“…I fell in love with you and then you went away
But now you’re coming home to stay
Hot dog, soon everything will be all right
Hot dog, we’re gonna have a ball tonight
I’ve got a pocketful of dimes
It’s gonna be just like old times, hot dog …”
~ “Hot Dog”
~written by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller
~ recorded by the great Elvis Presley
~on the 1957 album “Loving You”
Hot Dog! A hot bun, warm autumn sun and the American Flag wrap around a hot dog treating himself to ketchup and mustard atop Yocco’s West at 2128 Hamilton St., Allentown, Pennsylvania on an early November afternoon.
Yocco’s ~ the self-described “Hot Dog King” ~ has been a Lehigh Valley tradition since Italian immigrant Theodore Iacocca founded the original downtown Allentown location in 1922. Area residents, predominantly of Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvania German) descent, had difficulty pronouncing I-a-co-ca and instead pronounced it Ya-co-ca, and the name Yocco’s subsequently stuck. Yocco’s has six locations across the Lehigh Valley.
The Iacocca’s are relatives of the late Lee Iacocca, the American automobile executive and Allentown native who passed in 2019 at age 94. Lee Iacocca graduated with honors from Allentown High School (now William Allen High School, my alma mater), in 1942. He attended Lehigh University in neighboring Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in industrial engineering.
For more information on Yocco’s visit http://www.yoccos.com/.
