Don, do you have any other contextual clues from the recipe in that old book? Were supermarket hot dogs explicitly mentioned?
 
Certainly there were national grocer/supermarket brands of rot gut franks sold in plastic packages around 1960. There were also a lot more mom-and-pop neighborhood butcher shops who made their own franks than today. Then, there is the regional issue, i.e. Viennas in Chicago, Usinger’s in Milwaukee, Hebrew National in NY/NJ. Hygrade of Detroit was once a huge seller in NYC, now still selling a lot as Ballpark franks. There were also the infamous Merkel hot dogs made in Jamaica, NY with horsemeat.
 
Supermarket hot dogs changed since 1960, but natural casing Sabrett franks don’t seem to have changed much, despite having changed plants twice since then. Back then, current quality brands such as Boar’s Head, Deitz and Watson, and Thumann’s did not have the wide distribution they have today.
 
We also run up against that problem of trying to reproduce recipes from 50 years ago using processed foods. Some of those processed foods are no longer available in a recognizable form.