Pizza connoisseurs of Youngstown

I never knew anything about pizza until I moved to the Youngstown area around 1999. I thought it was just crust with sauce & cheese & some meat or vegetables. Or I thought it was one of the wild concoctions my dad used to put together at home. (He would pile on toppings up to and including sliced hot dogs, green olives, and poultry seasoning. Those pizzas were usually better the next day after the flavors mellowed a little.)
When I got to Youngstown, marrying into a Youngstown family, I learned that there's more to pizza than I ever knew. It turns out that chain pizza, which I had been eating my whole life, is pretty terrible. Dominos, Papa John's, Pizza Hut--woof. Barely fit to eat. You have to sample the classic Youngstown spots--Cornersburg, Wedgewood, Belleria--and then you find the good stuff.
As a way to excuse my pizza ignorance, my father-in-law once said, "Well, he's a country boy--he doesn't know about pizza." To which my lovey wife said, "Country boy? More like suburb boy." But same difference--I grew up in a pizza wilderness, either way.

Old Recipes from Bachelorhood, part 1

Mac & Cheese with Tuna

1. Make a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese using Stove-top instructions.
2. Open and drain a can of cheap tuna.
3. Stir tuna into the mac & cheese.
4. Eat just about all of it.
5. Lie on couch, complaining of stomachache.

Now I'm a Coffee Drinker

I never drank coffee until my son Will was born in February, 2000. My old pal in Dayton, Eric Nickels, told me when he became a dad back in 1991 that one of the things that surprised him about the whole experience was that diapers were a cakewalk. "Movies, TV shows--they make such a big deal about diapers, especially new dads with diapers. 'WHOA, how in the world do these things work?!' Supposed to be hilarious. But diapers are the easy part."

The hard part, he told me, was sleep, or the terrible lack of it. He was right, of course. The only way I could stay awake at work after Will arrived was by drinking coffee. At first I put lots of cream and sugar in it, but soon I found the sugar to be cloying, and I dropped it. I cut back a little on the cream, but not much.
What interested me was not just that coffee could keep me awake; it could also be really invigorating. I would drink a big Dunkin Donut coffee on my way to work and my head would spin with ideas about everything--home improvements, possible solutions to work challenges, wacky get-rich-quick schemes, and so on.

My experience was captured neatly in this piece by Jon Friedman, published in McSweeney's back in 2004:

CONFESSIONS OF A NEW COFFEE DRINKER.

BY JON FRIEDMAN

- - - -

This stuff is great! I’m 26! I always ignored it, thinking, “Why start a bad habit?” This is a terrific habit! I get more done in an hour than I used to get done in a week. Coffee! I bought a coffeemaker. It makes the coffee for me in the morning! I open my eyes and it’s there! I can see! The difference between tea and coffee is like a merry-go-round to a rocket ship! I like rocket ships! Coffee! I want to go on a real rocket ship. Where are they? Cape Canaveral? Let’s go! Coffee helps my creativity. I can come up with something creative out of nowhere. “Larry laughs like a lavicious lunatic!” See!? That was instantaneous! What does “lavicious” mean, you ask? I made it up. Doesn’t matter! Coffee! I’m going to make it a real word! It means scathingly menacing. Use it! Hey, I should try improvisational theater! I’d probably be a riot on coffee. Yes and … yes! Sign me up! Why didn’t I drink this stuff in elementary school? I would have had straight A’s. I could have taught the classes. Move over, Mr. Starchpants! Take a note: I’m going to teach a class! Wow! French vanilla! What’s that like? Sounds delicious! Get me some. Cream and sugar? I don’t need it. I ask girls to meet me for a cup of coffee. I talk the whole time! I used to be so shy! Sex! Yesterday, I called the bank to complain about fees! They gave me a refund! I can complain now. What’s smoking like? Does it really relieve stress? I’m thinking about getting addicted to cigarettes! I’m going to buy the patch and work my way up! Now I see why all these things are so popular. I’m totally serious. This isn’t satire. I have a lot of catching up to do! I wonder where I would be today if I had started drinking coffee earlier? It doesn’t matter, I live in the now, now! I have to shit! Maybe I would have invented the Internet! No way! You think? I used to think about how we could talk to each other on computers before we actually did. But that’s the difference. I used to only think about things. Now I do them! I better get to work on my retainatherm before someone else beats me to it! Retainatherm—think refrigerator except it keeps foods at the same constant temperature they went in with. Warm stays warm! Cold remains cold! Put a hot pizza in there and it stays hot! All at the same time! Retain-a-therm! Iced coffee! Haven’t had that yet. I can’t even imagine! You could drink it in the summer! Volleyball! There’s a shooting pain under my left ribs. It’s gone! Folgers crystals.

Uncle Wiggily

When we lived in Georgia when I was in elementary school, my dad used to come home from the air force base every day for lunch. On days when our school had a day off but my dad worked, my sister and I would have lunch with him, and he always ate the same thing: a sandwich my mother made, maybe a few chips, a few pieces of sliced apple, maybe a brownie or a cookie if there were any.

And when he left to go back to work, Dad would say something like, "As Uncle Wiggily would say: If the wheels don't fall off the wagon, and the frost doesn't make the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch roll down the hill and out into the road, and the bear doesn't chase me over the mountain, I'll be home for supper." If he forgot an Uncle Wiggily statement on his way out, my sister and I would loudly remind him to make one up for us.

According to The Writer's Almanac, today is the birthday of the author of the Uncle Wiggily stories, Howard R. Garis, born in Binghamton, New York in 1873. I don't remember reading those stories as a kid but my dad must have. The Writer's Almanac entry for Howard Garis explains, "Uncle Wiggily is a gentlemanly old rabbit who always wears a suit and a silk top hat."

My Son Cooks

My boy Will, 11 now, soon to be 12, is taking Home Ec in the 6th grade. He loves it, and almost every week he comes home and cooks for us exactly what they cooked in class: so far we've enjoyed cinnamon twists (biscuit dough from a tube, dipped in melted margarine, rolled in cinnamon sugar, and elongated and twisted) and birds-in-the-nest (a slice of bread with a cutout in the middle, dropped into a frying pan and fried with an egg in the cutout).

Not only does Will cook everything, he takes great pride in cleaning up the same way they do in class: washing and drying all pots, pans, and utensils, and wiping down all work surfaces. We stand back in amazement. And the food is good--even Will's 8-year-old little brother, Dominic, eats it all up.

Thanks again, Mr. Lombardi

The summer before my freshman year at the University of Maine, I mowed lawns in Sandy Point to earn a few dollars. One of my customers was Dennis J. Lombardi, who had a small camp on the shore down over the bank near the Hersey Retreat; I think he got my phone number from Jane Stewart, Jeff and John Stewart's mom. Mr. Lombardi drove a dark-blue Cadillac with a custom plate that said "DJL."

The last time I mowed Mr. Lombardi's lawn near the end of August, he asked me, "Judy Smith is your mother, right?" And I said yes, that's right. "And Dod and Reat Smith were her parents?" And I said yes. "Your grandfather, Dod Smith, dug the basement for this house." I thought that was really something. And when he paid me that day, Mr. Lombardi gave me an extra $20. "Something to take up to Maine with you," he said.

Looking for Indian Pudding

My grandfather, Morton C. "Jud" Files, born in 1910 in Gorham, Maine, always asked the young waitresses in restaurants we visited if they served Indian Pudding. Never once did we find any. It wasn't until I visited Durgin Park in Boston in 2007 that I found some, and it turns out it's made of corn meal. I sure wish we'd gone there when I was a boy--I would have loved to hear what Gramp thought of theirs.