Grabbing a Slice of Life

Grabbing a Slice of Life

By

Mike Scinto

            My father was born and raised in a house on Park Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  He was one of five children in this Italian-American neighborhood near the center of town. Stella, the only female sibling in the family lived in the neighborhood her entire life.  Tony, a right-out-of-“Grease” leather-jacketed tough guy lived in an apartment across the street with his wife and son. Lenny moved to a nice house in the suburbs post-war.  Ernie married young, divorced and lived in a room in the large family home his entire life.

            My father, post World War II, met my mother in Memphis and the rest, as they say, is history. That’s where my brother and I were born and spent our pre-teen years.

            This column isn’t meant to dig into the roots of my family tree but was simply setting up the background of this New England-rooted family and its love for the great American food…..pizza, and the best parlor to ever bake it, Jennie’s Pizzeria (still in business I might add). If I were to be asked for my two favorite foods on the planet, they would be pizza and bar-b-que; the Memphis, Bridgeport influences of course.

            If you Google it, I’m sure you can find millions of anecdotal stories of the origin of tomato pie (pizza). My grandmother’s explanation has always rung true for me.  In the “old country” women would take leftover dough and flatten it out. She would spread some freshly ground tomatoes, oregano, olive oil and a light sprinkling of ground parmesan cheese on top.  Voila! It’s tomato pie.  And I am true to Grandma.

            The thinner the crust is, the better.  You need to take that big old pie shaped slice and fold it in half to take a bite.  But as much as I love this traditional American food, getting a pizza place to make it that way for me is nearly impossible.

                If I say “extra sauce and light cheese please” they act like they can’t believe anybody would really want a “plain” pizza with light cheese and, seemingly to “get my mind right”, they load on the cheese anyway. I had Zak hooked on the correct way to eat pizza until his Mom suggested pepperoni………..and extra cheese.  The interloper won him over. It’s as if he went over to the dark side to join Darth Momma.

                Elvis liked bar-b-que pizza. I’ve eaten margarita pizza, sampled Hawaiian pie and munched on dough with green onions and ham. I felt like I was back in my Catholic childhood when I snuck into a protestant church with a friend.  It was so wrong!

                So you go on ordering your gourmet “pizzas”, cut in squares and baked in a deep dish, and I’ll stay true to my Italian-New England roots and eat tomato pie the way it was meant to be eaten. And you can only dream about how GOOD truly tastes!