Curiousfarmer

UW-Platteville hosted the spring solo ensemble contest.  I was one third of a terrible trumpet trio.  I would love to have a recording of that performance.

What made the trip stand out was our visit to Pizza Hut after the contest.  I grew up in a family of six and we didn’t eat out much.  So this was a real treat and I’m thankful to Mr. Harvat, our band director, for taking us.

The early Pizza Huts really did look like a hut.  This dark, squat, building was in downtown Platteville.  We entered into a world of exotic sights, smells, and sounds.

My family didn’t have video games.  I was fascinated by the PacMan machine.  Boys fed quarters so they could eat dots with the PacMan, avoiding the ghosts.  I watched. 

I never had deep dish pizza before.  My experience with pizza was frozen, served by the babysitter when Mom and Dad needed a night out.

The pizza came to our table in a piping hot black pan, steam rising from the cheese, which would burn the top of your mouth in an instant if you weren’t careful.  I can still remember my first bite.   

I was probably starving, as we didn’t snack back in those days, but its not an understatement to say that first bite of deep dish pizza was magical.  My culinary world was blown wide open.

This experience initiated a campaign of begging my parents to return to Pizza Hut.  My parents weren’t cruel, but they grew up in LaSalle county, Illinois.  

There was a Pizza Hut in Ottawa, the county seat.  The story was, the garbage man turned them in for consistently generating garbage which consisted of empty cans of dog food. 

Who knows if this story was true.  But the important part is, my parents believed it.  They had no interest in Pizza Hut, despite my glowing recommendation.  It feels like this stalemate went on for years, but time is different when you’re a kid.  

My parents and I went to a cattle sale in Monroe and were driving home in our red, Ford, ton truck, the one with the tall sides.  I started begging again as I saw the Pizza Hut sign.  “Ok,” Mom said, “we can carryout the smallest size they have, and you can eat it in the truck on the way home.”

I sat between my parents on the bench seat with cloth cover and tucked into my pizza, keeping my knees away from the shifter as Dad worked the truck into high gear.  The smell started getting to them.  They were hungry as well.

“That does look good,” Mom said.  “Maybe I’ll have a bite.”

It didn’t take long before we had that small pizza all ate up.  More importantly, the boycott of Pizza Hut was lifted.  Our family started enjoying Pizza Hut on special occasions.

My parents rented Almon and Wilma Larson’s farm.  They were the older couple who lived next door and became like grandparents to us.  Rent was paid spring and fall and Almon and Wilma would take our family out to eat after the rent was paid.  Now I don’t believe this to be standard landlord/tenant protocol, but Almon and Wilma loved an excuse to treat us.

Early on we went to “The Norseman” in Argyle.  They had an all you can eat buffet of which the only thing I can remember is the popcorn shrimp.  That’s about all I ate, but I still love shrimp today.

I don’t know why, but Wilma suggested we try someplace different, maybe someplace the kids liked.  We lobbied for Pizza Hut.  Now back in those days, a lot of the older folks didn’t care for pizza.  Almon and Wilma had never even tried pizza, but they loved to see us happy, so they were game to give it a try.

We had the deep dish pan Badger Special, sausage, mushrooms, two kinds of cheese.  Almon ordered a pitcher of beer.  They loved it!  Pizza Hut became our go to restaurant, spring and fall, to celebrate rent being paid. 

Our family still visits Pizza Hut once in a while, but its changed.  I know I’ve changed.  There is a magic experienced in youth that is difficult to find as we age.  I love seeing Romeo embrace new things.  May we all keep a little of the passion that is found so easily by the young.