Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place.....Dinglewood  (Lieutenant Stevens) 
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 June 2, 2007, 7:25 pm

Source:             Sesquicentennal Supplement IV, Ledger-Enquirer
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                         Scrambled Dogs Local Trademark
                             By Richard Hyatt 
                           Enquirer Associate Editor

  "Hey, Lieutenant," the guy said between mouthfuls. "Remember when we used to 
sneak away from school and eat with you? A bunch of us were talking about it 
the other night." 
  "Yeah, I remember and they'd catch y'all every time, too. But you know, 
they're still doing it," the man behind counter answered, still stirring the 
four gallon pot of chili.
  The man behind the counter they call Lieutenant. His uniform of the day, 
everyday, is a white apron, cap and an ever-present pair of ball-point pens 
clipped to the edge of his cap. His 34-year assignment has been  scrambling 
dogs at Dinglewood Pharmacy.
 "I've been making them 33 years, 34 in June," explains Liutenant, who may be 
Columbus' most renown chef. "I didn't invent scrambled dogs, old folks around 
tell me Mr. Firm Roberts first started making  them. But there"s no telling how 
many of them I've made.
  For those who are not gourmets, scrambled dog a la  Dinglewood is your basic 
hot dog (sliced) and bun,  topped by chili, mustard, pickles and oyster 
crackers."It's served piping hot in a deep bowl.
  "It's the chili that keeps folks coming back, they say. Folks say they never 
had anything like it. The late Sport  Brown, who I started with here, it was 
his receipe. It's become a tradition here, from generation to generation." 
Lieutenant says.
  Lieutenant has seen the generations come and go and he laughs about a father 
bringing in his young son for his first time at the crowded counter.
  "Folks eat them all their life. then bring the kids in. They start them off 
on a regular hot dog, later on they move to chili. Then comes the scrambled 
dog. That's a big day." Lieutenant said, with a grin. He smiles a lot.
  Lieutenant borders on being a member of many of the customers' family' but he 
said not many of them know that Lieutenant is not rank or nickname.
  "That's what you get when you're born in a military town. Lieutenant's my 
first name. Stevens my last name," he said.
  He made his first hot dog in the drug store's old home, further west on 
Wynnton Road, at the triangle of Wynnton and Buena Vista. It was post-war days 
and things were scarce.
  "We had to use a half a hot dog," he recalled. "They were a dime back then." 
Needless to say, they aren't today, more like $ 1.20. Sport and Lieutenant 
moved along with the store twice, but word about the scrambled dog moved a 
little bit further - to Europe, in fact.  
  "A girl from here was marrying an Italian and they told him about scrambled 
dogs and our chili. We finally froze a bunch of it and shipped it over there 
for her wedding.They live here now and he stops in every now and then.
  "Course we make up batches of it for other folks who call and tell me 
they're' passing through town or something. One fellow calls all the way from 
California." Lieutenant said.
  It takes 30 pounds of meat and 12 gallons of pure chili to get him through a 
typical day. His recipe for the chili, he explains, is secret "but folks are 
always asking." 
  Lunchtime at Dinglewood is a wait-your-turn situation and sometimes you sense 
the younger faces are more anxious than the others. 
  ''They're doing just like we used to do," said Bill Hudson, longtime 
connoisseur. "When I was,at Columbus High, back in '53 or '54, you 
weren't'suppose to leave school during lunch hour. But we'd pile into my old 
jeep and head for Lieutenant's place.
  "People at school would check here everyday anyway and it got to where they 
wouldn't even go in and check me off. When they'd see the jeep, they'd just put 
my  name down." 
  A local mother remembers that when her son was in Vietnam, she wrote at 
Christmas and asked what he  wanted her to send him. "Mama," the return letter 
said, "I don't think you can do it, but the one thing I've been  wanting most 
is a Dinglewood scrambled dog."  
  And it seems there's a lot of folks around who are  with him. 

Special Sesquicentennal Supplement IV
Ledger - Enquirer, Sunday, May 7, 1978, S-25


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