Peace of My Mind

The old philosopher in me whispers in my ear that there are really only two events in life:  beginnings and ends.  The rest is just padding.  It's just another way of saying that change is life's only constant.  My old grade school no longer exists.  My junior high is shuttered.  My high school consolidated and is no longer Aledo High.  My college is no longer a college but a university.  My old grad school is no longer affiliated with the university and exists independently.  Beginnings and ends. 

People are born, people die.  Friends come in and out of your life.  TV shows come and go, movies are important then fade, making way for new ones.  Jobs change, and what we do in those jobs changes, too.  Once I was into body wash, now I'm back to bar soap.  Businesses thrive then fade. Ebb and flow.  Beginnings and ends.

A case could be made that the young handle change better than the old.  Although if you had witnessed granddaughter Ayla's complete meltdown last Friday when Dunkin Donuts didn't have either  chocolate sprinkle or strawberry sprinkle donuts might dissuade you of that theory.  I had a similar feeling (less the meltdown) when I learned last week that Jerry's Pizza, after 52 years, had closed in May.  

But this wasn't just any closing.  It was the best pizza I ever had.  First introduced when I was a freshman in college, it was right next to the movie theater, college kids' second most favorite pastime.  Some unscrupulous guys used to call them up from Hershey Hall with an order for Treischmann Hall, the girls dorm, then run out to the car when he took it over to see if there were any undelivered ones.  I lived in Hershey, but I swear I never did that.  I may have partaken in a slice or two, but I never made the call - not after that unfortunate call I made in high school.  I swear.

Then when we started drinking at the West Side, we'd have pizzas delivered there on Saturday nights.  Pool, beer, buddies and pizza.  We always studied on Sundays.  Once I recall Peri, Kube's girlfriend, sliding the entire top of the pizza back into place after it had slid off after a rough landing.  The grease wasn't a secret ingredient.

After graduation, and in G-Burg for a career, we made annual treks over and sometimes ordered up to 10 to take home and put in the chest freezer.  Before Route 34 became a big 4-lane kind-of-interstate thing you went through Middletown, Danville and New London before reaching Mt. P.  The current Mrs. Blythe and I would stop at each and pick up scratch lottos to play while waiting for our pizza.  These annual treks became pilgrimages.  It was even a roundabout destination of our old BFE biker group once.  Mecca had nothing over Mount Pleasant.  

I only ever had one kind of Jerry's.  Sausage.  That small square sauce-on-thin-crust topped with a single sausage ball was pure heaven.  It could make things stand that don't have feet.  But change being change, Jerry got old and was working in his wheelchair.  Last time I was there I asked Mrs. Jerry if they had the recipe put away in a vault for safe-keeping and she told me they were hoping to get one of their sons to take it over.  Apparently that didn't happen.  Ebb and flow.

My God! I have more pictures of Jerry's Pizza than I do my mother!

I have sent notices to a few of my college buddies informing them of the fact and all are genuinely dejected.  Some have wondered if it is possible to purchase the recipe.  Some have offered to kidnap Jerry and hold him ransom for it.  Change can be fun, but not always.  So, it is a new world that exists for us who once knew the cosmic delight of Jerry's.  The stars won't shine as bright, the magnificence of the natural world dims, all our tomorrows will shrink in wonder.  But better to have Jerry's and lost than never to have had Jerry's at all. 

Ebb and flow.  Beginnings and ends.  Maybe a little more flow and a little less ebb.