If you hang around long enough in Las Vegas, you will eventually meet everyone in the world. That’s my theory, anyway, and I have new evidence to support it. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was in town last week, and I had the privilege of chatting with its drivers. Recent college graduates Chris Szwiec and Nichole Martinez beat out hundreds of other applicants to earn the coveted title of “Hotdogger” and drive the most famous food-shaped vehicle ever built. Their tour of duty began last June. After six more months on the road, they’ll hand the keys over to the next team and hone the stories they’ll tell their grandchildren.

It was impossible to ignore the genuine delight the Wienermobile ignited in every child that entered the Albertson’s parking lot while I was there. To label their reactions “shrieks of delight” would not be overstatement, and it wasn’t only kids who were enthralled. While the seven-to-ten-year-old crowd was swarming, three cool twenty-something dudes strolled up.

“Can I drive it?” one asked.

“Well, you have to have a class W license,” Chris said with a straight face.

“Class W?”

“Yeah. Wienie class.”

The dudes laughed.

“How can I get one of those?” another one asked. He pointed at a row of little plastic wiener-shaped whistles arranged on a folding table.

“You have to sing the song,” Chris said.

“I’ll do that!” I couldn’t help chiming in. And right there in the Albertson’s parking lot, I sang “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener” with the three cool dudes.

Later, as I placed my Oscar Mayer wienie whistle on my shelf of hallowed treasures, I got to wondering about the Wienermobile. Years ago, I saw a 1952 model on display in the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit. That meant the rolling hot dog phenomenon was at least fifty years old.

Get ready, because here’s news. It’s a lot older than that. The first Wienermobile hit the road in 1936. To put that into proper perspective, consider the fact that the Flamingo Hotel & Casino didn’t open until ten years later, and it was another few decades before hotels started taking on serious themes and spectacular shapes. Yes, the Wienermobile is coming up on its diamond anniversary, making it old enough to be the parent of any icon-shaped structure on the Las Vegas Strip.

So here’s my question. Is it possible that when Carl Mayer built a thirteen-foot metal hot dog in Chicago back in 1936, that he was also sowing a seed that would eventually result in a ten-story Sphinx on Las Vegas Boulevard? By 1950, the Oscar Mayer company had five Wienermobiles on the road, and they were as recognizable to every kid in the country as Mickey Mouse. Some of those kids went on to design things like giant Coke bottles, oversized golden lions, and replicas of the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower.

Perhaps I am overstating the Wienermobile’s influence on Las Vegas architecture. Even so, I think it’s good to remember, when you catch sight of a hotdog on the highway, that it owes no homage to its larger successors. If anything, it’s the Sphinx who should be doffing its headdress when the Wienermobile rolls by.