Getting Hired at Pizza City

A friend of mine, Jim Bricker had gone to Ohio State a couple years before me and he insisted I should go get a job where he had worked, Pizza City. If he only knew the path of destruction he led me to!

After writing my contact info on a guest slip they called me back the day I applied. A waitress said go back and talk to Dave. A gruff guy with hair all the way down his back was leaned over a table making pizzas as fast as he could. I went behind the table to talk to him through the rack holding pans with rising dough. He only glanced up as he kept sprinkling cheese, and dealing pepperoronis. "Got a valid drivers license?" "Yeah" "Can you be here at 5?" "Yeah" "You're hired" I started to answer but he had spun away slamming oven doors and moving down to sauce up another shell.

Lisa Underwood and Count Basie

Lisa was a roommate of an employee, I think...she was in one of the dorms across the street at first. She was a familiar face stopping in to say hi almost every day. A cute happy friendly girl everyone was always glad to see. I hadn't seen her with a guy for quite a while, so I got up the nerve to ask her out. We set a date to see The Count Basie Orchestra. So I was all happy. A few days later I talked to her again on the phone and she gave me a bit of news. She has a boyfriend but they decided to "see other people." Well that really doused my flames. My talks with her between then and the date were short and reserved. I was such a moron! Much later I realized "We need to see other people" is girl-code for "we need to break up!" We had a nice polite date anyway, but it's one of things I look back and kick myself over! :)

The concert was really mind blowingly good. A full house at vets memorial. These old guys had been touring together in a bus for decades, and the complex arrangements and ebb and flow of parts was amazing. Around 20 master jazz players up there playing their hearts out. The Count was on his last legs and all the band members treated him with a sort of reverence. He was wheeled out to the piano in a chair and remained there till the curtain came down. At one point between songs the Count was talking and stopped short, went blank...silent. The band simply stood waiting, as if they might have seen this before. But as a minute went by the silence was deafening and some faces started to look concerned. Then the Count started talking again and the show continued.

Lisa was completely impressed with the band. She had never seen or heard anything at this level. As the crowd filtered away we were still in our seats talking in dumbfounded amazement at how good these guys were. I was looking at the stage and could tell people would brush against the curtain now and then. I said "Lets go talk to them." She looked at me like I had just said "Hey, lets build a rocket and go to the moon." But I convinced her that there didn't seem to be much security, and if we walked confidently we could go right backstage with no problem.

A minute later we were going up the stairs to the left of the stage and then back left behind the curtain. The band was all still standing around in small groups talking, waiting for the bus to arrive. One of them told me they would be traveling through the night. I think I talked to the guitar player Jimmy Green first. He is a sideman legend. Plays acoustic with no amp with a big band. His style of comping he switches the chord attributes or inversions or whatever sometimes with complex melodic parts detectable within the changes. Most of this is lost in the big sound of the band, and yet it is there, the steady strumming helping to define the rhythm section, appearing as harmonic structure when there are gaps in the horns wall of sound. I tried to express to him how much I appreciated his accomplishments, but he had heard it all a million times, very gracious and cool though.

Everyone seemed pretty subdued. I don't know if this was normal or if they were all concerned for the Counts health. We moved toward the back of the stage and talked with the bass player for a while. Up to this point Lisa was quietly looking beautiful and glowing with excitement to be there with the band. This brought a faint smile to everyone we approached.

We were facing the curtain and Count Basie was a bit off stage to our right in a wheel chair, his back to us with a small group of people around him. We kept looking over to him and the bass player said "you should go talk to him" We hesitated and he smiled saying something like "He's really old, but he loves to see a beautiful young face." So we went over and Lisa was simply amazing. She went straight to him and his face completely lit up as she profusely thanked him for the wonderful music. It was awesome. She gushed praise for a couple minutes and the Count was beaming. You could see the concern on the faces around him melt as he became quite happy. It was really the perfect finish to an evening of loving respect for a great artist. Count Basie died a couple months later.

Pictures of the Shop

It was a warm day for winter and I decided to take a walk around campus and grab a few shots of the old place. It was sold and changed name to Adriatico's close to 20 years ago...not sure exactly when. Clicking these images will display a larger version This is looking down 11th ave, with University Hospital in the background
I made this turn up the alley downshifting a VW a million times!
Looking in the kitchen window from across the street.
The crew at Adriatico's was friendly and after a little hesitation let me take a couple pics in the kitchen. I assured them they keep it much cleaner than we did! That looks like the same Hobart mixer with the cheese grater attachment on it. Wonder who gets stuck with cleaning that tonight?
They now do their pizza making in the window here. Pretty good idea since we were always looking out the window anyway!
Dining room door. There was no pac-man or gorf! What are you supposed to do when your in there drinking till the sun comes up? Paul Pryor was hooked on pacman. I bet he still has nightmares about those little blue ghosties. He'd play for hours at the end of the night till all the drivers had checked in. Then we would usually all hang out for a while and have a few beers off the tap. Sometimes playing euchre for hours. Pryor and I would partner sometime and see how many hands in a row we could steal the deal. We would divert attention with loud talk and take turns raking the cards in and dealing. ...like 12 hands would go by!
Hope these guys didn't think I was too crazy! Probably still talking about me...

Cast of Characters

Ok this place was full of characters. I'll try to remember some of the names, in no particular order.

Dave Sharp - Manager
Gwen Peper - Education Major. Known to utter the phrase "Oh my!!" quite often.
Tim Sheridan - worked there briefly, guitar player.
Paul Sheridan - Tims brother.
Tim Diebolt - A cook. Tim Sheridan, Tim Diebolt, Rex, Martin Hamar, Marty's sister Charlotte and I had a house on Oakland Ave. for a couple years.
Kerri Blum - great friend and anti-agent provocateur
Billy gregarious southern boy. Special ed major. Girlfriend Mary then Ann
Ann and Billy and another couple had a place on Summit
Joe Randolph - actually known to study. We were a bad influence on him. He ended up throwing pretty good parties.
Paul Pryor - one of first co-owners. Enabler of many a late night beer blast / card party.
Izzi - was there the first year I worked. Had a strange attraction to red hair and green eyes.
Pete Costales cook. enjoyed mind altering, knives and heavy metal
Martin Hamar - his catchphrase "deeeceeeent!!!"
Tom Davis - my roomate when on 9th ave.
Amy
Gwen Ross Left shortly after I started

I'm sure more will occur to me later as I pull tales from my faulty memory.

Pizza City at Ohio State

Hi,

My name is Lee Goins. I worked at a place called Pizza City in 1980's. Pizza City used to be on 11th Ave. on the south side of the OSU Campus.

There were great friends, lots of beer parties and occaisionally we would make a few pizzas. I've lost contact with most of those people, but I bet if I started blogging about my memories, eventually some familiar faces will appear? Lets see!