Eighty years before the State Fair of Texas offered such deviant delicacies as the Funnel Cake Bacon Queso Burger and the Cotton Candy Taco, there was the humble corny dog. Born of batter and sizzling oil in the shadow of Big Tex in October 1942, this amalgam of cornbread and weenie signaled the start of a deep-fried dynasty. The concoction was created by the Fletcher brothers, Neil Sr. and Carl, vaudeville players who spent 12 years perfecting a secret recipe until their corny dogs became quintessential fare for fairgoers. Texas Highways photo editor Bill Reaves captured this image in 1987, when the brothers’ business had expanded to include 52 locations in Texas and neighboring states. It shows regular patron Fred Schultz slathering mustard on a corny dog at Fletcher’s Drive Thru on Austin Highway in San Antonio. This location is now closed, along with the rest of the company’s stands outside of Fair Park, but you can still devour Fletcher’s corny dogs at the state fair, where 500,000 of them are sold each year.
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