Nobody in the town I grew up in knew what the hell pizza was. When Dean Martin sang That’s Amore, we’d sing along “When the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie.” We’d get pasta fazool right, but just because it didn’t sound like anything else. Then Sister Bubbles went off to nursing school and, when she came home for one of her magic visits, she brought a box of Chef Boyardee (emphasis on “dee”) pizza mix and Sister Ruth and I watched in wonder as she shaped the dough and made a pizza using only the stuff that came in the box.
It was strange food from another planet. I ate it suspiciously, waiting for that burst of alien flavor that would convince me I’d never eat this stuff again. Pizza, now the manna of childhood, was strange.
But exotic. Nobody else in that town ate pizza and it made us feel kinda special. The Appian Way pizza mix was cheaper, but Sister Ruth and I had become connoisseurs and turned our noses up at that cheap imitation – despite the urgings of a depression era survivor mother who tried to convince us that pizza, whatever that was, was pizza, regardless of the fancy box. Time proved us right. Appian Way pizza mix soon disappeared from grocery shelves and Chef Boyardee’s is still there.
Using a Yogi Berra form of logic, we deduced that thinner pizza was better pizza because it looked like there was more. We’d stretch the crust so thin that it would tear and we came close to making tomato strudel. Then we’d smooth the sauce over it with the back of a teaspoon, until every cranny of the crust had a microscopically thin coating. Occasionally, there would be a slightly burnt pizza and that was a tragedy.
About the time I reached high school, a new family moved to our town from Kenton, OH. Don soon became my best friend. His father opened the town’s first pizza shop, in a tiny little trapezoid-shaped store by the railroad tracks. He had a Blodgett oven, which now is a source of wonder for me, but was just a funny looking big black stove at the time. He would take these thick preformed pieces of dough, about eight inches in diameter, cover them with toppings and pop them in the Blodgett. For me, they were just too think and therefore not pizza. To the rest of the town, they resembled pancakes so that’s what the people called them. Don got the nickname “Pancake” as a result, but if you ever called him that to his face he might punch you in the nose.
It was about this time our town learned the correct words to That’s Amore. I think it was Larry figured it out first, sang it right, and not long thereafter there was an incredible communal epiphany. I might have been the last to get it, but when I did it was a big “Aha!”
Every once in a while, I still get a hankering for some Chef Boyardee, so I buy a box and make it just like we did at home, no mozzarella (I didn’t learn about that until college and pasta fazool, even sung right, remained a mystery until my 30s), but maybe some pepperoni. Making that onion and bacon tart last Sunday, I got that old-time hunger while stretching out the crust. I decided to make a thin crust pizza using the same dough. No Chef Boyardee, but I’ll probably have to get a box soon to satisfy the crescendo of this Jones.
7:19:59 PM 
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