I thought I would say something about pizza - what I remember about it - what I long to experience again.

PIZZA!
The crusty kind,
dark bubbles of charbroil,
sweet strings of mozzarella,

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drippiness,
how I held a slice pointed down to my mouth to catch all the savory goodness,
the bite and the chew of it,
the hint of garlic exploding on my taste buds,
the sheer joy of it,
how they slid it into the oven with the flat pan and so carefully checked the bottom before they removed it,

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then I washed it down with the cold Coke back when the Coke was made right there with thick, dark syrup.
All this for a quarter.
The craftsmen of yesteryear are gone - too soon, destroyed by the Darth Vaders of Celeste and Totino.
The saddest of all is when our children say,
“Hey Mom, how about some pizza tonight?”
(meaning a frozen thing to be thawed in an oven and gulped in front of the TV).

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No more does the steaming carton of fresh-baked pie arrive with a delivery boy
or get picked up by Pop on his way home from work on a Friday night.
Or, even better, when the whole family sat together in a booth at the local pizzeria,

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carefully blowing on each slice of the hot pie so not to burn the roof of one's mouth (but it happened).

Pizza was more than pizza. It was a way of life.

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