Chapter 15: Chaos

We talked then for almost an hour. Finally Grandma looked around said "The house we left is a mess and dinnertime is only a few hours away. We're going to have to spend the night at your house Liz, and dinner too, unless you're taking us out in appreciation for buying Davey his own version of Grand Central Station?" she sort of waved at the scattered piles of boxes and barrels, quads and the Argo.

Dad grabbed his chair and headed over to the fuel drums. "Grab your chairs and stack them over here."

We followed suit, and with us all gathered back again in the spot we'd appeared in, I moved us back to the house. Mom decided we were going to Mikes Pizza for dinner. Yes, it was a teen hangout, but Sunday night at dinner time was it was not exactly teen central, and they also had a very nice selection of Italian dishes on their menu. Mom thought their roasted tomato and arugula pasta was to die for. We called Ginny's parents to see what their dinner plans were, and the Dinner Gods were definitely looking on us favorably, because they had been planning on ordering pizza! They agreed to meet us at Mike's in an hour, and we all got busy getting cleaned up and getting the guest bedroom ready for Grandma and Grandpa so they wouldn't have to deal with it after dinner.

The Mike in Mike's Pizza was Mike Giannelli. He still owned and operated the restaurant, but it was his son Vince who did most of the cooking, and his three granddaughters were the heart of the work force. It was really a family affair, but it wasn't all 'Lady and the Tramp' Italian. None of the Gianellis had even a trace of an Italian accent, Mike himself had a slight accent, but he says its just whats left of his childhood in Louisiana, where his father had been a civilian contractor involved in the training of firefighters at the Naval Training station in Algiers. Mike's own military service had been in the Army, and he had been an army radio operator during the war in Vietnam. Basically he said it was his job to sit in the copilot's seat of a helicopter and watch for enemy troop movements, and then radio the coordinates in to a gun battery, either at a fire station, or a Navy battleship. A few minutes later, Boom! Things started getting blown up. Really, he said, he spent most of his time trying to figure out how to avoid getting shot out of the air. He seemed like such a calm, quiet fellow it was hard to imagine him in a situation like that, yelling into the radio to be heard over the sound of the helicopter and the gunfire. Mr. Giannelli and Grandpa seemed to hit it off, chatting for a bit about South East Asia and the South Pacific.

We were ordering our dinners, when I heard the bells on the front door tinkle followed by a distinctive laugh that could have only been Arden Anderson. Arden had a distinctive laugh that sounded like what I imagine a mastodon coughing up a hairball would sound like. Really. Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but it was rather unique. I looked over to the door, and there were Arden, Freddie, Mike and Chet. The entire Legion of the Doomed was in the house!

Ginny and I jumped up and the Legion was gathered, for the first time in months it seemed, jabbering like idiots and blocking the door. Elena, one of the Giannelli daughters 'ahem'-ed as she passed with a tray of drinks, and Ginny quickly asked everyone to come sit at the table next to ours. I introduced Grandma and Grandpa Carson to everyone, and Ginny introduced them to her parents as well, although they both new all of them already in a casual way. We quickly decided that pushing our two tables together was the only practical thing to do, and with a little Giannelli cooperation, we were soon comfortably situated.

Somehow, without thinking about it really, we had managed to avoid the normal seating arrangement of all the teenagers at one end and all the adults at the other, and we were pretty much alternated adult-teen-adult around the table. Once the orders had been placed I thought to mention to Freddie that Grandpa Carson was the proud owner of a 1970 Pontiac GTO, which I had been allowed to drive, and just like that the two of them were off in their own conversation. While I had been getting that conversational ball rolling, Ginny had been busy as well. Mike, who was planning on being a lawyer someday was quickly and animatedly chatting away with Grandma Carson after she mentioned Grandma's former career in that field. I could hear Mom and Chet talking about growing tomatoes, something Mom had been trying to do in her garden with only marginal success. Dad, Arden and Mrs. Parkin were laughing over some skit that they had all seen on Saturday Night Live the night before. I already knew that Dad and Ginny's Mom shared a certain comedic sensibility, but I was surprised a little to hear Arden enthusiastically jumping in to share his enjoyment.