Friday morning a crew gathered in a supermarket parking lot at Plattsmouth to assemble what they hoped would be a record breaking ice cream sandwich which would weigh as much as a small automobile.
The completed dessert weighed in at 2,960 pounds and broke the Guinness World Record for the biggest ice cream sandwich. The previous record was set in 1998 when an Iowa supermarket assembled a 2,460 pound dessert.
The Nebraska sandwich took a crew of 30 people five hours to complete. Built in a refrigerated trailer, it started with a base of chocolate chip cookies onto which ice cream was piled. A second cookie crust was added to complete the sandwich.
When finished, it was 35 feet long, 4 feet wide and 11 inches tall. It took 32 cookies each measuring 2-by-3 foot and 182 fourteen pound containers of ice cream.
The story reminded me of the summer of 1979 when a group of Superior residents attempted to capture the record for the longest hotdog.
I remember photographing the effort and writing a story about the big hotdog. I even remember who accompanied me to the event but I don't remember if the hotdog qualified for the world's record.
At a Superior Library used book sale, I purchased the Millennium Edition (2000) of the Guinness World Records. I rushed across the street to my home and opened the book. I wanted to see if the Superior feat was listed. I couldn't find it. This week, I got the book from my private library and went it search of information about ice cream sandwiches. Couldn't find that record either. Concluding I had wasted my money on the book, I turned to the internet.
I discovered Nebraska holds 22 world records. The hotdog was not listed but since it was made by Nebraskans in Kansas, I concluded that may be the reason why it wasn't listed.
I continued my search by asking Google. The internet based information source reported the longest hotdog measured 668 feet, 7.62 inches and was made on July 15, 2011 in Paraguay to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the country's independence.
If it was ever the world's longest hotdog, apparently the Superior effort has been surpassed. But by how much?
Since the internet didn't list the Superior effort, I went upstairs to The Superior Express library in search of the answer. In took some searching for I had the year wrong. I remembered taking a guest with me and was certain it had to be the summer of 1978. It wasn't 1978 or 1977 but it was on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1979.
According to the story I wrote for The Express, more than 200 people gathered at the Lovewell Lake cabin area to observe the record setting attempt. Consumers Packing Company of Superior had made the hotdog which was unrolled on a string of banquet tables. From my picture file it appears to have started on a slipper slide and progressed down the slide and onto a line of banquet tables which were headed toward the lake.
Packages of hotdog buns were placed on the tables waiting to encase the long dog. Before being cooked, the hotdog measured 222 feet and 2 inches long. I would like to refer to the bunless tube of meat as a sausage but Guinness considers hotdogs and sausages to be two different items.
The stunt was the brain child of Michael Andersen and two of his friends, Dennis Hull and David Rieck. As Superior had the world's largest pizza cheese factory, they first planned to bake a record breaking pizza. But after learning what it would take to win the pizza title they settled on making a hotdog. If you are interested, the current record holding pizza had a surface area of 13,580.28 square feet and was made in Italy. I have no idea how it was baked but apparently barefooted people walked on the crust while spreading the topping which displeased some people.
I don't remember if the local hotdog stunt qualified for a world record, perhaps a reader will remember.
Several years after the event, I read that to qualify not only must the casing encased meat be measured but so must the bun and it must be as long or longer than the tube of meat. If that is true, the Superior attempt would have been disqualified. Standard grocery store buns were used when the meat was cut up and served to the observers.
If the record holder was encased in just one bun, I would like to know how a baker baked a nearly 700 foot long bun. The internet didn't answer that question.
Reader Comments(0)