ASHLAND —
Ask children what they’re doing hanging out in the Riverhills Plaza Saturday morning in front of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and they give you a slightly exasperated look.
“It’s super awesome. It looks like a big hot dog. That’s funny and cool at the same time,” 9-year-old Tera Williams patiently explained.
“It sort of looks like a giant hot dog? But they give out free whistles?” said Dominic Craft, 12, looking carefully at his interviewer to make sure he understood.
“Because it’s a giant hotdog on wheels,” said 11-year-old Gracie Moore, rolling her eyes and flapping her hands impatiently, pointing out the rolling sausage looming behind her. The “duh” was left unstated — but understood.
Aaron Williams, Tera’s 3-year-old brother, didn’t say anything. He just puffed away on his Wiener Whistle, the tiny musical plastic replica that drivers of the Wienermobile give away by the shovelful at every stop.
There are jillions of promotional vehicles on the highways of America. It’s hard to drive more than a mile or two without seeing a van or bus wrapped in flashy graphics and pushing a product of some kind.
But do kids push their faces up against the car windows to get a closer look? Do grown men in business suits and ties do double takes and grin? Do people scrabble for cameras to take pictures as the big dog cruises by?
No, nope and no way.
But all those things happen all the time with the Wienermobile, said its drivers, Angela Pimentel and Eliot Pattee. Drivers call themselves hotdoggers, by the way, and they spend their year-long tenure making stops five days a week in towns across the country. Pimentel and Pattee cover a region that extends to Florida in the south and Alabama in the west.
Both are preternaturally perky, a prerequisite for their role promoting Oscar Mayer’s meat products. While their appearances formally last about six hours a day, they are of necessity ready to meet admirers around the clock and on weekends too.
The Wienermobile is their transportation, so even going to a movie or out for a burger means meeting curious people, they say. “It takes us at least 15 minutes at the gas station, plus the time to pump the gas,” Pimentel said.
But that’s why they took the job. Both are recent college graduates, Pimentel from International University in Miami and Pattee from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
To Pimentel, her year behind the wheel of the Wienermobile is an ideal way to see America, meet its people and make friends with them.
The two drove into Ashland Saturday morning from Charleston, W.Va., taking I-64 and U.S. 60 to get into town, smiling all the way at the motorists waving to them.
The 27-foot vehicle is 11 feet high, so they have to be careful around rail underpasses, gas station canopies and the like, but otherwise it’s like tooling around in a large van or SUV. They keep it shiny themselves at truck washes, although in some towns a friendly bunch of firefighters will scrub it for them — and bring their children to gawk and get wienerwhistles.
On Saturday, Pimentel chatted up families and handed out whistles while Pattee took photos of the kids posing with the vehicle.
Waiting in line with her children, Adreine Worthington admitted to being kind of excited herself. She had read a newspaper preview at work and found herself and her coworkers singing the jingle multiple generations of TV watchers can never forget, no matter how hard they try.
If you missed them in Ashland Saturday, they are scheduled to be in West Virginia today: from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the Wienermobile will be at 100 Nitro Marketplace in Cross Lanes and from 2 to 5 p.m. at 167 Progress Way in Hurricane.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.
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