Map a trip to Dick's Hot Dog Stand
WILSON -- The first item on the menu at Dick's Hot Dog Stand hasn't changed since the year Warren G. Harding moved into the White House and Rudolph Valentino's "The Sheik" was the top silent movie.
The signature Famous Hot Dog comes with mustard, fresh-chopped onions and a meaty chili made with the same recipe Socrates "Dick" Gliarmis started with in 1921. Slide into one of the yellow booths inside the tiny original building at the corner of Nash and Pearson streets and chances are good a Gliarmis will still take your order.
Lee Gliarmis started working at his father's business when he was in grade school. It was during the Great Depression, and a hot dog would set you back a buffalo nickel.
Now 83, Lee Gliarmis is still behind the counter six days a week. His son Socrates Gliarmis is back at the grill, while daughter Chris anne Gliarmis waits tables. The dogs are still affordable at $1.55 each.
Hanging over the cash register are photos of Lee's seven grandchildren, one of the little ones noshing on a pink frank.
"You don't stay in business for 90 years without treating people right," Lee Gliarmis said last week. "That's why somebody in the family always has to be here, to make sure the customer is treated well from the moment they walk in the door until they leave."
Penny Womble, 64, sat with a friend eating a chopped steak smothered in onions and gravy. A Wilson native, Womble remembers being a little girl pulling up for curb service at Dick's with her parents and siblings. They'd each get a hot dog and cold Coca-Cola, feeding the whole family for under a dollar.
"I've always felt comfortable here," Womble said. "The food is the same. The people are the same. They know everybody by name."
The Wilson of Womble's youth was at the heart of the tobacco boom that sustained generations of farmers tilling the sandy loam of Eastern North Carolina. Situated on a key railroad line, Wilson was well positioned to prosper as the region's main cash crop shifted from cotton to brightleaf tobacco in the years after the Civil War.
By the 1920s, the growing city had claimed the title of the World's Greatest Tobacco Market, a distinction that generated so much pride that the call sign of the local radio station is WGTM. Massive auction warehouses where built downtown to accommodate the trade.
Julian Minshew, a tobacco merchant from nearby Stantonsburg who was eating at Dick's last week, remembers coming to Wilson with his father for the opening day of the tobacco market. The annual harvest-time ritual brought in thousands of farmers looking to sell their crop and spend money buying supplies for the next year.
"It was unbelievable, like a carnival," said Minshew, 71.
Dick Gliarmis, a native of Samos, Greece, came to Wilson to join two of his brothers who had already immigrated to the thriving town. Gliarmis had served with the U.S. Army during World War I, helping train Greek-American soldiers for duty in the trenches of France.
Two years later, he opened his hog dog stand on Nash Street, a leafy main drag where merchants and bankers who made fortunes off tobacco built their grand homes. The location also benefited from proximity to the stadium where the city's semi-pro baseball team, the Wilson Bugs, played.
Drawing crowds
A big sports fan, Gliarmis also erected a boxing ring in his parking lot to host amateur bouts. Circuses and touring wild west shows would pitch their tents at the ball park, bringing in big crowds looking for a quick meal.
Lee Gliarmis can recount an impressive list of well-known ballplayers, politicians and celebrities he remembers coming to his father's hot dog stand, chief among them the silent movie and radio star cowboy Tom Mix. Fading photos of famous people, many of them autographed, still cover almost every available vertical surface in the restaurant.
Dick's hot dog chili built such a reputation that a man from the Campbell's Soup company tried to buy the recipe. Gliarmis refused to sell his secret, which is still so closely guarded that the restaurant won't allow customers to take home containers of chili.
Lee inherited his father's love of athletics, playing varsity baseball and soccer as an undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill in the late 1940s. He had planned to become a coach after graduation.
When his father died in 1951, it fell to Lee to keep the family business going. His only sibling, older brother Richard, had been killed fighting at the Battle of the Bulge.
Lee expanded his father's business, adding new items to the menu and renovating the building. But he says he stayed true to his father's vision of keeping the food simple, using the best ingredients and treating his customers like family.
Womble said Gliarmis' service to his long-time customers doesn't end at the door of his restaurant. When her father died a few years back, she remembers Gliarmis coming out to the house.
"Everybody brings food, like chicken and butter beans or whatever," she said. "Lee comes in with a big box of hot dogs."
The big tobacco market crowds that sustained downtown Wilson for more than a century ended in 2004, when most of the auction warehouses closed following the end of the federal quota system. The town was also dealt a blow when hometown banking giant BB&T relocated its headquarters to Winston-Salem.
A local fixture
Close to Interstate 95, Wilson is now trying to rebrand itself as a destination for travelers seeking a plate of barbecue or antiques from the new shops springing up among the vacant downtown storefronts.
Through it all, Dick's thrives. Gliarmis said he stays profitable by making sure the service is quick and efficient, turning over the tables quickly to the customers typically forming a line at the door during the lunch rush.
Still spry and sharp, Gliarmis said he has no intention of retiring. But he takes comfort in knowing the next generation is ready to take over when he can no longer work.
After a lifetime of donning an apron at a hot dog stand, one could forgive Gliarmis if the sight, smell and taste of his signature combination had lost its appeal. No way, he said.
"I cooked up a big pot of chili this afternoon," he said last Tuesday. "When I was done, I ate some on a hotdog with mustard and onions."
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