Oh No You Don't!

As you may know, I originally came from the east coast; New Jersey to be precise. One thing I do miss about living there was the cultural diversity. Here there is mostly people of Scandahovian heritage, and most of those are third and fourth generation. The next closest thing a foreign heritage here are Californians. Their ideas and cultures are way and I mean way different, though they think they fit in they often don’t but still seem to achieve acceptance by the welcoming locals.

Back East it wasn’t uncommon to meet someone that didn’t speak English. Somehow it was never a problem. I’ve had haircuts by immigrants that just stepped off the boat. The steel mill in town hired several people that just arrived from Poland and Russia. The Greeks came over in droves and learned to speak the language by waiting tables.

When one went to a Pizza Parlor you could expect to hear a mix of English and Italian. In fact that’s how many of us learned how to speak a rudimentary version of Italian. And by the way, for you Orgonians, the word it It-Talian not Eye-Talian.

Pizza was simple in New Jersey. Each Parlor had a distinctive crust, but that was it. There was no deep dish pizza and no white sauce pizza. If you were lucky you could get Calzone, but that was as exotic as it got. Your choice of toppings were: onion, peppers, sausage, olives, mushroom, pepperoni and meatball. Anchovies were also an option though I’ve never actually met anyone that had them on their pizza.

We could be tolerant of a lot of things back then. We could accept vast cultures, but the resistance that met the new craze of the Hawaiian Pizza was astounding. Following shortly on its heals was the Mexican Pizza, yet another abomination. I came to accept these pizzas and even order the Hawaiian from time to time, however I recently saw a pizza on Tango’s Blog that has me drawing a line as to what I will accept as legitimate. The photo above is of the macaroni and cheese pizza. That is just unnatural. How dare they?