Take pizza for example; it hasn’t changed since we all sported Michael J. Fox and Dorothy Hamill haircuts. In high school, our outlet for pizza came mostly from The Big Banjo in Pine Bluff. I figure that anyone from the '70s that lived anywhere near Pine Bluff must have eaten a slice or two or twelve of Big Banjo pizza. For example, I bumped into a guy about my age who happened to have grown up the Pine Bluff area. I asked if he’d ever eaten at The Big Banjo when living there. He looked at me like I was crazy. I took that as a “yes.” So, I asked “which one did you eat at?” and I said it just like that, too, dangling preposition and all, because he didn’t strike me as the type that would correct my grammar (and I just lazy enough not to care). He said, “The Dollarway one...you know? The one shaped like a big banjo?” “You’re a sissy!” I blurted out. He laughed - and when I didn’t, he got really serious and asked what I meant by that. I said, “Because Dollarway is where all you city boys ate at” flicking another misplaced preposition at him like an unfinished cigarette. That’s the point at which he took a swing at me and I ducked and then we both got kicked out of church.
Okay, I totally made up that last part, but I have found that most people I bump into from Pine Bluff, Rison or the area have eaten at one time or another at the Big Banjo.
Recently, I was in a pizza place made popular by some guy named Larry. I guess Larry ran out of creative names for his pizza enterprise, because he named it simply, “Larry’s Pizza.” At Larry’s, you go in, pay your money up front, take a seat and 16-year-olds in torn jeans and braces parade pan after pan of hot pizza past your drooling lips until you pass out. It seems more like a birthday party than a restaurant. Not my style. I prefer to go in, sit down and be served my pizza, not everyone else's.
Near my home there are no less than a dozen pizza places. There’s Larry’s thingamajig and then of course there are the Domino's and the Papa Johns, the Little Caesar's and maybe some other national brands. They all taste the same to me. If you want something unique, you’ll have to visit some homegrown outlets like Shotgun Dan’s, US Pizza and another place who’s owner insists on telling me about his dough and how “it ain’t store-bought.” Personally, I don't care if the dough-fairy drops it off, I just appreciate how the end product looks and tastes. And I can appreciate some of these smaller mom and pop places. The breadth and depth of the monster pizza pies they create is overwhelming. These should be featured on a food show, like “man versus pizza” or something. There’s no way that a normal human being (outside of a few guys you and I can think of) can eat one of these gargantuan pizzas in a single sitting. It’s a waste for me to dine there (because I hate taking food home. It seems like a sissy thing to do).
So, has pizza changed that much since the '70s? Probably not. Maybe the varieties have (Larry’s has Chocolate pizza) and the availability has (i.e., ordering online) and the way it’s delivered (anyone from a kid to a 90-year-old may home-deliver your pizza). But, fundamentally, pizza is still pizza and, as they say, even bad pizza is still...pizza.
So, do some things remain the same over the years? Stay tuned, because this 'blog is where we'll explore that very subject...at!
-Ken
