aCokeAndASlice.com

the long, lost Pizza Diaries, shoulda stayed lost maybe...

I grew up on Long Island, in New York. You can tell if somebody's a stranger or new in town if they say something like,

"Oh, you live in Long Island?"

which the only proper response to without using one of George Carlin's 7 words is like,

"Uh, no, I live ON Long Island, not IN Long Island. Nobody lives ..IN.. Long Island unless they're dead and buried like my friend Harold, he youstah (not used to, okay?) ..LIVE ON.. Long Island, now he's dead, he's ..IN.. Long Island, okay? Big difference. Harold liked pizza, yeah.

You can move your hands around to put the emphasis on certain syllables if you're thinking of moving here, which why anyone in their right mind ever would these days with the taxes and the loss of regional identity and the political bullshit that keeps us all divided and the fisheries management denial of our right to keep a table sized fish in the name of a sustainable harvest so we gotta eat that flash frozen crap no offense to the hard working fishermen of Alaska and wherever but MY kids grew up with the gospel truth knowledge that "fresh fish" means you caught it, you watched it die in a bucket or at least twitch before you put a knife through its head and put it in a wet burlap bag or on a wet towel or hunk of burlap on ice, but fish isn't every Friday for people anymore, and besides we're not Catholic, token WASPs in a neighborhood of primarily 1st generation Italian/Irish/Jewish from Brooklyn and the Bronx. Not just Yankees or Mets, still a lot of Giants/Dodgers around when I was a kid, one bonding trait, everybody hated the Red Sox.

Say THAT in one breath or with a mouthful of pizza, okay?

But this isn't about fish and it's not about baseball cuz baseball is hot dogs, and this is about pizza. You need a scorecard maybe? Let me explain it.

Baseball, hot dogs, seasonal. And I'm not talking about Oregano. Pizza is year round though, as should be fishing, when the codfish were still around in the winter.

You see, a good majority of conversational sentences ON Long Island start with either "Uh, Like, or You see," and end with either "okay, you realize, you understand or you know?"

Because we talk funny, or so say some people, but those are people who make fun of the way we talk and they say things like "oh, you're from LongGuyLand, which pegs them as what shoulda coulda woulda been Mr. Carlin's eighth great word if he had lived long enough maybe, maybe you guessed it, an "asshole." No disrespect if you pronounce it that way, maybe you got it from your parents' regional accents and assholes just happen to run in the family. You can't be blamed for where you were born, wear dark underwear maybe, you know?

Anyway, all this talk about how we talk and how it all got that way makes me hungry, but it's Friday night and we ate the last of the flash frozen friggin' codfish a couple of days ago and I don't wanna cook and I feel like pizza, or rather I feel like EATING pizza, if you will. Pizza's good. It's singular, it's plural, it's affordable, you can eat in or take out, you can have it delivered, it comes in a real cardboard box and or with wax paper, you can get a whole pie, you can buy it by the slice and if it's a REAL pizzeria you can still get a fountain soda in a paper cup, and that's why this website is named

aCokeAndASlice.com, which is what lunch youstah cost me back in 1972/1973 when as a high school senior we were allowed to leave the school grounds for lunch and skip the toxic waste school cafeteria food to fend for ourselves from the nearby restauranteurial establishments and get back for the afternoon class bell without smelling like yeast excrement derived from hops, barley, crushed grapes or Cheech & Chong's automobile upholstery.

Me? Me and friends, we were good kids, no knives, didn't smoke, didn't drink, this is years before Adam Ant even was askin' "What Do You Do?" (WhenTF was that song, 198?). 1982. May. Ah. Goody Two Shoes. Check it out: Goody Two Shoes (Adam Ant, 1982)

So, we're out to lunch, if you will, okay? Me and friends or friends and me, no one was in charge, we weren't a gang, no leader of the pack, alright? We were the outcasts, the weird kids, void of smoke, drink, gang affiliations, we were the outcasts, an odd mix of jocks, intellectuals, musicians, late to the game hippies, bookworms and strays that belonged together simply because we were friends and laughed at the same kinda shit that each other laughed at, which was a nice mix of at ourselves AND each other.

And we liked the same kinda food, which was basically anything in the price range of 35 cents to just less than a dollar, and the base currency unit of measure was... You got it... aCokeAndaSlice. One small paper cup, fill it up yourself with ice from the fountain machine, then whoosh in the gaps with real syrup and gas based Coke, even get a free refill and they didn't always keep count if they were busy and you were quick enough. And one slice of pizza. Separately, 10¢ and 25¢ respectively, but together, an even 35¢, at least in OUR econony, a bargain at any price if you had correct change, one size fits all. Most of us did have 35¢, another definitive bond of comradierie and when someone was short a nickel or a dime or even if you're counting pennies, no one ever went hungry.

And we made it back to school in time for the afternoon without a nefarious smell, other than garlic maybe. True friendship.

A lot of those friends are dead now, though it seems like yesterday. Viet Nam was still going on, and I know people who went and never came back. That's a story for later maybe. This is about pizzerias.

For example, back then there was no Pizza Hut, Domino's or Papa John's,

Domino's Pizza, Inc. (DPZ): Fortune 500, ranked #695. Uh, 695 isn't in the boundaries of 500? I think not.

How about Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut): The parent company of Pizza Hut is Fortune #213, based in Kentucky. KENTUCKY? Moonshine and Horse races... not pizza, sorry...

Casey's General Stores: A CONVENIENCE store chain, AND a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest pizza chains in the U.S. by unit count. WTF is a unit count? And a ^&*^*)^) General Store? Arnold the Pig makin' the pies? Mr. Haney delivering them maybe?

Papa John's International, Inc. (PZZA): Not Fortune ranked, just LESS than a $billion annual revenue.

Yet, I'd bet you a sausage calzone that the CEO's of all these imposter wannabees belong to the same country clubs, secret societies and or frequent flyer passenger manifests on Epstein's Lolita Express and sprang for numerous free pizza for the young ladies at the weekend banquets, all slices courtesy of their expense accounts, coke maybe by Mr. Epstein, and all enjoyed a piece or two. More than friends maybe? 35¢ though? I don't think so.

Screw that. No pun intended.

A REAL pizza experience if you will starts out with a coke and a slice, you fill your cup with ice and coke while they heat your slice in the oven. There's a jukebox that took dimes back then, 3 songs for a quarter maybe it was. Maybe you got a paper plate, maybe just a small white napkin and the slice on a sheet of wax paper. You folded the slice and ate it pointy ind first, hopefully it wasn't cold and even more hopefully it wasn't so hot it shredded the skin off the roof of your mouth and you spit it out, screaming and reaching for your coke to wash away the pain... followed by that free refill and taking a mouthful of soda before each bite and swishing it around to cool off the bite of pizza, a feeling better than any opiate painkiller yet to hit the marketplace courtesy of big Pharm...

Me, I was lucky. I had braces and by then had a retainer, so the roof of my mouth was like asbestos... I was impervious to pain of that sort...

This story will be continued at a later date. It's 7:30 p.m. on Long Island, February 13th, 2026, Friday the 13th, damn... and I live again on Long Island and back at the house I grew up in since we moved here in 1962, but, I was born on Long Island, and lived on Long Island with a couple stays off the Island but always came back to my roots. It's just me and my son here now in this old house, and a couple of dogs, and I'm waiting for him to get home from work, he'll be home around 8:30 and we are timing a pizza delivery from *** pizzeria name redacted *** in *** town name redacted *** here....

On its way, via *** delivery agent name redacted ***

Arrived 9:19pm