds.
The move is a white birch soda alongside it. Not tradition — necessity. It's the only thing that puts the heat back out. I'm bringing a jar of the relish home to St. Pete.

Ten of us have been friends since freshman year of high school. Decades later, three of us live within a mile of each other in St. Petersburg, a thousand miles from where we started.
It's been an unusual month: beautiful places in Massachusetts and Connecticut, old friends, family, even a new friend.

Standing in a hot dog line I've stood in a hundred times isn't stabilizing. It's affirming.

This trip started ninety minutes from here, thinking about the town I grew up in. It ends about a hundred yards from its border, ordering the same thing I always have.

Jon Kelly | The Tenpenny Collection | St. Petersburg, FL
Real Estate Sales Associate | Exclusive Buyer Representation
Guiding Clients to #BecomeStPete

#JonKellyStPete #BlackiesHotDogs #WaterburyCT #CheshireCT #WeAreStPete