I’ve been home sick for a few days. Cough (a bad one), congestion, and my voice sounds like the rusty hinges of the gates of Hell. Got in to see the doctor today, and was told it was bronchitis. Apparently, it’s running around the area right now.
My case is severe enough that the doctor prescribed a double run of antibiotics, in addition to cough suppressant, decongestant, and expectorant. The cough suppressant is the most immediately important to me, because I’ve got a racking cough that’s coming close to cracking my ribs.
Anyway, I caught part of a show about “Pizza Palaces” on the Travel channel this morning, and they made a point of the people in line waiting to get into one of the places. That brought back some pleasant memories.
Back in the mid-70s, I was stationed at the submarine base in New London, Connecticut. The local pizza place I usually patronized, Great Oak Pizza, was up a little north of the base in a strip mall on highway 12. It was owned and run by a guy who’d been a Greek submariner during WWII, Spiro Vitouladitis, and his brother George.
Now, they’d get lines. Some weekend nights, the line outside waiting to get in would run all the way to the end of the strip mall. When the lines got long enough, Spiro would hand a pitcher of beer and a stack of plastic cups to the first person in line, which would be passed back through the line to keep everyone happy. If there were enough kids in line, he’d provide a pitcher of soda for them.
Their “kitchen sink” pizza was called a Spiro’s Special. After diligent training, I got to where I could finish about 3/4 of a small and about 1/2 a pitcher of root beer by myself.
The last time I went back to Connecticut (1985, I believe), they’d moved into larger quarters further up the highway. Just wasn’t the same, though.