GET THE DOOR, IT'S A TOP SECRET TOPPING

Thirty years ago when I was delivering pizza for Dominos in Portsmouth, NH there were three places you didn’t want to draw – Atlantic Heights, Seacrest Village and Pease Air Force Base. Atlantic Heights was a nightmare because all the houses looked the same. They still do. The hidden brick village expands out at the end of Kearsage way like a balloon at the end of a straw. There really are not that many roads – Crescent, Concord, Raleigh – all named after warships build here along the Piscataqua. But there is only one way out and one way in, and if you miss that road, you can circle around the place for half an hour. Pizza people don’t have half an hour to spare, and I met my share of grouchy residents who didn’t want to pay for an ice cold pizza.

Back then the pizza guy survived on tips. The base pay was about $2 per hour. The pizza guy had to use his own car. He had to pay for his own insurance and his own gas. If you screwed up or showed up late, you had to eat the cost. If you got robbed, you had to cover the amount stolen. Once the pizza guy ahead of me drew the Margeson apartment complex and found a gun barrel pressed against his head. That’s why we only carried $20 – less to steal.

The only way to make enough scratch even to cover expenses was to deliver the most pies to the fewest houses as close to the pizza shop as possible. Not only was it easy to get lost forever down in the housing developments, but the people down there rarely tipped. They might come to the door naked. They might come to the door drunk. But they rarely came to the door with spare cash.

Sure I’m exaggerating, but not that much. Seacrest and Mariner’s Village were also low rent nightmares to the pizza man. Today you can’t get a condo there for under $200K.

But the worst tips on the planet came from guys watching football in one of the dorms at the air force base. Married Air Force customers were better. They lived in the split level houses that circled the giant runway. Sometimes, when a half dozen screeching kids rushed to the door, I felt like giving the parents a tip instead. But those dorm boys could be nasty. The only think lower on the social scale then an unmarried file clerk at the air base, apparently, was a college graduate driving a VW with a flashing pizza sign.

But worse than the base boys was the base speed limit – 5 mph. You just can’t prepare, bake and deliver a pizza when the speed limit is 5 mph, especially in mid-winter when all the flat topped, snow-covered, poorly lit military buildings on base look the same. One night I got a $25 speeding ticket for doing a brisk 12-mph on what you youngsters know today as Pease International Tradeport. The guy who got robbed made out better.

But I got my revenge. Back in those days the entrance to Pease was blocked by serious looking men with large guns. The first couple of times I made an Air Base delivery I stopped and nervously identified myself, but after a few nights of that, the guards just waved me through. The big red Domino on my roof was as good as a top-level security badge. I discovered that I could wander the base unmolested and once I accidentally drove onto the runway and had to be waved off by a guy with a couple of long red flashlights. A warm slice of pizza later, he decided not to report me.

For some reason it seemed like a good idea to see if I could sneak someone onto the secure Air Base. My girl friend volunteered. I picked her up on a pizza run and, as we approached the security check, she ducked down in her seat. It was that easy. Today, thanks to the boys in the White House, you can’t even sneak a Coke onto an airplane.

Another time – and I’ll tell this story to my dying day – I was ushered into a room below ground with lots of dials where guys were watching radar-like screens. How deep I penetrated into the heart of the Strategic Air Command I do not know. But one thing is certain. I was the only man in the room wasn’t stoned out of his gourd. These guys were hammered. I was invited to have a beer. I got a slice of pizza and one of my best tips ever.

Today I live in Atlantic Heights where I once feared to tread. One house in our neighborhood sold recently for half a million dollars. I get my exercise in the spiffy city recreation center where Seacrest Village used to be. The place on the former Air Base where I got stopped for doing 12 mph is now the Red Hook Brewery. Neighborhoods evolve. People move on. Only the pizza remains the same.

Copyright © 2006 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.