Stephenson Tales |
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Pizza in a CaveOne Christmas (I think it was 1958) I was invited to speak to a local service club in Hollywood, Florida, on the subject of "The Impact of Television." We were the guests of the parents of one of our National Music Camp students, Nikki Flacks. We took our four children and our little Beemer house trailer, and the first night on the road we almost froze as the tiny floor heater had no effect on the temperature inside the trailer. We made it all right, nevertheless, and parked our trailer at the Hollywood Trailer Park Ð on a cement slab right on the sandy beach! It was warm and beautiful, and all was well except for one disaster: two-year-old Robin fell off the step of the trailer and smashed her face on the cement slab. She knocked her front baby teeth loose and her mouth was swollen like a bad cartoon. We felt so sorry for her! Incidentally, my speech went well and to quote "Editor Webb" in Our Town, "I told them a few things." On the way back north, we stopped for supper and bought our very first pizza. We had seldom had anything so delicious. Actually, after finishing the first one, we ate a second! The next day we stopped to take a tour through Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Of course, the guide led us through with great care and pulled the old trick of asking the group if they would like to see how it looked when it was first discovered. Of course all agreed, whereupon he extinguished the lights and we were in ABSOLUTE darkness. Robin, who had learned a lot of new words in the previous 24 hours, whimpered, "I don't like this pizza!" |