Pizza Drive-In

As I sit here this morning, the smell of the fresh, homemade pizza still drifts in my mind if not in the air.  Pizza is a magical food that, if homemade, is fully configurable.  You can put anything you want on it and it will never cost you $30 per pizza.  As a long time victim of the heartbreak of Celiac’s Disease, the introduction of cauliflower pizza crusts has honestly been a game changer for me.  After at least a 15-year abstinence from the multiple sensory  pleasures of pizza, the introduction of cauliflower as a pizza crust has allowed me to again enjoy good pizza with all the crap I love on it.  Nothing smells like a pizza with onions, black olive, pepperoni, jalapenos, bell pepper, mushrooms, garlic, and sausage on it…..and cheese…lots and lots of cheese.  Extra cheese.   My mouth waters as I type this.

I don’t know if everyone remembers where they first experienced the joys of pizza.  We can only pray that few suffered an introduction via Pizza Hut or, worse yet, Dominos.  My introduction was at a little pizza place on Nettleton Ave in Jonesboro, just east of Caraway Road, that we called Pizza Drive In.  It sat right across from where Bittles Vegetable Market and University Motors used to be.  The parking lot had probably been asphalt at one time, but when I knew it, it was mostly broken asphalt and random stones.  The first time I went there, I had to be six or seven years old.   I don’t think that it was called ‘Pizza Drive-In’.  It may have been ‘Riccio’s, I don’t remember.  The place was a small white building, with a tall pole on the top.  That tall pole had about a dozen, colored, revolving lights on it.  Well, they tell me the lights were colored.  I’m color blind so I thought they were just revolving white lights.  The building had an awning for cars to park under that wrapped around it like a wrap-around porch.  The awning served to get at least the front half of the car out of the sun or rain, whatever the case might be. There was plenty of parking in back to the place too, but no shade.  I remember we used to order one ‘Around the World’ pizza, and one cheese pizza.  Dad loved the ‘Around the World’ pizza.  It had a little of everything on it and was very expensive.  My mother, my brother and I, we loved the cheese pizza.  My sister always had some of the ‘Around the World’ with dad.

Pizza Drive-In took the ‘take out’ concept to the next level.  This place was like the original McDonald’s or the Tastee-Freeze.  It was a ‘drive up, walk up’ place. There wasn’t any place to go ‘in’ to and no one was going to come to you to see what you wanted. To place your order, you had to get out of your car, and walk up to a tiny window with a very small shelf.  One of the guys in there would come to the window and write your order down on a little note pad.  You would then go back to your car and wait. There were huge windows all the way around the little building so you could watch the guys make the pizza.  First, they would grab a hunk of dough and begin making it into a circle.  They would work the dough roughly at first, but then they would begin to toss the spinning dough into the air.  When they were satisfied with the size of the disk of dough, they placed the dough on a work service covered with corn meal.  To the top of the dough, they would begin adding ingredients.  This process could, on occasion become quite theatrical.  First was the marinara sauce was ladled onto the pizza and spread all around.  Cheese flew in the air as it was added to the pizza and then, finally, the toppings that you ordered were placed on top of the cheese.  The guys in there would put on quite a show with each pizza they made.  After they had added all the required ingredients to the pizza, they put the pizza on a big ole, boat paddle looking thing (a pizza peel), and slid the pizza into the huge pizza oven to cook.  The pizza oven sat in the center of the building and dominated the space in both the building and my mind.

On my first visit there, the whole family, Mom, Dad, Sweet Pea, The Goob and I, were all in the car.  It was nighttime, and it must have been winter because I don’t remember the windows being down or battling mosquitos.  I remember we all watched in silent awe as a guy, I think dad said his name was Riccio, made our pizza.  He was a big guy dressed all in white.  I think he had a black beard.  I watched him closely.  He seemed to know what he was doing.  I remembered wondering how he learned to throw the dough up in the air and catch it like that. How many times did he mess up and hit the ceiling or drop it on the floor, I wondered. I hoped he wouldn’t drop mine. I was fairly certain that the ceiling was reasonably clean, but I wasn’t so sure about the floor.

To a small, hungry boy the time it takes to cook a couple of pizzas can seem like an eternity.  Couple that with the smells that sneaked out of the little building and into our car, and Einstein be damned, time simply stops.  Eventually, the guy, Riccio, would look at your in your car and point at you.  You then walked up to the tiny window, paid for your pizza, and walked away carrying pizza in thin, white cardboard pizza boxes.  It was absolutely critical to keep the pizza flat because otherwise all the topping would slide, taking all the cheese with it, to the low side of the pizza.  It was a tremendous responsibility to be entrusted to hold the pizza on the drive home, and even though the bottom of the box was setting fire to your legs where you rested the box, you struggled through the searing pain to keep it absolutely flat. Woe be unto you should you arrive home and find that the toppings were all on one side of the pizza.  There is no shame like ruined pizza shame.

By the time I was in high school, Pizza Drive-In had changed hands a few times.  Ownership may have changed, but the pizza was still the same.  The crust of the pizza was always perfect, and the toppings were plentiful.  The smells that came out of that place once compelled me to eat an entire large cheese pizza by myself, purchasing one slice at a time.  Though Pizza Inn, Pizza Hut, and a few others had invaded what once had been solely Pizza Drive-In’s domain, it’s popularity among young folks never waned while I was in high school.  It became more than a pizza joint.  It became a gathering spot.  On a Friday or Saturday evening, weary of cruising up and down Nettleton, you could pull in for a slice and a coke and see friends.  Slices were consumed sitting on the hood of your car listening to FM-100 and talking about school and girls.  In the summer we battled heat and mosquitoes, and the winter we shivered while the hot pizza fogged up the windows of our cars and trucks, but we always went to Pizza Drive In for a slice and a coke. 

Times certainly have changed.  The gods of economics decreed that rather than a cool little pizza joint, what Jonesboro really needed was one more strip mall. Pizza Drive-In was relegated to our memory. 

Every time I have pizza, I remember Pizza Drive-In.  I remember the sights and smells.  I remember the absolutely perfect crust.  I guarantee you that 60 years from now, when the gods of economics have replaced the strip mall with some other modern monstrosity, no one will miss the strip mall. The kids of the 1970s, however, will still miss the hot slices, wonderful smells and music of a cool fall night under the awning at Pizza Drive-In.

I can smell it. Can you smell it? Subscribe Now!