I need your help. We go to Gettysburg, Pa twice a month to visit my PAP and eat at Ernie's Texas Lunch where we have the absolute mouth-wateringest best Texas Hot Wiener we ever had. Would like to know where you guys & gals have your favorite Texas Hot Wieners (and hamburgers).
Here's the Hamburger version. (that yellow stuff is mustard smeared on it.
And here is the place where these yummies are made: Ernie's Texas Lunch in Gettysburg, Pa.
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For those who may not know the Texas Hot Lunch franchise the specialities are shown on this thread. They called the hamburger baked but it was grilled and then simmered in a secret broth. I always thought the secret broth was water and beef bullion. The onions were food processed down to spreadable. When I started eating them in the 50's both sold for a quarter each. One could get two sandwiches and a grog with two bits change from a dollar. At that time I was earning twenty two cents an hour working as a Lionel Train Engineeer in the areas largest department toy store in Chambersburg the county seat. After Christmas I was given a two dollar bonus and told the job was mine next year. Gasoline was twenty five cents a gallon. We still had to carry lunch to make ends meet and we all walked to school. My wife's mother was a teacher. Both she and my wife walked three miles to school.
A family vistit to Texas Hot was a night out for our family. I know of only one in Altoona that was still open about three years ago. We were permitted to hang out at our Texas Hot after eight PM.
I've never even heard of it.
I have heard of them, might have been on the Food Chanel, but never ate one. They look good, but all those onions just won't set right with me. The only dog I eat is Smith's Natural Casings. I use to buy a big pillow pack of them when DD came up to visit from Columbus OH, then she found a store that carried them.
Doc, I'm not sure how far I walked to school but I did climb 157 steps and then up 2 hills. School buses were a rarity and when I went to High School I caught public bus transpiration at the end of the steps and 2 hills. I have some pretty large calves due to all that walking and climbing, I had a hard time finding Go Go Boots that fit. LOL I don't think I ever stepped on a school bus until my DD started school and I chaperoned school outings.
Me neither jen.
doc's reminiscenses give us some kind of perspective. And we wonder why so many young kids are overweight.
We like Hebrew national, at home.
I found the Hebrew National too salty. We buy Deitz and Watson
Well I had reason to walk that girl and/or her mother three miles to her home. Nine years later we got married and somehow we managed to put up with each other for well over fifty years and through the raising of two boys and now the grandchildren. We must have remembered the wedding vows.........."through thick and thin, puddings and steaks we'll stay in the same bed" or something like that. ]:o) It must have worked because we were both raised on fried milk toast in our early years.
:)
Doc, I love that trip back in time. Actually, for Bob & I to be able to eat a Texas Hot (it isn't hot or spicy at all, just freshly cooked and steaming hot), we take a Pepcid before we say Grace & eat. LOL. The onions are mild but you can smell that delictable delight on your breath for many hours. Bob took me to the Famous Texas Restaurant in the late 1970's when we were running my Dad's (later to become mine) TV store and we were open from 9-5 and 6-9 p.m. on Friday evening so he took me to the Famous Texas Lunch and nearly every Friday between 5-6 pm, we would go there and have a famous texas hot wiener and a famous texas hamburger. By the way, That was a relative of Ernie Kranias who ran the Famous Texas in Chambersburg, Pa. I am not sure if the Chambersburg store is still open but Ernie runs the one in Gettysburg. I don't go back as far as Doc but my sis & I walked to grade school in Carlisle (only a matter of blocks, not miles), and Bob walked several miles to school when he was young & lived in Adams County. Weavers makes the short tough-skinned tasty hotdogs that are used in the Hot Wiener. If you never ate one and you enjoy onions, chili, mustard, a great hotdog and a freshly steamed bun, treat yourself. They are addictive.
I ate plenty of dogs at Texas in Chambersburg, It was just a few doors square side of Washington on Main. I think one of the first visits was after a trip to the library.
Judy, I think your right about being Ernie's place. They never rushed us if we sat around chewing the ice from the bottom of our Cokes after eating, even though we were pretty much kids. Ric
I think they ended up moving out to west Lincoln Way West. Yes they did! and they have a web page:
http://drawingforfood.blogspot.com/2009/07/historic-texas-lunch.html
This message was edited Nov 28, 2010 7:22 PM
Jen, I think there was one on Perry St. across from the little graveyard that was next to the USO, about 1/2 block or so from the Cathedral. Ric
http://mealsihaveeaten.blogspot.com/search?q=Texas+lunch
http://texashotwieners.blogspot.com/
This message was edited Dec 1, 2010 11:18 AM
Chambersburg Fact..................all the property from the square on the West side of South Main Street South to the famous Waffle House was owned by Jerry B.Henks a county bachelor farmer who found out farming wasted town properties was better than walking behind a plow. My father was a small contractor who remodeled every square inch of those properties for Jerry. I got to help on Saturdays. Jerry always had a thousand bucks cash in his pocket and paid his verbal bills weekly. He could neither read or write. He liked to trade stuff. For instance he gave my dad enough beautiful walnut to build two corner cupboards for a project undertaken at the farm. Mom always had him as a guest for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He always had a gift in his name under our Christmas tree. My sister and I were willed the corner cupboards dad built out of that walnut. Jerry never forgot that dad made something beautiful out of his walnut. He died a millionaire owning a nice chunk of the 1st. National Bank in Chambersburg which was on that center city square over looking the investments they made with Jerry.
Every Wednesday Jerry would have breakfast at the Waffle House with a banker. They would find out how much money Jerry needed to pay his service providers. At noon on Friday another banker would have lunch with Jerry and give him the right amount of money wrapped and named for his contractors. Friday afternoon Jerry would walk down the street and pay every one he had working that week. He never missed a pay day except one week he was in the hospital. On Monday of the following week my father stopped working to go see Jerry. His biggest complaint was the nurses scrubbed him up to much. Dad was given the pay roll and delivered it just three days late. He had no known relatives. He arrived in Chambersburg on foot and never owned an automobile. Mostly he walked. Occasionally he rode his retired race horse. He never owed anyone anything more than a week.
I know that some reading this will find it nearly unbelieveable. Those were indeed different days than we live through today.
The day he died or shortly there after each all of his regular contractors were given a major surprise but they had to leave the cash in the 1st National Bank and maintain an account with that bank. I remember him well because of the gift he always had for me when I was with dad as early as six years of age. The gift was an uncirculated silver dollar in a tin box that had the banks image on it. I still have them. I have no idea what the might be worth today.
I enjoy your trips back in time. I can remember going trick-or-treating and being able to eat everything (even the homebaked stuff), and not having to take it to the hospital to have it x-rayed. I remember going out at night and not having to worry about being shot or kidnapped. I remember my Dad having the first television set in Carlisle: a 7-inch b&w sylvania in a wooden cabinet (a portable?). I remember Mom setting up folding chairs in the basement and making popcorn for the neighbors to come in & see the first tv show in Carlisle, channel 2 out of Baltimore, a basketball game. I remember.
I missed a goodie...........Jerry was very kind to his animals. They had free front and back entry to his house.
The shovel and the broom were handy. Dad told us he never saw any evidence of a scrub bucket or change in position of the shovel and the broom. There was always two to four inches of yesterdays newspaper covering any doo doo that got dropped on the table. The rest of the newspaper was in the outhouse. When the pile got to high he burned some and saved the ashes to throw down the outhouse hole instead of buying lime. He carried water to the house from a spring house. His bathtub for the weekly bath was the spring house pool that cooled his raw milk. He dumped his raw milk there causing the outside pool to be literally covered over with the finest growth of watercress I ever saw even to this day. Plump wild rainbow trout were fat and sassy in that pool. He took bushels of the cress to the weekly county cattle auction where the farmers wives could buy all one hand could hold for a dime. My one uncle was the auctioneer. He always brought home a dimes worth for my mother. One could hardly go pick it for a dime even in those days.
JUST REPORTED TO ME.............Lock Haven's Texas Lunch is still in business on their Main Street.
Oh I wonder how their Texas Wieners are? Next time we are in the area, we'll stop in. Thanks, Doc.
