Fifty Years Written in Ketchup

How much can things change in fifty years? A kid’s memories around the globe in half a century.

We all have our own unique takes on the world. Mine spans the Fifties to now, from the European continent to the Middle East, to India, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and back to Australia. In the Fifties, Europe was looking at a successful United States with similar progress trajectories to Europe.

My birth city Vienna had the usual mix of attitudes to the “Ammies” as they referred to Americans. “Go home Ammie Ammie go home, spalte fuer den frieden dein atom” was something my mother sang in protest events before I was born. “Go home Americans go home, split your atom for peace” was the message a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But the Viennese knew about ketchup – because by the time I was born “hot dogs” had made the journey from German “wurst und semmel” to Coney Island hot dogs, and then back to Europe as an “iconic American dish.” Despite knowing about it, I didn’t get to sample this fad food until the Nineties.

In the Sixties we moved to Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf and thus slap-bang into the oil-rich Middle East. Thanks to Aramco and other oil interests bringing some North American culture and foods to the ME (albeit most often in their company-owned gated communities – delicate situation, you understand…) ketchup was ketchup on Bahrain, too.

Since I started my schooling NOT in a gated community, I started at St Christopher’s school (in only its second year of operation) knowing not one word of Arabic or English, except “ketchup.” Between the workmen on the farm that my father was constructinging and operating, and St Christopher’s, I learned Arabic, English, French, and a few words in Latin in my first year of school. I learned Bahraini Arabic, Veddy Veddy English English, Veddy English French, and very Catholic Latin. With the exception of the latter, those other languages also all had the word “ketchup.”

We eventually moved to what was then known as Bombay, where I’m pretty sure they too knew the word, and from there to Fremantle, Western Australia. There, ketchup was found in bottles labelled “Tomato Sauce…” And English spoken with a Veddy Veddy English accent opened one up to the accusation of being English. As did using the work “ketchup.”
“What are ya, a Pom?”

It’s to be noted at this point that Australia actually liked its history of being convicted prisoners (“convicts”) of the Veddy Veddy English justice system, while at the same time harboring quite some anger and resentment against that Empire. They therefore didn’t like those Veddy Veddy English people that they called “Poms” and often harassed them.

I wasn’t going to be taken for a “Pom,” especially when I heard the sneering and dislike in the way they pronounced that word…
“Oh no,” I’d reply in my Veddy Veddy English accent, “I’m from Austria, Vienna in fact.”
“You’re a bloody Kraut? Guys! A bloody Kraut! Get ‘im!”

We arrived in Australia 1965 just twenty-one years after WWII. People can apparently also carry simmering resentment and anger about those “war” things for ages – until most of the “my brother died in that war” and “my old man never came back” feelings become generational. I could understand the resentment amongst adults but that kids would be like that shook my belief in the innate goodness of people.

We moved towns (and I therefore moved schools,) and in that move I did my best to ditch the Veddy Veddy English accent and tried to emulate an Aussie accent. I thought I’d done well, but at this new school, there was a bakery across the street that sold the good old Aussie staples of meat pies and sausage rolls, and I was doing okay in the playground.

Until.
“Funny accent there – where’s it from?”
“Oh – we spent time in Arabia and India, you know?”
“Yair, okay. What’s yer name?”
“Rupert. Not a Pom.”
“U-hmmmm…”
Whew.

Until…
(By now inside the bakery waiting our turn to buy lunch.)
“I’d like a pie and ketchup please”
“Aw Cripes – you’re a bloody Yank!”
Ketchup. Damn that word!

By the third school, my Australian accent was good enough, I ordered in “tomato saucese” and changed myself to “me name’s Rmumpmpert but everyone calls me Ted cos of that Pommie bear in the story.”
“Ah yeah. Rupert the bear, Ted the bear. You gonna get a pie’n’sauce ?”
“Might have a sossie roll’n’sauce”
“Are ya a poof then?”
“Nah, just mum busts me because pies spill filling on my school shirt.”
“Fair enough.”

Thirty years later I was in a location where I could finally buy myself a hotdog, and once even had a memorable hotdog at a car show, a “hotdog” that had a fried BBQ sausage, cheese, bacon, tomato sauce – and a mustard that was so unexpectedly HOT that both the mate I went with and myself dumped them in the next bin and got a cold bevvie to try and stop our eyes watering. So, memorable for all the wrong reasons… Oh wells.

That’s another thing about the hotdogs here – they are NOT an American hotdog – unless you go to fairs and shows and find the German/Bavarian food stands. They have real Ammie-style hotdogs and no-one beats the proprietors up over using sauerkraut or being Krauts any more… Those stalls make what American friends have said are every bit the equivalent of decent street dogs in the States.

So how not-Ammie are the commonly-sold hotdogs here? Let me regale you. For a start, they’re made with red “frankfurts” that are . . . that are . . . bad. I guess they’re “the end-of-the-meat-processing-line-scraps” bad. And very red.

Don’t hate me for this but after fifty years in Australia I’ve become resigned to the things and often grab a hotdog for lunch. In the last twenty years I’ve noticed some places have at least come to terms with putting bacon, and/or cheese, and/or onions, and also maybe mustard (if you ask nicely) in their hotdogs. They just still can’t seem to come at the idea of putting in real sausages or sauerkraut. Maybe there’s still some simmering resentment?

Anyway. Back to the question of how not American (which, remember arose from the German sausage in a bun from before the 1800s) Aussie hot dogs are? Here – cop a load of this story:

They’re quite a . . . unique . . . sight. So much so that when a friend a few years back had some American friends visit and they stopped for hotdogs, one of the visitors opened his wrapped dog and yelled “OH MY – THE GODDAMN THING’S FLUORESCENT!” and threw it away fromhimself in a reflex that ended with a fluoro red dog with fluoro red tomato sauce getting run over on the road.
Oh Mr Hart, what a mess!
That’s how much – or how little – times have changed.

But times haven’t finished changing, will never finish, and so now we get to the present. I recently went through a McDonalds drive-thru for breakfast and ordered a Big Breakfast with ketchup and no-one batted and eyelid. Although, my eyes did twitch a bit so I said
“Unt you vill ensure zat I vill receiff ziss – ketchup, ja?” in my best Faux-German accent.
And the kid in the cashier cage just said “jawohl mein kapitan!” and we all laughed.

We even got sachets of tomato sauce.

Labelled “Ketchup…”

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