Pizza pizza
The urge hit me, late in the afternoon. Pizza for supper. And as a break with tradition, I decided to go out and deliver it to myself.
When you live in the same neighbourhood for more than a fortnight, you get a feel for who has Good pizza and who has Bad. If you’re in tune with your own stomach, you post the Good menu near the phone, put the number in speed dial and become a creature of habit. 660-0000. Easy to recall.
When we first moved into the area, there was a beautiful old home on top of a hill near the highway. One summer, the house disappeared, followed by the hill. In it’s place, a gas station that sold ethanol-enhanced petrol. Over the years, in part due to a consumer view that their product shouldn’t be priced identically to the “real” gas just across the street, the volume of sale diminished and finally disappeared as well. The tanks were disenterred, the terrain renewed and now the building is recycling into a pizza joint. MY pizza joint. Before the move, I decided to visit the original location.
Not that I visited often. Remember: speed dial. A hole in the wall, with shoulder to shoulder seating for thirty, a counter, several telephones. I decided to place my usual order, which was ready in just over ten minutes. Behind the counter, one guy flipping discs of dough, someone else topping at speed, and a conveyor oven “just rolling along, merrily” to keep cooking times uniform. Ten minutes.
If I’d ordered at home, we would have waited for thirty or less (euphemism for a half hour), scrambled to find the correct change plus tip, watched for a marked car to drive by at least twice… all before chowing down. This way, I was home before the family realized I was gone, and I’d seen things in preparation. No freezer fodder. Real pizza, with a fair market value of $19.98 for twin fourteen inchers. All dress, of course.
