The Hot Dog Truck: Bellingham

July 10th brought the National Hot Dog Month 2012 tour to Bellingham, Massachusetts- the home of Larry Joe's New England Fire Pit. Larry has been absent from the hot dog scene for 26 weeks. Back in early December, his trailer caught fire and was a total loss. Luckily, he had complete insurance, so he had the funds to build a brand new trailer!

The new rig is 4 feet longer than the old one and has a lot of custom features. Larry went through two manufacturers and countless design tweaks before it was built to his demanding specifications.

Sir Lawrence of Frankfurter was in rare form today. He belted out a few tunes on the new electric piano and regaled the growing crowd with his usual rapier wit and good humor.

Larry Joe's serves half pound, hickory smoked, marinated, all natural, all beef, natural casing Pearl Franks. His assortment of condiments is all home made (dare I say gourmet) and there is not a ketchup bottle in sight!

Tour photographer Andrew Bennett took a bunch of pictures which will be up on the Hot Dog Stories Facebook Page.

Get the full story of my visit to Larry Joe's New England Fire Pit on Hot Dog Stories.

A trip to Larry Joe's New England Fire Pit is always fun. It's where I had the 27th hot dog of my quest to eat a hot dog a day in honor of National Hot Dog Month. Some people say the 27th of July is National Hot Dog Day, others say it's the 19th, and others say it's the 23rd. All I know is this- it's National Hot Dog MONTH, so technically every day would be National Hot Dog Day. I have been to Larr y Joe's a number of times, so I decided to have a little extra fun on this trip.

My buddy Drew Bennet, from the Benspark, blog scored a 2011 Camaro for the occasion. He's got some pull with the marketing people at GM and they give him a car to borrow every once in a while. He uses it for a week and then blogs about it. Not a bad gig!

Driving the Camaro to a hot dog story made me think of the old commercial jingle: "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet." I took it out on 495 and the thing can HOP! Drew made me promise not to post any video of me driving- let's just say I tested the limits of the machine....

Larry Joe had the piano cranking and we performed "The Hotdogman" LIVE for the first time.

He even let me tend to the grill while he ran across the street for ice.

Drew and I chatted with some patrons, then ordered up. Larry Joe's New England Fire Pit serves up half pound Pearl all beef franks that are marinated in his secret sauce and then smoked on a hickory wood-fired grill. Larry Joe bastes the dogs with the sauce as he cooks them and declares them "ready" when the skin crisps and the dogs' skin starts to get a crunchy consistency. The dogs are served on toasted rolls and he tops them with any combo of onions, mustard (his own special blend), tomato salsa, hot pepper relish, chili (his own recipe), barbecue sauce, and berry and walnut chutney. There is no ketchup at the Fire Pit. Larry serves the regular dog and the Fire Dog which is a hot dog loaded with Caribbean style spices. It is eyeball peeling hot stuff- Larry will not sell a Fire Dog to a first time customer. Pearl sells a lot of these dogs down south, but to Larry’s knowledge, he’s the only one who serves these dogs in the northeast.

I ordered up one with chili, mustard and onions. Drew got one too, then we....