Pizza with Papaw

My favorite pizza in the whole world is Pizza King pizzas. Well I can't say the world because I haven been everywhere. New York style is good and Chicago is just too much - its more like a casserole. Pizza King beats them both. In general I like thin crusts better than deep dishes as you can tell. To me on a thin crust there is more taste. I know I'm crazy. Where did this love come from? Where else - my grandfather.

I didn't grow up in the north, in fact I grew up in the Deep South. Georgia to be exact. A little community of Helen is where I began. In Helen, pop about 800, it was hard enough to get pizza let alone good pizza. Well, once about every two to three years the parents would breakdown and take the kids to see the grandparents for Christmas in Indiana. I was the oldest of all the grandchildren so, at some point during each visit my dad's father would pull me aside and whisper in my ear - "Let's go get some pizza". And we were out of there before anyone knew we were gone. Papaw would get in trouble from my dad and memaw when we got back but he didn't care. He would say "He's the oldest. There are privledges to being the oldest." And pizza with Papaw always meant Pizza King.

The Pizza King we went to had a jukebox and Papaw would always give me money to play some songs. We would always order a pepperoni. And it always tasted like the best thing in the world to me. Papaw would ask me how I was and what was going on. He would tell me about work and how him and Memaw missed us. After an hour or so he would anounce "Let's go back and get our whoopin'". I would smile and say "Ok Papaw lets go back." We did this until he died when I was 13 years old - too many cigars.

A few years ago my other grandfather and last grandparent died. All of us grandchildren decided to go to Pizza King for dinner after the funeral. I sat at the table wiping away tears. It was the same Pizza King me and Papaw used to go to. Everyone thought that I was sad because of the recent funeral but in reality it was that I missed Pizza with Papaw.