Why do Clocks run clockwise?

by David Feldman

  percent are side-by-sides; and only 2 percent are bottom-mounts.

  One does pay dearly for the privilege of buying a side-by-side—they are usually priced hundreds of dollars higher than their rival designs.

  As might be expected, side-by-sides tend to be bought by an 230 / DAVID FELDMAN

  older and more affluent consumer. The top-mount sells disproportionately more to the younger and less affluent buyer. The bottom-mount market falls between them, but sales skew toward an older clientele.

  If the main argument for the top-mount is its fuel efficiency, couldn’t the compressor be placed on top of bottom-mount refrigerators? Some manufacturers do move the compressor for bottom-mounts, but there are inherent disadvantages to this scheme that counteract any energy savings. If placed near the top, a compressor would waste prime space for food storage. Also, as Blaine Keib, a spokesperson for Amana Refrigerators, told Imponderables, economy of scale is achieved by allowing the guts of the machinery to be identical from one model to another.

  Ultimately, whether to top-mount or bottom-mount is a less than profound question to refrigerator manufacturers. Currently, we are energy conscious, so top-mounts reign supreme. A bottom-mount fad could revive; if so, appliance makers will be pleased to oblige.

  Submitted by Steve Thompson, of La Crescenta, California.

  WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 231

  Why Do Hot Dogs Come Ten to a Package and Hot-Dog Buns Come Eight to a Package?

  In order to answer this most frequently asked Imponderable, we must acknowledge that, to some extent, this is a chicken and egg question. Officials from the hot-dog and bun industries tended to be a tad defensive about the whole issue, so let’s clear the air. We aren’t trying to assign blame here, only to make this world a better place to live. But to achieve this harmony, it is necessary to delve into the messy history of hot dog and hot-dog bun packaging, and to let the chips fall where they may. As the cliché goes, somebody has to do it.

  The hot dog, of course, is simply a form of sausage, and sausage, have been with us at least as far back as the ninth century B.C. (they were mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey). We 232 / DAVID FELDMAN

  won’t even go into who created the first hot dog, or where it origin-ated, because we don’t want to jeopardize Imponderables sales in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, or Wien (aka Vienna), Austria. Suffice it to say that, by the late seventeenth century, “dachshund sausages,”

  what we now call “hot dogs,” were sold commercially in Europe.

  No one knows for sure who was the first person to serve a dachshund sausage in a roll, but one popular story is that a German immigrant sold dachshund sausages, along with milk rolls and sauerkraut, from a pushcart in New York City’s Bowery during the 1860s. However they were consumed, dachshund sausages took New York by storm. In 1871, Charles Feltman set up the first Coney Island hot-dog stand, and Nathan’s later became an institution.

  It was also a New Yorker who coined the term “hot dog,” in 1901.

  On a cold April day during baseball season, concessionaire Harry Stevens was losing his shirt trying to peddle ice cream and cold soda, so he sent his salesmen out to buy dachshund sausages and rolls.

  Vendors sold them to frozen customers by yelling, “They’re red hot!

  Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!” Sports cartoon-ist Tad Dorgan, sitting in the press box bereft of ideas, drew a cartoon with barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in their buns.

  Dorgan didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he substituted

  “hot dog.” The cartoon was a sensation, and the expression “hot dog” stuck.

  The hot-dog bun, in its current configuration, was introduced at the St. Louis “Louisiana Purchase Exposition” in 1904 by Bavarian Anton Feuchtwanger. At first, he loaned out white gloves to customers to handle his hot sausages, but when the gloves weren’t returned he asked his baker brother for help and was soon presented with the slotted hot-dog bun we know today.

  In the early twentieth century, hot dogs were purchased not in grocery stores, but only in butcher shops. They were stored in bulk boxes, and one simply told the butcher how many “dogs” one wanted to buy. From all evidence, hot dogs then were the same size as

  “conventional” hot dogs are today—approximately WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 233

  five inches long and about 1.6 ounces in weight. Certainly, by the time the hot-dog makers automated, this size was standard.

  Not until the 1940s were hot dogs sold in grocery stores in the cellophane containers we see today. Almost all of the early hot-dog companies sold hot dogs in packages of ten, making each package a convenient one pound.

  Perhaps the main reason the number of buns and hot dogs per package never matched was that when hot-dog buns were first introduced, hot dogs were being sold in butcher shops in varying quantities. Sandwich rolls traditionally had been sold in packages of eight. Kaiser rolls and hamburger buns, like hot-dog buns, had always been baked in clusters of four in pans designed to hold eight rolls. This practice, more than anything else, seems to explain why hot-dog buns usually come eight to a pack.

  Today, pans are manufactured to allow ten or twelve hot-dog buns to be baked simultaneously, but Pepperidge Farm, for one, told us that these pans are relatively difficult to obtain. Ekco told Imponderables that their eight-bun pans heavily outsell other varieties.

  It is clear that the number of buns or dogs in a package is more the result of tradition than energetic planning, but certain trends are rendering this Imponderable semiobsolete. Very quietly the bun industry, and more particularly the hot-dog industry, are introducing new sizes.

  Many regional hot-dog companies have long sold packages of eight wieners, often calling them “dinner franks” because their larger size makes them more appropriate to serve as an entree for dinner than as a luncheon sandwich or snack. Several companies make quarter-pounders, sold four to a package. Kosher hot dogs have traditionally been larger, and thus come with fewer dogs per package.

  Armour, and many other companies, are introducing even bigger frank packages (Armour sells sixteen-ounce and twenty-four—ounce packages). In the South, hot dogs are often sold in bulk two-pound bags as well as in conventional cellophane packages.

  Similar innovation is entering the bakery business. Conti 234 / DAVID FELDMAN

  nental Baking, the largest producer of hot-dog buns (and the parent company of Wonder bread), and American Bakery now sell ten-bun packages in many areas.

  None of the many companies we talked to indicated that it knew (or cared) what its compatriots in the other field were doing. American Bakeries, like Wonder, is experimenting with different packages in different regions, but not in response to what hot-dog packagers are doing. Everyone seems to want to march to his own drummer.

  Imponderables humbly suggests a summit meeting at a neutral site to discuss these differences that have created chaos. Until then, we will be stuck with orphan frankfurters, left without the shelter of a bun.

  Submitted by Charlie Doherty, of Northfield, Illinois. Thanks also to: Lisa Barba, of Corona, California; Tom and Marcia Bova, of Rochester, New York; Kathy A. Brookins, of Sandusky, Ohio; Sharon Michele Burke, of Menlo Park, California; Paul Funn Dunn, of Decatur, Illinois; Kent Hall, of Louisville, Kentucky; David Hartman, of New York, New York; Mary Jo Hildyard, of West Bend, Wisconsin; Mary Katinos, of Redondo Beach, California; Joanna Parker, of Miami, Florida; Mary Romanidis, of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; Terry Rotter, of Willowick, Ohio; Glenn Worthman, of Palo Alto, California.

  WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 235

  Frustables

  or

  The Ten “Most Wanted” Imponderables

  There comes a time in any writer’s life when he must share with his readers his innermost torments, his doubts, his fears. We have no shame in baring our soul and admitting what has kept us from realizing our hopes and dreams: the scourge of Frustrables (i.e., Frustrating Imponderables). These
are Imponderables for which we could not find a definitive answer; or those for which we could find an answer that we were almost sure was true, but could not confirm.

  A reward of a free copy of the next volume of Imponderables will be given to the first reader who can lead to the proof that solves any of these Frustrables.

  FRUSTRABLE 1: Why Do You So Often See One Shoe

  Lying on the Side of the Road?

  Since we initially researched this Imponderable for our first book, we have spoken to countless officials at the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Safety Traffic Administration. We have observed that Rich Hall devoted an entire chapter to the subject in his Vanishing America book without really answering the question.

  We have even found out that there was another soul brave enough to tackle the subject, Elaine Viets, columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. She devoted two columns to this Frustrable. In her first column, she advanced several plausible theories:

  • They are tossed out of cars during fights among kids.

  • They fall out of garbage trucks.

  • Both shoes in a pair are abandoned, but one rolls away.

  But being a good reporter, Viets wasn’t satisfied with her own conclusions. She turned to her readers, who responded with 236

  their own guesses at the causes of what some called SSS (Single Shoe Syndrome):

  • Discarded newlywed shoes (you do see single cans on the highway, come to think of it).

  • A variation on the “fighting kids theory”—they are specifically thrown out of school buses, during fights or as practical jokes.

  This is the best we’ve been able to come up with. Anybody else have a better explanation?

  FRUSTRABLE 2: Why Are Buttons on Men’s Shirts

  and Jackets Arranged Differently From Those on

  Women’s Shirts?

  The party line on this Imponderable is that it stems back to the days when ladies of means were dressed by their maids. Because most people are right-handed, it is easiest for right-handers to button their clothes from left to right, the way men’s buttons are now arranged.

  The button arrangement for women was presumably changed to make it easier for the female (ostensibly right-handed) maid to button her mistress’s clothes.

  A few other theories are advanced less often. One is that women usually support babies with their left arm when breast-feeding, so it was more convenient for women to breast-feed in public from the left breast. In order to shelter the baby from the cold, the theory goes, the mothers covered the baby with the right side of the dress or coat; it behooved the clothesmakers, then, to make garments for women that buttoned up from right to left.

  The last theory stems from the days when men carried swords. A man needed to be ready to lunge at a moment’s notice, so he kept his right hand in his coat to make sure it was warm. He could only do this if his coat opened from left to right. But why couldn’t women’s coats conform to the men’s styles?

  Frankly, these stories seem a tad lame to us. Obviously, all such explanations are obsolete. Now that so many clothes are WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 237

  unisex, many garment manufacturers would prefer one button styling, yet inertia guarantees the status quo will linger on.

  Can anyone offer any evidence about the true origins of the button Imponderable?

  FRUSTRABLE 3: Why Do the English Drive on the

  Left and Just About Everybody Else on the Right?

  The explanations we have encountered trace the disparity back to everything from English versus Italian railroads to Conestoga wagons. But no proof, anywhere.

  FRUSTRABLE 4: Why Is Yawning Contagious?

  The most asked Imponderable, and we have no good answer, only a few lame theories. Who studies yawning?

  FRUSTRABLE 5: Why Do We Give Apples to

  Teachers?

  We haven’t gotten to first base with this Imponderable.

  FRUSTRABLE 6: Why Does Looking Up at the Sun

  Cause Us to Sneeze?

  Is this nature’s way of stopping us from staring at the sun? Does looking up expose the nostrils to floating allergens?

  FRUSTRABLE 7: Why Does the First Puff of a

  Cigarette Smell Better Than Subsequent Ones?

  Even the cigarette companies’ research departments can’t answer this one.

  238 / DAVID FELDMAN

  FRUSTRABLE 8: Why Do Women in the United States

  Shave Their Armpits?

  This phenomenon makes Gillette and Schick happy, but they can’t explain it.

  FRUSTRABLE 9: Why Don’t You Ever See Really Tall

  Old People?

  Yes, we know that most people lose a few inches over their life-span, and that our population has gotten much taller since today’s septua-genarians were young. But we should see a few elderly people of above-average height. Do very tall people have higher mortality rates than average-sized folks? The big insurance companies, who don’t keep separate figures on death rates by height, don’t seem to know.

  Does anyone?

  FRUSTRABLE 10: Why Do Only Older Men Seem to

  Have Hairy Ears?

  Endocrinologists we spoke to couldn’t explain this phenomenon.

  Help!

  WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 239

  240 / DAVID FELDMAN

  Acknowledgments

  This second volume of Imponderables was made possible by the enthusiasm and participation of the readers who bought its prede-cessor. In less than one year, more than five hundred people wrote with their own Imponderables, their praise, their criticisms, and their corrections. All were greatly appreciated.

  Their kindness, generosity, weirdness, curiosity, enthusiasm, and sense of humor energized me. What did I do to deserve a reader like Joanna Parker, who peppered me with charming letters, and then offered to track down the answer to a knotty Imponderable herself? It is thrilling for a writer, who labors alone, to find out that he is, indeed, reaching the audience he was hoping for. I promise to read every letter that is sent to me, and to answer all that have a self-addressed stamped envelope (and, I must admit, many that do not). To all the readers of the first Imponderables, thank you for making this book possible.

  Rick Kot was doing me favors even before I worked with him.

  He did me his greatest favor by becoming my editor. Rick actively pursues good food, cares about popular music, and occasionally even laughs at my jokes. Who could ask for anything more? My agent, Jim Trupin, laughs less often at my jokes, but is otherwise an invaluable friend and partner. Kas Schwan continues to produce brilliant cartoons on demand. The Atlantic Ocean is likely to dry up before Kas runs out of creative ideas. To all of my new friends at Harper & Row, who have welcomed me with enthusiasm and good humor, thank you for the support.

  When I get lost in the wonderful world of Imponderability, it puts a strain on my innocent friends and family. They want to talk about the meaning of life. I want to talk about why meatloaf tastes the same in every institutional cafeteria. They want to talk about why suffering exists. I want to talk about why you forget that a hat is on your head but it still feels as if it’s on after you’ve taken it off. The following people helped me maintain my sanity over the last year while I’ve wrestled with these unfathomable problems: Lori Ames; Judith Ashe; Michael Barson; Ruth Basu; Jeff Bayone; Jean Behrend; Eric Berg; Brenda Berkman; Cathy Berkman; Kent Beyer; Josephine Bishop; Sharon Bishop; Jon Blees; Bowling Green State University’s 241

  Popular Culture Department; Annette Brown; Herman Brown; Alvin Cooperman; Marilyn Cooperman; Paul Dahlman; Shelly de Satnick; Linda Diamond; Diana Faust; Steve Feinberg; Fred Feldman; Gilda Feldman; Michael Feldman; Phil Feldman; Ray Feldman; Kris Fister; Linda Frank; Seth Freeman; Elizabeth Frenchman; Michele Gallery; Chris Geist; Jean Geist; Bonnie Gellas; Bea Gordon; Dan Gordon; Ken Gordon; Christal Henner; Sheila Hennes; Sophie Hennes; Uday Ivatury; Carol Jewett; Terry Johnson; Sarah Jones; Mitch Kahn; Dimi Karras; Mary Katinos; Peter Kee
pnews; Mark Kohut; Marvin Kurtz; Claire Labine; Randy Ladenheim; all of my friends at the Manhattan Bridge Club; Jeff McQuain; Carol Miller; Julie Mears; Phil Mears; Steve Nellisen; Debbie Nye; Tom O’Brien; Pat O’Conner; Jeanne Perkins; Merrill Perlman; Larry Prussin; Lela Rolontz; Brian Rose; Paul Rosenbaum; Tim Rostad; Leslie Rugg; Tom Rugg; Kas Schwan; Patricia Sheinwold; Susan Sherman; Carri Sorenson; Karen Stoddard; Kat Stranger; Anne Swanson; Ed Swanson; Carol Vellucci; Dan Vellucci; Julie Waxman; Roy Welland; Dennis Whelan; Devin Whelan; Heide Whelan; Lara Whelan; Jon White; Ann Whitney; Carol Williams; Maggie Wittenberg; Charlotte Zdrok; Vladimir Zdrok; and Debbie Zuckerberg.

  The word about Imponderables got spread by radio and television talk show hosts (and their producers) and by newspaper and magazine writers. To them, my thanks, not only for help promoting the book, but for providing me with a forum for communicating directly with potential readers. Special thanks for service and gra-ciousness beyond the call of duty to: Sally Carpenter; Rick Dees; John Gambling; Alan Handelman; Carol Hemingway; Marilu Henner; Emily Laisey; Dave Larsen; Jann Mitchell; Beth Morrison; and Tom Snyder.

  Most of my time while working on this book is devoted to research, digging for answers. In a few cases, books provided vital information, but most Imponderables could be solved only with the assistance of experts. Undoubtedly, executives at Armour and Hygrade and Wonder bread and Pepperidge Farm have better things to do than to talk to me about why there are ten hot dogs in a package and eight hot-dog buns in a package, but God bless them, they did. The following people generously provided help that led directly to the solutions to the Imponderables in this book: Dennis Albert, Westwood Products; Richard B. Allen, Atlantic Offshore Fishermen’s Association; Frances Altman, National Hot Dog and Sausage Council; American Council of Otolaryngology; Dr. Harold E. Amstutz, American Association of Bovine Practitioners; Gerald Andersen, Neckwear Association of America; Beth Anderson, 242 / DAVID FELDMAN