It Only Happens to Me - Story #2 The Pizza

I find myself tripping, stumbling and shuffling down memory lane when the weather is gloomy like it is today, and I'm tired from a restless night (i.e. last night). So I'll dip into the Way Back Machine for one of my adventures from back in the day.

It must have been the summer of 1973 or 1974 or 1975... can't really remember. My friends were home from college and we were having an impromptu get together. As the day progressed we decided to splurge on a large Harris Pizza. At that time Harris Pizza was the gold standard of pizza in the Quad Cities (and in my opinion it still is.) So we dug deep into the pockets of our frayed, patched and embroidered blue jeans to scrounge up just enough money for the pizza and a case of soda. I was the only one that actually owned a car, and a fine car it was; a shiny blue 1972 Ford Maverick. My friend, Marybeth, called it The Carp since I guess it did look just a little like a fish. So naturally I had to go to make the pizza/soda pickup.

My best friend Nicki, and my dog (a rather large Old English Sheepdog, named Butch) loaded into The Carp and headed off to pick up the pizza. We got to Harris ok; went in to make our pickup (both pizza and soda), and prepared to return to the party. As we loaded back into the car we noticed the young guys at the pizza place were all waving and smiling at us. We giggled coyly and waved back at them... hey, we were pretty cute back then. About a block down the street I asked Nicki where she put the pizza. She said "I got the soda" and I said "I got the dog", and at that moment we both looked at each other, and I noticed something floating off the tail of The Carp, like a slow motion sequence. We had found the pizza, and the reason those cute boys at the pizza place were smiling and waving at us.

The gods were smiling on us though because although the precious pizza landed squarely in the middle of the busy intersection of 30th Street and 14th Avenue in Rock Island, all the cars were being very careful to drive around the pizza. OK... so we decided to make a quick detour down the alley so we could stop back at the intersection and retrieve our prize. As we pulled through the alley we found ourselves in a race with 2 little boys that also spied our treasure. Game on.

We reached the intersection at the same time, only to witness a car drive right through the middle of the pizza... squish... how rude! But hey it was a large, so there was still plenty left to retrieve. I stopped the car, and Nicki prepared to launch after the pizza but the boys were just too fast for us. They took off with our pizza, and us in hot pursuit.

But alas, our pursuit was fruitless and they got away from us. So we had to return to the party pizza-less, but with what we thought was a pretty funny story.

So I guess rather than producing a moral for the story, a question for the ages was raised again... which is more important to college-age boys; cute girls with long hair and short cutoffs, or a large Harris pizza? You decide...