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Okay, I’m a middle-aged white woman. I look like somebody’s mother because I AM somebody’s mother. I don’t look the least bit mean or intimidating. Friends and even complete strangers (delivery customers) worry about my safety. Justifiably so, it seems. When we were trained, the manager assured us casually we’d be robbed sooner or later.

Some nights do have spooky moments. My phone loses reception in all the worst places. One street started off okay, nice little ranch-style houses, a streetlight or two. But before the numbers counted down to my appointed destination, the road petered out into gravel. The last streetlight was busted. My headlights illuminated further down the road, where the gravel ended and the rutted red clay track led uphill and out of sight. Read more...

Cascades of purple flowers perfumed the air every time I got out of my car. It smelled like jasmine, delicious, mysterious. It took me a couple days to find it.  The pizza store is swimming in a sea of asphalt, with a six-lane interstate behind it. But the wisteria grabbed onto a little patch of dirt and climbed daringly on the understructure of the highway, vines and blossoms drooping down, making a magical bower just to the right of the rusty trash dumpster.

Magic happens everywhere. At the stop light on the corner, a girl and her guy were in an older car, the kind with a bench seat in the front. As the light turned green, she leaned over to kiss him and he leaned forward too, trying to turn the car and kiss at the same time.  They were both laughing. Call me sappy if you like. Spring is beautiful.
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Three days after I started delivering pizzas it was Super Bowl Sunday. Boy, did I have the jitters. I just knew it would be a crazy night; I envisioned coming home with piles of cash. About seven drivers were lined up to work, and we were all poised for action hours before kick-off.

As it turned out, most folks in our delivery area decided to pick up their pies. From the comments I heard, customers didn't have a lot of confidence in our ability to get pizzas delivered. Our store had had pretty steady driver turnover. Nobody told me exactly why, but it probably had something to do with low tips and/or driver dangers. So I only delivered to five or six people on Super Bowl Sunday 2010.

It made me start thinking about who eats what. Sometimes you can guess at what type of community it is by looking at the food for sale. Like, a college area might favor restaurant/bar combos, or a swanky suburb might sport sushi and high-end chain restaurants. Since our delivery area cuts through six or seven different neighborhoods, I get to gather little clues about everybody’s eating habits. Read more...

I don’t care if you think I’m nuts, I think pizzas could change the world.

I tell people I’ve got the greatest job in the world, because everybody’s always happy to see me. Even the dogs. I’ve delivered pies to ritzy houses in secluded neighborhoods, cottages tucked away in the woods, homes with the ceiling falling in. They’re all glad I’m there, bearing pizza and wings. They’re hungry. Arguments stop, telephone calls end, people gather, if only for a brief moment, around the pizza box. They might even exchange a smile or send a blessing up to heaven and around the room.

It’s great fun to imagine stories behind every door. Sometimes they’re obvious. A beautiful woman with a week-old baby and two girls under ten. Of course cooking dinner was out of the question. There was the late night pizza delivered to a darkened house, a hushed living room, a single lamp pooling light over an adding machine and a pile of receipts. Tax time. The lady in her bathrobe was clearly exhausted; she deserved a snack. Read more...