Class of 1954
 

Fitchburg High School
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Fitchburg, Massachusetts

 

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Windmill Pizza Shop

Pizza at the Windmill Pizza Shop

  I was a skinny kid. My nutritionist mother could cook, but she also held down a full time job and was too tired to be inventive when she came home from work. Bland meals such as hamburger, boiled potatoes and canned peas were quick and easy to prepare. Frozen food was new and expensive usually limited to corn, frozen peas or beans. There was one Chinese restaurant in town, but most of the others served plain American food until Whalom Park opened a pizza shack on the waterfront. Our gang loved it.

  I was sixteen and a junior in high school in 1953. We all were old enough to have drivers’ licenses, but the most fun was riding in convertibles. Susan, Marie, Jean, Peggy, Sarah, Janet, Lois, and Jane and I piled into Susan’s brother’s black convertible and Peggy’s mother’s white one. In those days it was a real luxury for a family to have two cars. No girl I knew had a car of her own during the high school years . Very few of the boys did. The motorized rag tops crumpled neatly down into their storage spaces allowing a spectacular view of the stars. Susan pushed in the cigarette lighter and lit the cigarette she held in her white, even teeth. She took a drag of her Kent and spinning the wheel, guided the car on the road.

  It was a soft summer night. Velvet breezes caressed our firm young skin; our shoulders bare in peasant blouses, waists cinched in by wide elastic belts hooked together over dirndle skirts; ballerina slippers encased our feet. We jingled our charm bracelets and sometimes wore dog collars on our ankles for now apparent reason.

  The radio played our favorite tunes. Johnny Ray sobbed out,“ Cry” and Frankie Laine belted out “ Mule Train” and “ Jezabel”. We loved to sing , “ Well, you met somebody who set you back on your heels , Goody, Goody----“

  Susan eased the black boat into the parking space in front of the Windmill Pizza Shop. Peggy neatly parked next to her. We could hear the roller coaster shiver its way to the peak of the scaffolding and then accelerate in a dive, the clackety clack of the descent followed by excited screaming of the passengers. The full moon sent bright ripples of reflection across the water to the Windmill Pizza Shop at the waterfront. The boys: John, Mike, Gashouse, Rick ,and others arrived to meet us there. What a wonder to be free and out with wheels under us and to have the world before us and all it had to offer.

  Tantalizing aromas of tomato sauce and baking bread wafted from the long open window over the counter. Greek boys ,dressed in white tomato stained aprons, wore white hats hiding their perfectly combed and pomaded hair . Beads of sweat rolled down their side burns. White teeth flashed perfect smiles as they reached into the hot ovens with a bread peal and extracted the huge , rectangular pizzas. Deftly they cut the pizza into squares, not wedges. We only bought single portions and honest to goodness classic Coca Cola, the kind that sent me to the dentist to have twenty-two fillings at one time and ended the Coke drinking. We sprinkled the stringy cheese with oregano, basil, and hot peppers in metal shakers. Holding the hot luscious squares in a paper napkin we took a satisfying bite.

  Nothing would ever taste quite as good as that pizza. We didn’t need five way combinations. We didn’t need a brick oven. We didn’t need a whole round pizza or a choice of crust. We were young , in love with love, ourselves, possibilities, and boys , ------------oh yes, and pizza at the Windmill in the wonderful and golden years of the 50’s.

By Barbara Barton Badstubner


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