From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In
The Be-Bop 1960's Night- The Salducci's Pizza Toss Bet
You all know Frankie, right? Frankie,
Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and
usually kind Frankie by rough inclination when it suits his purposes. Yah,
Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement,
the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub
together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was
such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well,
this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said
scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And
poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more
importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective
social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of
Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, if not then North Adamsville’s finest still the place
where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed
some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.
Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal
heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle
for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Adamsville
High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental,
and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the
first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But
mainly it was his "style,” his mad-hatter “beat” style, wherefore he
attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with
his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two
minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it. He said, reflecting
his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his
god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I
tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as
least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of
theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.
All this talk about Frankie royal
lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story.
Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza
dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now
because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was
originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before.
Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I
see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and
maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.
One summer night, yah, it must have been
a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on
our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had
to be between our junior and senior years at old North Adamsville High because
we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do,
after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday
summer night at that as we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that,
mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’
sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation
and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not.
I was also trying to keep a lid on my
new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in
and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status
(that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she
could impress HER friends, yah it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a
summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according
to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although
I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the
following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his
next pass through.
Now this Tonio, as you know already if
you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and
if you don’t you will hear more about him later, was nothing but an ace, numero
uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art,
although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who
knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I
don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the
ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then
cutting it up into pizza-size portions.
I only really know the front of the store
part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the
preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling
of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and
tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks
out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average
citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put
in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no
culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good
pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a
perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate
or just ravenously hungry.
Beyond the extra knead though the key to
the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is
where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he
went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if
you happened to be from old North Adamsville, you probably can still see it too
if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern
Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows
watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in
the air. Artistry, pure and simple.
So you can see now, if you didn’t quite
get it before that Frankie’s proposition was nothing but an old gag kind of
bet, a bet on where Tonio will throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation
on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush,
and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least
known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules,
naturally. Since its Frankie’s proposition he gets to give the rules a go, and
I can veto.
Frankie, though, and sometimes he could
do things simple, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural
inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply
Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the
sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza
sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t
want pizza that night.
You know such signs, every pizza palace
has them, and other fast eat places too, you have to go to “uptown” eateries
for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s a list
of Tonio’s public offerings. On one side
of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or
five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the
prices fifty years later for christ sakes, no fixings. Just right for “family
night”, our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats,
public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not
Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father
hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in
our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.
Later , when we had a little more money
and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days,
when Ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it was too hot, or something and to avoid
civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla
pizza was like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wanted it and
you just feel bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone
who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice,
out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some
aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get
it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders
and progeny), usually a root beer, a <i>Hires</i> root beer to wash
away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.
Or how about plump Italian sausage,
Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a
couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those
fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and
finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they
were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your
cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half
one, half the other fixing, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of
death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the
nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these,
although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more
than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you
had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball
toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza,
except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been
declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe
again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet
delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went
onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this
modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ,
whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza
not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol,
high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.
On the other side of the sign, although
I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also
known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew
up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who,
non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various
sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed
onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips
so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a
little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what Ma
prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to
get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to
run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill
the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason
though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma,
high Roman Catholic saint grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of
mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, yah, grandma no way I would
betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that
grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese
and so on. The sign, in all it beatified Tonio misspelled glory.
“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed
reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just
repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before
I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea
here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get
to know how my mind works, or how it works different from star king Frankie,
but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low
pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were
not aware of. See, I am thinking, as many times as I have watched old saintly
Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really
thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit
the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there is some kind of regular pattern to
the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of
teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind
of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason
to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity of the tosses (that was the secret to that
good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said
"Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I have
visions of filling that old jukebox with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song
just came in that I am crazy to play about a zillion times, <i>Mr.
Tambourine Man</i>). We are off.
I admit that I did pretty well for while
that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night.
Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk
was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every
righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling
pretty good ‘cause I just beat the king of the hill at something, and that
something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested
comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were
sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real
paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or
less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he
said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza
tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain,
that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.
Now here is where things got tricky,
though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t
work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she
was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting
smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza
flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with
time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot.
However, Sammy, North Adamsville High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is
when he was supposed to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older
brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé was on duty. Since we
already knew the ropes on this thing I didn’t even bother to check and see if
Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?
This night we flipped for first call.
Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the
previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that,
like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll
balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key
chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this.
Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south.
Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right
for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about
four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question.
At that moment I was feeling about three feet tall and about eight feet under
because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda,
fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking
that is another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when
I think about it now that was just a passing thing with her, and you know about
passing things- what about it.
What is part of the story though, and
the now still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie,
king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a
bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I
didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse
by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements,
born and his cohort Sammy. It seems that Sammy owed Frankie for something,
something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to
make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about,
the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy,
taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a
“king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?
Here is the really heinous part though,
and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this.
Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on
dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than
enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly
world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older
brother, big-man-around- town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his
regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that
unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to
tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons
than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I
was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time)
caper he was off on. Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the
Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question,
which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2010
minute, I’m ready to go up to his swanky downtown law office (where the men’s
bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and
demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.
