pizza

There are many people in the world that are nice, once you get to know them. Once you peel back a few layers. After you coax them out, develop some trust and gain access to the true individual. But rarer are those souls that are nice — genuinely nice — from the moment you meet them. From the very second you walk into their lives you know you are standing in front of the pure, unguarded, essence of the individual. They have no agendas or desires to impress. These are just balanced and happy and the pleasure of life just spills out. They can’t help it. They are content which makes them nice.

Al Santillo is one of those truly nice guys. Al owns Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza, which is located in a small house tucked between a church and an apartment building in Elizabeth, New Jersey — in fact, when I was first trying to find it, I walked in the front door and walked back out; this could not be the place with three pages of raving Yelp reviews for it. It was so small, so —- so, not what I was expecting. I walked in, saw Al, his back to me writing something down at a cluttered table, I didn’t see any lines of people clambering for what I was told was the best pizza in New Jersey, I didn’t see any banners, posters or signs telling the customer how amazing their pie was. So I left.

When I got to my car I went back to the Yelp search — because this pizza was for Austin and it had to be great. This was going to be his last dinner with us before he moved and I wanted it to be — well, amazing. Austin had had now had his first taste of good pizza a few weeks before this when we had taken him to New York City for his first time, his going away present. So this had to rival that pizza and since I had a meeting in New Jersey— which is close to New York, the capital of Pizza — this is where I would find it. Hopefully.

Now, we had known Austin was leaving us for a while, several months actually, but denial is a wonderfully comforting thing when you call upon it. And we did. But the day rudely came anyway. On Saturday morning, Austin and his family would begin the 1800 miles trek from Delaware to Colorado to begin a new life.

Austin came into our lives seven years before this. I had walked into the family room one day and there were three warm bodies in there, instead of only the two male dependents that share my last name.

“This is Austin,” Nick introduced from behind him. Not taking his eyes off the screen or taking his hand off the controller.

“Hi,” Austin said, while killing Nick’s character in a blaze of digital gunfire.

And from that time he was a fixture at our house. But it wasn’t until the first time that this shy and quiet kid looked into our refrigerator and screamed out, “We’re out of ice tea.” And Debbie yelled back. “I’ll get some in the morning.” — was he officially part of the family.

Over the past seven years Austin would go on family trips with us, vacations and most weekends either he was sleeping at our house or Nick was sleeping at his. In fact, Austin and Nick were in my car when I learned our house was on fire and I broke every speed law in Delaware to get to it. And they both took dates together to the prom.

With all the electronic gizmos available, Nick and Austin will keep in touch. They’ll face time and game together and do a bunch of other technological miracles that I don’t understand. But first, I had to get him pizza.

After I had conformed with Yelp that I was at the right place, I walked back into Al’s place. He spent the next thirty minutes telling me about the difference between cheese from Romania and cheese from Wisconsin. Without ever meeting me before, he brought me behind the counter to try a pizza type he was experimenting with, he asked me about my family and where I grew up and he showed me how his huge brick oven works.

Al is a genuinely nice guy.

Just like Austin.

And, oh yeah —. Al’s pizza is absolutely amazing.

BY:

evdemorier@aol.com

Everett De Morier has appeared on CNN, Fox News Network, NPR, ABC, as well as in The New York Times and The London Times. He is the author of Crib Notes for the First Year of Marriage: A...


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