Paulies

Summer were always the same.  It was time for me to shed the convenience of a friend who lived a street over and move on.  I had two friends, Colin and Lucas, who lived on the other side of town which was about a half an hour walk away.  We would always wake up around nine, I would then call Lucas to meet me up at Paulies for an early lunch.  He would then call Colin which then you would get his father, Scott, on the phone.  You would have to plead to him to wake up his son.  It was then Lucas’s duty before getting to Paulies to go and knock on his door and make sure that he actually got up.  His walk was about five minutes shorter then mine to the town square so it just made sense.  The town square only consisted of a few small town basics.  A weird super market that was named after the town, Wonder Foods, a video rental store, a used car dealership and 3-4 bars. 

    The three ways to travel were walking which took twenty minutes, skateboarding which took about fifteen and a bike which took ten.  The mode of transportation was chosen based on what the daily activities were.  If we were just going to hang around town then we would just walk.  If we were going to go back to Lucas’s house then we would bring our skateboards because he built his own mini-ramp.  And if plans were uncertain we would just bike which would then lead us to anywhere around town easily.  I, being diligent and punctual, would get to the town earlier than they would and would ride my bike, if I chose it, on the only sidewalk in town until they showed up riding in the grass between Wonder Foods and the Citgo gas station.
    When we met up we would head straight to a new pizzeria that just opened up.  But this location for twenty years has always stayed a pizza place.  Paulie’s Pizzeria has finally stuck and his logo was a long haired man with a goatee holding a pizza above his head.  Even though it was a cartoon, he looked identical.  When we got in front we would throw our bikes in the front making it impossible for anyone to use the red, stripped picnic table.  No one ever used it either.  When you entered the walls were boarded with strips of wood that looked like floor paneling but Paulie also owned a make shift, Do It Yourself construction company so I guess he was a so called expert. The noise from the cooler that held Pepsi products and ketchup would mask the television and the cashier greeting you.  The rumble also shook the floor and cooled down the place.  The menu was jam packed with different, easy dishes.  If you weren’t standing at the front desk underneath the sign that was too small for that many items you wouldn’t be able to process all the data being presented to you.  The prices were outrageously cheap when they first moved in when Paulie didn’t know anything about profit.  For a pizza as big as a booth table was 12 bucks.  But we always got two hot dogs with fries with a can of soda.  Hot dogs are the same everywhere the only difference is theirs has poppy seeds.  The reason we got this wasn’t for the dogs but for the fries.  Slender strips of potato that didn’t need to be salted.  They could be eaten without any condiments.  They only came out to be 4 bucks. 
    Some weeks we would go four times and for a kid that only got his age for his allowance every two weeks, the money was spent in loans to Lucas who would get any money he asked for from his parents.  One time they gave us a hundred dollar bill for food during a sleep over and we lost it in a bag of popcorn.  Either that or I would have to sneak quarters from my dad’s state collection that he kept behind glass.  I would have to even out the stacks of hundreds to stay sneaky and undetected. 
    The workers at Paulie’s are always the scum of Wonder Lake.  They were either the thug L.D. students that you stopped talking to in fourth grade but they still acted like you were great friends just because you gave them a ride once.  Or they were the kids that dropped out at 16.  The employees were constantly changing over a months stretch of time.  When you ordered your hot dog they would still stick your receipt on a spike.  Your food might come out in two minutes or like one time, not at all.  When we didn’t get our food on time or we were particularly upset with our meal we would seek revenge.  Sometimes we would throw away things such as mustard and ketchup packets just for them to lose some money or put salt in the napkin holder so if a person pulled out one they would get blinded by the amount of salt.
    The interior felt more like a middle aged mans garage then a pizzeria.  There was a television in the top left hand corner next to the cooler that only played WGN.  Either Jerry Springer, Maury or a Cubs game.  In the opposite corner they had two arcade games that would be switched whenever you got the high score.  Then above the kitchens entrance next to the arcade was Paulie’s prize catches.  A taxidermied fish with a picture to accompany it that was him holding it in a boat, a deer’s head and a fox.  We always sat in the booths and looked out the gawking windows for friends or for trash.  If we saw trash we would belittle them because obviously we were better then them.  Straight A Students, teacher’s kids eating a lunch with friends.  How respectable.  If they were kids we did not want to see particularly Dan Dwayne who, at noon, would get on his bike and ride down every street that his friends lived on to see if they were home.  We once saw him coming and decided to hide in the bathroom to evade his patrol.