Pizza, pizza, pizza!

 

                                                                                                       Sicily Pizzeria, Flint, Michigan                                         

Most days I drive past a favorite pizza place of ours that went out of business during the pandemic.  It had those nice little "cupped" pepperonis on a thin crust, and it came wrapped in paper, the way we used to get pizzas when we were kids.  There's something about ripping open that paper and watching the steam rise, carrying a wonderful smell with it.  It was an experience.  Opening a box like we do today doesn't even come close.  

I keep hoping against hope that it will come back.  

I always wondered how this little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria could pass a health inspection, but apparently it did for almost 60 years!  You see, to pick up your order, you had to walk in the backdoor and down a tiny little hallway past the kitchen.  You could actually see the guy working in the kitchen around a big, old, pizza oven as you walked past the open doorway.

I often wonder if something happened to him, or if he just got tired of making pizza, but his pizza was the best!

When we first moved into our community, there was a huge piece of land known as "deer park."  By the time we moved in, most of the deer were quite scraggly and decidedly unhealthy.  I used to like to park near the woods where the deer roamed as it was a little piece of woodsy heaven in the center of the city.

Today, the deer are gone, as well as the woods, replaced by some grocery stores and lots of parking.  It reminds me of the old Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise put up a parking lot

 

Interestingly, at the time I did have a sense of what we were losing.  I did feel sorry for the deer, but I knew our community would be changing forever--which it has (and continues to do.)  I remember driving by the corner where the huge dealership now sits, seeing a little girl playing in her scant backyard.  Today, there is no evidence of her existence.

It's not just our community, I know.  Our drive out to see our grandparents in the country when I was a kid took us by a big, old, stone house, which I always thought was neat.  Today, more grocery stores and parking lots.  By the way, the fields are gone, too.

I guess my point to this little trip down memory lane is to remind you just how meaningful ordinary memories can be.  Cherish them.  Each and every one of them.  Work through the not-so-good ones and make new ones to replace them, thanking God for the opportunity to do so.

Janet Cassidy
janetcaassidy.com
#memories
#bigyellowtaxi
#pizza