Let's talk about pepperoni pizza, since I tend to speak so well about it.

To me, there is only one pizza shop around here that makes the best. The House of Pizza on Division St in Pawtucket. This Greek shop has been here for decades now and it's possible I put one of their kids through a semester at college with all the money I've spent there.

As a kid, I hated everything. One of the things I despised was cheese. Yes, ain't that weird? I don't quite remember why I did but I wouldn't touch the stuff. I'd watch in horror as my brother would eat those frozen school pizza squares my Mom would sometimes buy. Fine by me, you can eat the whole box, you won't have any competition from me.

The other thing he'd eat was that canned Chef Boyardee Spaghetti in some weird cheese sauce...Ugh!

*****

Every Friday night, the day my Dad was paid, we hit up a local restaurant then go food shopping at the old Almacs in Seekonk. My parents were creatures of habit and you could count on this like you could count on the sun rising the next day. These small, predictable things are what makes a decent childhood. 

We would eat at the Friendly Tap, a half bar/half restaurant that served up the same menu since before I was born probably. There were waitresses in there that should've been name “Flo.” It was full of working class 30-something girls of the early 1970's, snapping gum and still hanging on to beehive hair dos. They word baby blue uniforms with silly paper, Jackie Kennedy pill box hats too. They looked like they were waiting for their truck driving husbands to return from the road one day. You know, in some ways, it did have the feel of a truck stop, though the road it was on was no where near a trucking route.

I'd grade the place a perfect C+ for quality. It was never awful nor grand, so they get an A+ on consistency. Perfectly middling. Perfect for my Dad, a Depression Era kid who thought meat and potatoes was the only food worth eating...and lots of it.

I have to get off track here because I just remembered it.

Once in a great while, my Dad wanted to try something different...really different for him...like...Italian food! There was a new neighborhood restaurant that we tried ONCE and never went back too. I forget the name and it's no longer there but looking back on it, they did do Italian food right. This was back when Italians from North Providence were moving into our predominately Irish/English/Polish neighborhood.

When we got there, there was a line out the door but it moved fast enough. When we managed to get inside the building, my Dad noticed an awful odor that wrinkled his nose.

“Maureen, what's that stink!?”

“Richard, shhh...it's just garlic.” my Mom told him.

“Holy Moses! It's like a skunk!” he said. He said it loudly enough to insult some of the Italian/American patrons sitting in their booths. I saw them turn their heads.

I guess the word spread that the six-foot-two IRISH guy had managed to insult the one ingredient that makes Italy famous. We were seated and waited forever to be served. When we did get our food, I ate mine, simple spaghetti, while my Dad poked and prodded something he'd never seen before, Veal Parmesan. He ate half, which was surprising as Dad usually inhaled food.

After, we were sitting in the car and my Dad said,

“Auggh...We're not coming back. The service was crummy too!”

My Mom, the woman, who always had better judgment on social cues said that if he had not too loudly protested the smell of garlic to ¼ of the restaurant, perhaps we would've received better service. Leave it to the wives to be the moral compass.

Ok, back to my story...but this reminds me of another great story about my puking in a restaurant. I will tell that one soon enough, it's funny.

One day my Dad died and with him a lot of the things we used to do went with him into the grave. We no longer went out Friday nights and I had to learn to live with this change.

My brother, who was 18 at the time and wanting, more than anything, to live his own life w/o having to deal with my Mom, started getting take out from a Greek pizza joint behind Saint Ray's High school every Friday night and ate it by himself.

My Mom and I'd eat whatever she cooked while my brother sat in the living room eating his pizza. I'd finish up pretty quick and joined him to watch and goof on Star Trek that was on the TV in late afternoon.

One Friday I finally got curious and asked if he would get me the same pizza he was eating for a Friday night treat as I missed the Friday treks we used to do. I suppose if I could have this, it would be something like we used to do...at least a tiny part of it.

He came back with two pepperoni pizzas and I when I lifted up one slice, I could see the underside looked sort of burnt. This isn't good! Not only that, if you tilted the pizza, a slow progression of oil could be made to crawl across it.

“Well, this is going to suck.” I told myself.

That judgment was reversed in a damned hurry when I got the courage to try, with what I thought, was a badly cooked piece of food. The flavors that spilled across my mouth were amazing. The salt bite, the heat, spice, the incredible CRUNCH of the pizza dough busting on my teeth. I never knew!

That was probably July 1977. Since then I've eaten more pepperoni pizzas than was probably healthy to do.

The House of Pizza is still there, a couple of the original owners, gray haired now, are still running the ovens to this day. Had my Dad walked into this place, he would've been thrown by all the murals, Greek vases and how the employees shout at one another in that language.

Or perhaps not? Perhaps, he would've been surprised as I was.