Brockway Avenue Ghosts

Nearby is a splendid little pizza place called “The Spring Garden Pizzeria.” They do not deliver, but they have a pizza special so grand that it's worth the trip down Holden. One large pizza, and it really is large, with one topping for $7.99. That is a bargain, and that is why I like it, aside from its thin crust, ample cheese, and good taste. I like jalapenos on mine, so I stopped down there this evening and ordered me a big ol' pie.

A problem exists with SGP, unfortunately, and it is that the cookers there never allow the pie enough oven time for my taste. I like the cheese to brown some, and they always pull the pie before this can happen. I could tell them I wanted it well done, but then they would probably burn it, so what I usually do is throw a slab on the PIZZAZZ and crisp it up a bit. The PIZZAZZ machine will make crispy anything you want it to.

SGP is not my very favorite pizzeria, however. The very best pizza in this town can be had at Mario's, but the same pie there would cost you around $18! Ridiculous. It is good, though; New York style thin crust, light sauce deliciousness. Before Mario's came to town, another place had the best pie. I ordered pie from there exclusively until I had a few disagreements with their business practices.

I think we were made of pizza in Morgantown. Always with the pizza. One summer, the Dominoes delivery guy was so familiar with us that he would stop at the drive-through store on his way to our house and pick up smokes or snuff or soda pop or really whatever you wanted him to get for you. Nice guy.

Some of the absolute worst pizza I ever ate was from a place called Plus One Pizza. Their gimmick was that if you bought one pizza, you would get another exactly like it for free. And then, if you ordered 20 pizzas or something like that, you'd get free pizzas! What a deal. The pie was crap, but pizza, like a very few other things in life, is great even when it's terrible.

The Plus One shop was maybe a half of a mile down the hill from one of the places we lived in Morgantown, a huge, drafty, dilapidated beast of a structure that housed five 19-20-year-old guys, quite a few raucous and enjoyable keg parties, and some other sordid events better left unwritten here. It was so cold in that house during the winter that you had stay upstairs.

Well, old Lumpy was a housemate at the time, and on a particularly cold and dreary Morgantown evening so snowy the delivery man was not delivering, I persuaded Lumpy to walk down that hill to Plus One to get our free pizzas that we had earned by eating so many terrible meals from them. A small victory, but a victory is a victory, nonetheless.

Of course, Colasante's was a great place for pizza. Their pans had seasoned over years and thousands of pizzas that made their thicker crusts quite crispy. One of the best perks about working there was free pizza. C$ worked there, and he would occasionally stop by the house after the shop closed with a pie and some beer, and we'd sit and have a hootenanny. Good times.