Chapter 39

It was a few minutes before noon on Wednesday, when Dan looked up at the door. Surprised, he saw there was a rather large crowd of people gathering in front of the pizzeria. He estimated that there were fifteen people, and that more were coming. The average age of the crowd was looked to be around seventy. He recalled that the landlord had mentioned that there was a retirement community nearby.

For the next twenty minutes, he was extremely busy cooking pizzas and spaghetti. The two waitresses were rushed as they put the ingredients on individual pizzas, fixed salads, and delivered the pizzas when Dan had finished cooking them. Other groups of three and four people came in even as his staff worked through the party of retired people.

During a very short break in the rush, Dan looked over at the picnic tables. Much to his surprise, half of the retirees were sitting on the tables. They were definitely having a good time. A few were standing around eating their pizzas. The other half of the retirees was seated at a couple of the patio tables. They were pointing to the mural and making comments about the scenes shown in them.

When one of the waitresses handed him another pizza paddle, Dan returned to cooking. The one good thing about the size of the oven he had purchased, was that it allowed him to cook a large number of individual sized pizzas at a time. He was thankful for that trip to Las Vegas!

Adding to the number of pizzas he was cooking were the delivery orders taken over the telephone. There were two medium pizzas to his old high school. One of the local companies had called in an order for four large pizzas. A doctor’s office had called in an order for a large pizza as well. Seven pizzas constituted a pretty good lunch. As he worked, he wondered about the sales figures.

The rush finally eased off a bit after one in the afternoon. The retirees were still sitting around the place laughing and talking. Dan had done as much business during that one lunch rush, as all four previous lunchtimes together. He was tired, but happy. It would be nice if every lunch time was like that one. He got busy cleaning up the pizza station while the waitresses took care of the tables.

When he finally finished cleaning up the pizza station, he looked around the pizzeria. He went over to the cash register and looked at the total sales for the day. It was over three hundred dollars. Excluding the delivery pizza orders, there were over forty sales, with each sale averaging six dollars.

A little old lady came over to Dan and asked, “Are you the owner?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Dan answered.

“We really like your place,” the woman said.

She had laughed at the mural in the bathroom. Too many places where the group ate lunch didn’t seem to think that eating out should be fun. No one ever said anything to them about the noise they made, but there were dirty looks.

“I’m glad,” Dan said with a smile. He had recognized her as one of the people who had been sitting on one of the picnic tables. He added, “We want people to have a good time, here.”

The woman said, “We would have been here earlier, but we were arguing over where to go. Next Wednesday we’ll be here closer to eleven.”

“That would be great. Any time you want to come here, we’ll be glad to fire up the pizza oven for you,” Dan said thinking that their earlier arrival would make it a little less hectic. Having one or two groups that ate lunch regularly at the pizzeria would be very good for his business. He decided that he’d make up a batch of cinnamon twists and hand them out before the group left.

The elderly woman said, “I remember when my late husband started his own plumbing company. There for a while, things were really tight when we first started out. He built up the business to four trucks. We sold it when he was ready to retire.”

“Sounds like your husband did well, Ma’am,” Dan said meaning it. His experience in the construction industry and starting the pizzeria gave him a little better appreciation for someone who was able to build a business like that.

“He did,” the woman said. She gave him a small smile and proudly added, said, “We managed to put both boys through college.”

“That is good,” Dan said with a nod of his head. He knew that college was expensive and was getting more expensive every year. The price of an education was rising faster than the cost of living. He said, “I hope that I’ll be successful enough to put my kids through college.”

“Do you have any kids?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Dan answered with a shrug. It was the first time anyone had asked him about children, but he liked the idea. He said, “I’m hoping that I’ll have children one day, but right now this pizzeria is my baby.”

The woman looked at Dan and smiled at the reminder that he was probably busy. She said, “Here I am prattling on while you need to take care of business.”

“That’s okay, Ma’am,” Dan said.

“You’re a polite young man,” the woman said just before returning to her friends.

Dan watched the woman return to her group before turning back to the cook station. He pulled the cinnamon twists out of the refrigerator. After placing them on the paddle, he slid them into the oven. While the cinnamon twists were cooking, he checked over the quantities of dough to see how much he needed to make for the evening. He was definitely going to have to make some extra dough that afternoon.

It was the afternoon of the next day when the little old lady returned to the pizzeria. She was wearing a very loud outfit. It was a bright Hawaiian flowered shirt and shocking neon green pants. She came in and waved at Dan. Wondering where she could possibly have found that outfit, Dan waved back.

Spotting a pair of teenagers sitting at the picnic tables, she made her way over to them. Shaking her finger at them, she asked, “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to sit on the picnic tables?”

“Excuse me?,” one of the kids asked thinking that the old woman was senile.

“We aren’t doing anything wrong,” one of the other kids protested.

The woman turned around and perched her ass on the table and swung her feet onto the bench seat. She said, “This is how you’re supposed to sit.”

“We can’t do that,” one of the other kids said.

“Sure you can,” the woman said. She pointed to the mural and said, “See, the sign there says that you’re supposed to sit on the picnic tables.”

“Who are you?”

The old woman answered, “I’m Granny Parker.”

With frequent glances over at Dan, the kids slowly sat down on the picnic table. They assumed that she was related to the owner and was giving them permission to sit on the table. Granny Parker spotted the plate of Cinnamon Twists and grabbed one. She popped it in her mouth. One of the boys said, “Hey!”

She pinched the boy’s cheek and said, “You’re so cute. I bet all the girls go wild over you.”

The young man blushed. His friends immediately started to tease him. Granny Parker moved away listening as the volume of the pizzeria slowly rose. She grabbed one of the Nerf basketballs and moved over to another group of kids. She handed the soft ball to one of the boys there and said, “I bet you a mug of root beer that you can’t make a basket from the free throw line.”

“You’re on,” the boy said looking over at the little old lady. He went over to the corner with the Nerf basketball court followed by his friends. As they gathered around, he prepared to make a shot. He postured to demonstrate how cool he was and made a big production out of getting set up for the shot.

Just as he was about to shoot, Granny Parker reached over and goosed him. His shot went wild and his friends burst out laughing. Grinning at the boy, she said, “You missed.”

“You cheated,” he said looking at her in shock.

She smiled at him and answered, “Of course I cheated. How else was I going to win that bet?”

“You’re a little old lady. Little old ladies don’t do things like that!” the kid said still staring at her.

Granny Parker called over to Dan, “Can we have some root beers here?”

Dan poured a root beer for each person over there. He delivered them over to the Nerf basketball area. The kids all took one and raised their mugs to Granny Parker. She raised her mug and said, “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” the boys answered as one.

Dan returned to the pizza station. He was followed by the little old lady.

She said, “I’m Granny Parker.”

“Well, Mrs. Parker, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Dan Parker.”

“I don’t want to hear any of that Mrs. Parker stuff from you. I’m Granny Parker,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Dan said with a grin. He wondered if her last name was really Parker.

She turned and watched the kids playing for a moment. There were some teenagers playing twister. It was a game of boy versus girl and she suspected that while the boys thought they were winning that the real winners were the girls.

She said, “I miss being around young kids. I used to teach kindergarten back in the day when it was fun. Now they’ve tried to turn it into school.”

“You’re welcome to come here, anytime you want to play with the kids,” Dan said.

“I’ll come over every afternoon,” Granny Parker said with a smile. She watched as one of the girls who was playing twister batted her eyelashes at one of the boys and said something to him. When the boy headed towards the pizza station, she was sure that the girls were winning the game.

The boy came up and waited. Dan said, “Can I help you?”

“Ma’am,” the boy said gesturing for Granny Parker to order first.

“I’m just chatting,” she said.

“One order of cinnamon twists,” the boy said. He leaned against the counter and looked back at the girl for whom he was buying them.

“I’ll deliver them to you,” Dan said ringing up the sale on the cash register.

Granny smiled and said, “I’ll deliver them.”

Dan laughed and said, “I stand corrected. Granny Parker will deliver the cinnamon twists.”

The boy handed over the money for the twists and said, “I’ll be over there playing twister.”

Dan winked at him and said, “She’ll definitely owe you a rematch for buying the cinnamon twists.”

The young man blushed and said, “I hope so.”

Granny watched the exchange with a smile. When the young man had left and Dan had finished putting the cinnamon twists in the oven, she said, “I remember when the game of Twister first came out, back in ‘66. It was such a scandal at the time.”

Diana sat at Dan’s old desk reading the paper on happiness. She had finally decided to take the time to write down a personal definition of happiness and was reviewing the sections to clarify some of the concepts. As she reread the section on physical environment, she was struck by the thought that she didn’t know what she wanted in terms of her surroundings. For ten minutes she stared at the paper.

Like a lot of women, there had been the time when she was a little girl where her room had been piled high with stuffed animals. In fact, she still had a few of them sitting on her chest of drawers. After the phase with the stuffed animals passed, she had decorated her room in pink. Now she was tending towards a more adult lace theme. The transitive nature of her taste in surroundings, wasn’t lost on her. It made it harder to establish what kind of surroundings she wanted in her life.

She knew that she wanted a man in her life. That thought led her to wonder how he would want the bedroom. She doubted that he would want to sleep in a room surrounded by lace. She didn’t really want the kind of man who would feel comfortable living in that kind of environment.

Looking up from her blank sheet of paper, she said, “This isn’t so easy.”

Her mother looked in the room and asked, “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m trying to write a personal definition of happiness,” she answered.

“No, I mean, why are you in Dan’s room?”

Looking a little uncomfortable at having to admit it, Diana said, “I kind of miss having him around.”

“I know what you mean,” her mother said. It was impossible for a mother to be prouder of a son than she was of Dan. He was a good boy who had grown into a good young man. It was easy to fail to notice all of the little things he had done around the house. One of the things that she missed the most was how he washed the breakfast dishes to give her a little extra time in the morning.