Franks a Lot!

By Alex Miller

It was a wurst case scenario when commuters on Interstate I-83 in York County, PA were snarled for hours after a tractor trailer experienced a mechanical breakdown, then collided with another vehicle and overturned, spilling half a ton of frozen hot dogs on the highway, closing it in both directions.  Drivers were in a pickle and frankly steamed about the situation.

The local Shrewsbury Fire Company Chief Brad Dauberman mustered the emergency services, but the crews didn’t relish their task, knowing it would take hours for them to ketchup in clearing the highway.  Grilled later over his team’s performance, Dauberman commented, “I can tell you personally, hot dogs are very slippery.  I didn’t know that.” (1)

From the sublime to the ridiculous, astrology can help us make sense of the world around us.  Even a seemingly innocuous occurrence as this one has its celestial referent.

For starters, the Sun (9 Leo) is currently conjunct retrograde Mercury (8 Leo), famed for its ability to disrupt traffic when in its apparent backward motion, on full display here due to the Sun’s illuminating tendencies.  As well, the Sun and Moon (9 Scorpio) are exactly squared (90 degrees), at the half-moon phase of First Quarter, which promotes a crisis of action.  Or in this case, with commuter-focused Mercury retrograde involved, inaction.

Saturn and Neptune in conjunction (both at 1 Aries), trine (120 degrees) Mercury, speaks to delays, frustration (both Saturn) and confusion (Neptune) regarding traffic (Mercury), while a sextile (60 degrees) from this Aries pairing to Uranus (0 Gemini) suggests an accident.  Saturn with Neptune also depicts the slipperiness (Neptune) of the frozen (Saturn) hot dogs so decried by the Fire Chief.

And that’s about all that traditional astrology can tell us.  But today we have lots of new tools, which help to fill in the gaps in our celestial knowledge and bring the picture into stark relief.  That Uranus placement, reflecting the potential for accidents, becomes a lot more interesting when we add asteroids and other minor bodies to the mix.  A combination of Damocles (5 Pisces) with asteroids York (also 5 Pisces) and Frankfurt (7 Pisces) in square aptly describes the accident as some sort of unforeseen threat or peril (Damocles), occurring in York County (York), and involving hot dogs (AKA, frankfurters, so called due to their invention and popularization in Frankfurt, Germany, for which this asteroid is named).

This square fleshes out into a T-Square (a dynamic pattern comprised of two or more points opposed each other, each squared a third) with the addition of asteroid Dobermann (2 Sagittarius), named for the dog breed but here representing Fire Chief Brad Dauberman (an alternate spelling, phonetic match).

And speaking of dogs, we have asteroid Doga (“dog” with an extra “a,” at 10 Leo) conjoined Sun/Mercury, and accompanied by asteroid Carr (6 Leo, alternate spelling of “car”), doubling down on the traffic theme (Carr) and suggesting interaction with hot dogs (Doga).  This is repeated by asteroid Wiener (14 Gemini), another common term for hot dogs, in semisquare (45 degrees) to Carr.  Wiener’s importance to the story can be further intuited from its placement conjoined the Midheaven (13 Gemini) for the 9:13 AM EDT time of the accident, also squared the Ascendant (15 Virgo).  The Midheaven (or MC) is the Angle of the chart at its topmost point, the greatest elevation of the moment, and the focus of all eyes, while the Ascendant governs public image and appearances, both here affected by the huge hot dog spill.  (Incidentally, Frankfurt is also angular, widely conjoined the Descendant (15 Pisces) and squared the MC, with the cosmos underscoring the importance of hot dogs in the moment.)

Perhaps most to be pitied here is Fire Chief Brad Dauberman, tasked with overseeing the cleanup of the frozen franks.  In addition to asteroid Dobermann directly linked to accident-prone Uranus, we find asteroid Bradley (13 Aries), which appears at station, denoting pivotal importance and a turning point or crisis, opposing a pairing of asteroids Dogen (14 Libra, also for hot dogs) and Nemesis (22 Libra), which represents a hindrance or roadblock (here quite literally!) to progress.

But there’s a bit of a silver lining in this for Dauberman – with Bradley squared Jupiter (11 Cancer), T-Squared Dogen, he found a type of celebrity (Jupiter) in his frankfurter foray (Dogen).  Perhaps one could say, it was the best of times, it was the wurst of times.

Notes:  (1) https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/hot-dog-spill-shuts-highway-pennsylvania-commuters-wurst-124294403

Sources:  ABC reporting; chart data from serennu.com; graphic images by author

Title Image Credit:  drawn by ChatGPT