Legacy Writing 365:305

My freshman year, living in the dorm, we had mandatory meal tickets; they looked like this. Apparently I had some meals left at the end of fall semester. I’d like a refund!

Very old school, in the days before all the information in the world could be put on a magnetic strip.

On Sunday nights, the dorm cafeteria was closed, so we were on our own. This is how I came to eat my first slice of pizza ever.

There were Pasquale’s Pizza places in (or near) both my high school towns, but I never ate pizza at them. At one of them, Lynne and I just hung out to flirt with the guy who worked there. The other I went to after high school football games but I always ate their roast beef sandwich. Lynne thinks I used to go with her to a local pizza place that’s still there, but she’s confusing me with her other friends. I didn’t go to that one until after I was out of college.

There was a Pasquale’s in Tuscaloosa, too, but it didn’t deliver. I think our delivery almost always came from Pinocchio’s, although apparently there was a Domino’s even then–I only know this because I saw a Domino’s box in a college yearbook photo.

But given the choice, I always opted to go to my favorite deli, Uncle Andy’s. It was just around the corner from our dorm, and their sandwiches were SO good. In fact, in the decades since, I’ve never had another deli sandwich that came close to my favorite sandwich from there.

I can remember lots of other restaurants (and bars!) I frequented in my years there (I lived in Tuscaloosa three separate times), and at the end of my undergraduate years, one of the pizza places had a phone number that was one off from our home number. This meant we got lots of drunken calls between midnight and two a.m. for pizzas to be delivered. Usually we let them know they’d dialed wrong, but sometimes, if we were really irritated at being awakened and the callers were particularly demanding (“Large with everything, except no anchovies, light on the sauce, extra cheese, wait–only put the mushrooms on one half, and the black olives on the other half–and two Diet Pepsis”), we’d just tell them to expect the delivery in half an hour and then we’d go back to bed.

Senior year, my favorite pizza place was on the strip about half a block from our house. Plus it was next to where I did laundry. Plus two of my favorite people in the world worked there. In fact, they met there and later married and had a son. I loved hanging out with them and our other friends there (and I still remember that David K got onions on his pizza–something I never did and still don’t–onions ruin a pizza for me).

Kathy and Mike
This is a little menu. A 17-inch pizza was $4.80. I’m old.

7 thoughts on “Legacy Writing 365:305”

  1. i would like one of those roast beef sandwiches… are they still in business? if so they probably changed the food…

  2. Talayna’s across the street from Wash U. was the pizza of choice for generations. They eventually had to tear the building down because it was totally infested with roaches. Eating there was like eating at Joe’s Apartment.

  3. My family was down in Tuscaloosa Tuesday, my daughter reviewing the campus as a potential hangout for the next four years. The food service options have expanded tremendously, with Starbucks and Chick-filet and Domino’s lined up in Ferguson center and included in the meal plans.
    There are still Pasquale’s in Alabama. One is in the Walmart shopping center on Hwy 150 (it closes and reopens frequently) and one is in Gardendale, Unfortunately, the food isn’t as good as I remember from Lenlock.

    1. Yet another adolescent memory turned to (pizza) dust! Do you still eat onions on your pizza?

      Oh, I hope your daughter DOES go to UA. Seems so right.

      I probably shouldn’t say this, but I remember sitting in Ferguson reading and studying between classes–or soap viewings–and watching a rat run to and from the little room where the ATM machine was housed. Never stopped me from getting food or coffee from Ferguson, though. Good thing Starbucks didn’t exist then–I’d have been even broker than I was.

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