Bank robber John Dillinger might have thought he'd found the perfect hideout in Tucson, Ariz., in January 1934. The dusty city was a far cry from Chicago, where every law enforcer was looking for him.

"The Dillinger gang was the most notorious gang in America at that time," said Marshall Trimble, Arizona's official historian. "Tucson was considered kind of a quiet place in the boondocks." 

The Food Writers Act of 1902 requires me, as well as every other food writer in America, to produce a story every Fourth of July about either hot dogs or apple pie. I flipped a coin, and this year it’s hot dogs.