“Oh the weather outside is frightful

“But the fire is so delightful

“And since we’ve no place to go

“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!!”

“Wait. Stop the singing. No fire. This is Frosty the Snowman with Snow Wife Mrs. Grandma Brrrr. YES to Snow, NO to Fire. As you can see, snow people are made of snow. To us, frightful weather is so delightful and the only place to go. Let it Snow. Let it Snow. Let it Snow.”

Frosty the Snowman first appeared in a popular song recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950. Of course, wintry sightings of a jolly happy soul with a corncob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of coal had been reported for years. The children knew the secret. When a magical old silk hat was placed on a certain snowman, Frosty began to dance around. He was alive as he could be, and Frosty could laugh and play just the same as you and me. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was the one who tipped off Gene Autry and the music industry. After that, the Snowman was out of the drift. Frosty’s last name is Brrrr. He’s married and his Snow Wife is Mrs. Grandma Brrrr. You’re the first to know. The song for the two will probably come out next year. For this year, let’s get back to fun. Go Frosty and Grandma Brrrr.

Meanwhile, Chubby Penguin and his friend No-Tooth-Decay, with his hands in the air from a good dentist’s report, are rounding up the gang for their Penguin duties.

Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere, and many reside in Antarctica around the South Pole, which is at the other end of the world from the North Pole and the invisible workshops of Santa, his elves, the flying reindeer and Santa’s sleigh. There is another very secret fact that the penguins in Antarctica know, and scientists have yet to discover. The North Pole and the South Pole are closer together than is generally expected, and they are connected by the Upside Downside Elevator. You have to speak Penguin to find the door, but once you’re there, just press the glowing red call button, wait until the doors open, step inside, press the blinking “Down-Up” button (there is only one button and one way to go) and hold on. When the doors open, you’ll be looking at Santa’s workshops. If you’re a penguin (and most are who take this ride), just Hop on the Elf Trolley and report to work.

Another little known fact: Penguins are excellent mechanics. They maintain Santa’s sleighs in tip-top condition, and they are responsible for the little details that Santa often overlooks when he’s in a rush to mount up and shout, “Dash Away, Dash Away, Dash Away All,” to the anxious reindeer and Rudolph prancing in front.

Here’s a snapshot of Motley and the Penguin Crew of Sleigh #1. Please note the attention to detail: hat, a warm scarf or two, small tree for interior lighting and big red boots to keep Santa’s feet warm and ready to jump down three billion chimneys or so.

It’s getting to be that time. Frosty and Mrs. Brrrr have the children excited from play and ready to head home to place the Christmas Eve cookies and milk by the tree. Chubby, No-Tooth-Decay, Motley and the Penguin Crew have everything in place for a well-running sleigh and a well-dressed Santa. Santa Claus himself is about to step out from his Crystal Reading Ball after having matched the Christmas letters to the cargoed inventory to ensure his sleigh is packed with presents for good boys and girls of all ages around the globe.

“Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry

“You better not pout, I’m telling you why

“Santa Claus is coming to town.

“Ho ho ho ho!”

He’ll be here before you know it.

Better be ready,

Grandpa Jim

About a thousand years ago, somewhere near 1000 AD, in the evening, a man in Germany was strolling by his neighbor’s house. The passer-by noticed the neighbor kneeling beside something big on the ground. A few sparks flew into the night.

“What ya’ trying to ignite. Johann?” the passer-by asked. “A new tradition, Wilhelm. I picked it up from the Anglo Saxons.” Johann’s wife and children appeared from the house, bundled for the cold weather. “What do you call this new tradition?” Wilhelm asked. “The Yule Log,” Johann answered.

In a flash, the kindling ignited. Fire rushed around the base of the huge log, leapt up between the dried bark and exploded in bursts of incandescent color. The children clapped their mittens. The adults cheered.

“Wow, that is a good tradition, Johann. I think I’ll light one up for the Missus and kids when I get home.”

“Do that, Wilhelm. You can’t beat a warm fire on a cold night, and the flames are a pretty sight.”

It was, indeed, a pretty sight.

In the middle of the cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere, as the days shortened to the winter solstice around December 21 or 22, people needed a bright distraction and a warm encouragement.

The Yule Log was the first of the winter holiday lights.

About five hundred years later, close to 1500 AD, the guilds in Europe started cutting down fir trees and dragging them inside their halls to decorate with fruit and candy for the children. Buildings had improved, it was much nicer and warmer inside, and Christmas gift-giving around the time of the winter solstice was catching on.

Over the next three hundred years, families started cutting their own trees and placing the firs inside their own homes. Beneath the ribboned branches, on Christmas morning, the gifts from Old St. Nick were piled. The kids loved it. Christmas trees were here to stay.

Around 1800 AD, someone had the bright idea to decorate the family tree with candles. Unfortunately, the dried branches ignited faster than a Yule Log, so buckets of water and shovels of sand were the norm under the lit trees. Insurance was catching on, and insurance carriers refused to insure homes with Christmas torches for trees. Something had to be done. Lit trees were all the rage, and people wanted more light at the turn of the year, but candles on branches were just too high a risk. There was a market for something new.

Enter the inquisitive young Thomas Edison. Tom loved to rub things together and experiment with the static electricity that was produced. Now, there was an idea, he thought, as something strange glowed over his head. Why don’t I capture the electricity, send it along a wire, run the current through a section of special string designed to glow inside a glass bulb, and see what happens.

The modern electric light bulb was born in the Edison Labs in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

In the Christmas of 1880, not content to hide his light in a closet, Edison strung incandescent bulbs outside the perimeter of the laboratory compound. The electric strings blazed away. Passengers in passing trains pressed their faces against the panes for a better view. Carriage horses skidded to a stop and snorted to the delight of their drivers. Children snuck to touch and jerk their hands back at the new-age marvels.

The first electric Christmas decorations had been invented.

For Christmas 1882, a colleague of Edison draped the tree in his Manhattan home with strings of specially designed walnut-sized incandescent bulbs in red, white and blue glass. The press thought the electrically lit tree a publicity stunt — which it was; but the idea caught on. The next year you could buy a string of electric bulbs for your home tree for about $300 in today’s currency. That was too expensive for most families, but the prices kept coming down until every home had electric strings of colored bulbs for the holiday tree. The insurers were ecstatic, as was Santa. With all that light, it was much easier to find where to place the presents.

The electric Christmas tree had found its home.

Noticing a lustre on the objects nearby, I turned from the story of the Holiday Lights of Christmas Time, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, not a Yule Log or a candle sparkling on a branch of new-cut fir, but, in the corner of this very room, a synthetic-fibered approximation of tree growth glowing in a splendor demanding dark spectacles to stare long at the seasonal beauty.

Wandering outside into the chilly night and glancing back and up, I discovered that young Tom has been at work framing in electric decoration the windows and doors over the old trail of the Katy.

With eyes bulbing, I recognized as fact that, when the days wane short and the sting of cold is in the air, there is nothing quite as comforting as holiday lights, whatever their origins, history and color.

Take a stroll and enjoy the night. You never know what your neighbor may be doing over there near the house. It could be the start of a new tradition.

Let wonder be your guide. Young Tom did, and we’re better for it.

Keep smiling,

Grandpa Jim

On the news, the weather forecaster shivered between his teeth, “This wasss the coldest Decemberrr 7 in hissst’ry.”  Apparently the heat was out at the station, as it was for many in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

Our high on Saturday, December 7^th, was 26 degrees Fahrenheit (-3.3 Celsius), but that doesn’t tell the whole story. We crawled into our ice-block cave Thursday night, December 6^th; and, as a couple, we did not emerge until Sunday morning, December 8^th, when the temperature hit 33 F (0.6 C), slightly above the frozen mark for the first time in three days. Admittedly, a couple of times I coated up and tried to make it to the mail box, but the ice kept me back.

Dallas is noted for its ice storms, and this one was a doozy.

I knew frosted trouble had arrived when the new bulbs I’d hung outside strangely beckoned and glistened in glazed fashion.

Growing icicles dangled above the running trail of the Katy.

I watched in the cloudy diurnal phase as the crystal clear beards lengthened.

I searched between the gleaming sheathes of solid Siberian aqua pura for the sounds of humanity crunching their way over the ice-coated lane below.

I peaked forlornly through the guarded gates of Jack Frost’s kingdom.

When I ventured out to test the climatic elements, I found waiting for my step a sleek and stealthy stretch of black ice.

My recollection drifted back to a cold Iowa night driving home from high school. Happy in my parents’ car, radio blaring Beatles and Stones, I hit the black ice, spun and headed for the ditch. Steering madly to regain the roadway, I glided bumpily along the side of the ditch, the underside of the car rubbing and pounding against the frosted and frozen plants and bushes. Popping up and over the edge of the road, I flew and landed onto a stretch where the surface was dry and trustworthy. Agitated and anxious, I slowly and carefully negotiated the back lanes to our familial dwelling where I parked and quietly snuck to bed. The next day at breakfast, my head sheepishly bent to the cereal bowl, avoiding eye contact, Dad wondered aloud, with hints of humor and concern in his voice, how so many sticks and leaves could have attached themselves to the scratched and dented undercarriage of the car?

Honesty is the best policy, and ever since I have avoided ice on drives and walks. I have, from experience, found it safer to turn and traverse the true track and avoid the black ice of destiny and doom. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, but I wasn’t stepping on that ice. The mail could wait. The better part of valor is sometimes to turn tail and seek the warm wreathed door of home.

All things melt in their time; and a cave vacation, even if forced, isn’t that bad — especially when there’s plenty of food in the pantry. It won’t last forever. You know what they say, “If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait a while.”

Enjoy the season, while it lasts,

Grandpa Jim

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday now officially behind us, I decided to walk the mall to see what I might see and find who I may spy.

Before I begin, let us review the numbers. Black Friday weekend was a guarded success with overall sales of $57.4 billion, down 2.9% from last year. Cyber Monday was a sparkling success with spending up 18% to $1.74 billion, the top online sales day since statistics began to be kept in 2001. The experts are still saying overall spending will be up 2.9% to $602.1 billion for this Christmas season, a nice jump.

So, I thought I’d get a jump on the season and catch the sights out there at the mall.

I drove to park between the tall towers camouflaging the interior haven of holiday shopping glee.

Red-stemmed ornamental rhubarb and smiling blue petunias waved me on to the closest entrance.

Disembarked and entering, bright red poinsettias and twinkling Christmas lights clamored to catch my eye.

Tiny pine trees pointed their needles to direct my passage.

A ginger-bread world waited to freeze my frosted attention.

Forcing myself onward, I passed beneath the gigantic orange sculpture that seemed to better fit the Holidays than the everydays of past months.

The leaping hare pointed me onward for the path to the North Pole.

Sensing movement in the air, I hurried past a field of the laughing red jack-in-their-pulpits, their noses tuned to my search.

There he was! I rushed to draw closer, but the sleigh accelerated, gliding away and around the corner.

I might yet have a chance! Sprinting to catch up, I passed the fixed gaze of a regular mall resident standing before his lighted tree.

Focused on pursuit, I hardly noticed the giant winter golf balls resting in their desert lair.

Between the nodding holiday blooms, I moved my head right and left, hope yet driving me forward.

Sensing a presence, I jumped out in front of a child’s construction of wonder and looked up.

It was him!

Off again, off again, he flew to the skylights. The red-suited old elf with the flowing marshmallow beard rushed overhead and past, behind the pecan-encrusted coursers kicking back their fleet hoofs in surprise. My smiling face followed every movement. It was a thing only a mall could bring.

Good Christmas to you and yours. May you keep that jolly red figure in sight. And, with your eyes to the sky, watch your step. The prickly cactus of Christmas make their home at my mall.

Extracting a few small burrs was worth the trip for a happy observer like me to see a seasoned traveler like he, Jolly Old St. Nick and his reindeer nine — as I count the rhyme.

Now Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen. On Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen. Dash away, dash away, dash away all. Oh, I almost forgot that one in front. Do you recall? The most famous reindeer of all? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

It’s something to spot that red nose.

Dash away, Dash away,

Dash away all.

Grandpa Jim

In the parlance of shopping, “Black Friday” is the name attached to the day after Thanksgiving.

Since 1939 in the USA, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Traditionally, Thanksgiving Thursday has itself been a day for stores to be closed to the commercial activities of business and homes to be open to the business of familial activities, a day for relatives and friends to gather, eat and relax. The next day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, has also traditionally been in the States a holiday from going to work and an opportunity for going to shop. Thanksgiving Friday is the day to wake up from rest and head out to the shops before the rest are there first and grab the best presents. As the gamers say, “The early bird catches the latest technology.”

The race is on, and a race it has been — for some years now.

In 1961, the rush of Thanksgiving Friday overtook the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The City of Brotherly love did not that day bear the image of its name. Downtown department stores were mobbed from daybreak to long after nightfall with invigorated shoppers reaching and wrestling for bargains. Intersections were jammed with cars, their horns honking and tires screeching as drivers waved their hands into the chilly air. Heavy-packaged crowds elbowed through and between each other, pushing onto the streets and between the stalled traffic. The Philadelphia Police Department had had enough. The officers blew their whistles and muttered and moaned under their breaths: “Black Friday!” The name stuck. A new term was coined that day for a new event.

In years after, the more kind of mind and pure of speech argued: “Black Friday is too negative a term to attach to such a noble endeavor as the pursuit of holiday treasure. Instead, let us call the day ‘Big Friday.’” Fat chance of that. To the throngs of shoppers, the term Black Friday had acquired too nice a ring to be left behind. More clear-headed minds attempted a different tactic: “Let’s rehabilitate the terminology,” the students of economics said. “We meant ‘black’ in the accounting sense of the word, to represent the effect of sales moving a merchant from the red ink of loss to the black ink of profit.” Who were they kidding? The police knew what they were facing as did the drivers in their cars and the shoppers on the streets. The day is ‘black’ because of the joyous madhouse of unrestrained consumption that threatens to unravel the infrastructure of modern civilized notion. The frenzy is a wild fiesta of manic merchandising unmatched in the history of mercantile madness. “We love you Black Friday,” the masses shout waiting for the doors of the Big Box stores to open. “We will not let them take your title away.” So, it seems, we are stuck with Black Friday.

In fact, the whole of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend seems labeled in term. The National Retail Federation defines “Black Friday weekend” to include Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and has reported, since 2005, the total spend by American consumers flooding the aisles and lanes of twinkling bliss. From 2005 to 2012, shoppers have spent more each year. Even in 2009, in the midst of recovering from recession, sales were up — if only slightly.

Not so this year. The numbers are in. The National Retail Federation estimates spending for 2013’s extended Black Friday weekend to be $57.4 billion, down 2.9 percent from a year ago — the first such drop in recorded spending history.

Explanations abound for this year’s reduction in sales. Suffice to say, there has been a change; and no one knows just why. Perhaps the more positive and semantically inclined are about to have their day. Perhaps Thanksgiving Friday is becoming less black, tamer, more restrained, respectable (as difficult as it is to attach that term to that day) and less exciting. Perhaps it will be just another big Friday, a good day of black ink, not the bad day of fun that blackened in scowling wonder the visages of the police officers of Philadelphia, PA. Perhaps Black Friday is naughty no longer, and the trafficked rush of past Thanksgivings is settling into a new and milder fashion.

Only time and the traffic guardians may know for sure, and they’re not saying as yet.

We’ll just have to wait for 2014’s big Friday and see if it will be Black.

Maybe, I’ll be waiting in line with you to find out.

It would be a first, for me.

Grandpa Jim

In 1621, the Pilgrims hosted a grand party lasting three days to celebrate their first harvest in the Americas. Written accounts from the attending colonists document the merriment of that First Pilgrim Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Squanto, a well-traveled Native American living with the Wampanoag Tribe, was likely one of the hungry guests, as were other local dignitaries, 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims (some babies were born since the landing). Squanto and the Wampanoag had taught the Pilgrims to catch the eels and grow the corn for the baked eel delicacies and the tasty corn dishes lining the tables that day.

It was a feast. Somewhat different in menu than would be encountered today. Nonetheless a feast and festivity for all in attendance.

Thanksgiving days and harvest festivals continued as the American Colonies grew and changed.

In 1789, General George Washington, the first President of the new United States, declared a nation-wide Thanksgiving celebration to be held November 26. Subsequent Presidents and governors of the participating states continued the practice, designating various fall days to acknowledge with grateful hearts and bowed heads the harvests and bounties of a growing land.

In 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, struggling in the dark days of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day. President Lincoln wanted to bring a divided country together to recall the common blessings that continue and sustain even in the midst of great loss. His was a new vision of a Day of Thanksgiving to be held each year in fixed fashion on the last Thursday of November.

In 1939, in the midst of the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32^nd President of the United States, sat in the White House trying to think of ways to make things better. A little extra shopping time before Christmas might help the merchants and the country. Looking at the calendar, President Roosevelt saw that November, 1939 had five Thursdays. Why not have Thanksgiving on the next to last Thursday, the fourth Thursday, and make room for a few more shopping days? With due respect to Mr. Lincoln, President Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday to be Thanksgiving and the start of the Holiday shopping season. The idea caught on. Congress was a little slower to convince; but on December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed the bill making the date of Thanksgiving, as a matter of federal law, the fourth Thursday in November.

To the joy of merchants and shoppers throughout the land, Thanksgiving has been the fourth Thursday in November ever since.

As you can see, arriving at Thursday, November 28, 2013 for this year’s Thanksgiving in the United States has taken the country, its people and our leaders thought, time and effort.

As you also know, a feast and celebration is a feast, celebration and Thanksgiving whatever the Day.

A smiling face and full tummy are always cause for thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Grandpa Jim

My hand-held read 37 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) when I started my walk in the cold and damp of the early morning. A front passed through after midnight with dropping temperatures and pouring rain ushering the brittle leaves from their branches to the wet ground.

Color guards cling to the right and to the left as we early morning sojourners brave the cold and wet.

Where they stand gazing out over the walls of their castles, the ranks of the brightly dressed sentries of fall appear thinning in the assaults of early winter .

Soon, the trail of the Katy, the roadway that passes between the city that has grown up and around the trains that no longer pass that way, will lose it protective covering and be exposed again to the elements.

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad is gone. In its place, a long surfaced parkway welcomes runners, walkers and bikers who wonder after the trail’s name, “Katy.” Years ago, after the Civil War that divided this nation and killed so many of its young men, cotton was grown to the west of the small town of Houston, Texas. When the farmers and workers loaded the wagons with the white fibers, they’d climb aboard and yell back to their families on the porches of the homesteads: “We’re off to the Katy!” The bounty of the cotton harvest was hauled to the railcars of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas to travel around the country and beyond to the world. Those farmers must have thought that name, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, was just a might too long for friendly Texas talk. So, they shortened the railroad to KT and took those wagons to the rail stop of the “KayTee.” It was there that the town of Katy, Texas was born. Katy is now one of the largest western suburbs of the very large city of Houston, Texas. Things changed, but the name stuck. In fact, folks all over Texas started referring to that railroad as the “Katy.” Even up Dallas way and even after the tracks were pulled and the roadbed converted to a manicured path for the lonely walker I followed this morning, the phantom trail of the old railway is called the Katy.

The birds of winter still line the wires beside that old line. When I stop and lift the camera of my hand-held, the skittish flock lifts and soars away. Perhaps, I think, those birds are off in search of a more suitable perch along of a real railroad heading to the south, where the whistles of the modern engines echo a plaintive call to the years goneby and the times changed.

An early morning walk in the cold allows the mind to wander. I step over a resting leaf and see he, like me, is observing the passing of time along the Katy Trail.

May your steps accompany you in pleasant reverie to your destination,

Grandpa Jim

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

Trees are afire along the Katy trail.

This happens each year. The first frost occurs — it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) one morning last week. That daybreak the bugs ran shivering for cover, and the potted plants drooped unsmiling waiting for the morning. Those plants knew they’d soon be moved to the garage to wait out the months of cold.

This morning, in the bright first rays of day, the tops of the trees exploded in torches of shimmering color.

Even on the ground, I could hear the talking up there in the branches.

The Saps were leaving.

Sap 1: “I’m out of here.” Sap 2: “Why?” Sap 1: “Don’t be such a sap, the temperature has gone south; if we stick around, we’ll be frozen into horehound cough drops.” Sap 2: “Oh, right, I’m running kinda’ slow this morning.” Sap 1: “Well, you’d better get flowing — these leaves are headin’ for the ground and they’ll take you with ‘em if you don’t start snapping.” Sap 2: “Where are you going?” Sap1: “Me and the family have a real nice place just down there, under the roots of the tree – we’re snowbirds when it comes to cold weather. You ought to come along. A change of scene will do you good.” Sap 2: “Thanks, I think I will.” Sap 1: “Well, start headin’ over there to the main trunk. It will be congested with all the traffic on the way down. We’ll catch up. I’ve got to help the Missus with the packing. You know what they say: ‘It’s the early sap that catches the winter nap.’”

With the Saps leaving, the grounds are already covered with dropped and drying leaves.

While overhead, the bright foliage still clinging to the branches has turned bright reds, yellows and oranges with the exercise and puffing of one last fling in the sun.

It’s not just the leaves, the seed pods are on their way off too. They hang dry and shriveled. Soon, a gust of wind will break them free, and they will fly and scatter their seeds to wait and sprout with the April rains.

Until then, we walk down the tunnel of the Katy,

Past the bare silent sentinels of approaching cold,

The last red roses guarding the gates of winter,

Climb the rough-hewn steps to the soon cave,

Past Francis brooding in thought over his fallen flock,

And Armor, the Armadillo, heading to hibernate in his dug den beneath the root home of the vacationing Saps.

Pull out the warm clothes and put an extra blanket on the bed.

The leaves they are a changin’ and the snows will soon be here to whiten our days.

Grandpa Jim

I discovered pizza in 1964 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In this old house down the street from the college, the proprietors served round thin flat hot bread with tomato sauce, cheese and Italian sausage. I remember the sausage because it was not sliced from a link like you’d find on sandwiches and other dishes. The sausages on top were irregular hand-pinched hot-crisped dollops that tasted to a Midwestern teenager like heaven from the oven.

I never forgot that taste.

I grew, I traveled and I found other pizzas, but those pizzas did not taste the same. That first sausage pie was the best ever, and I missed it soooo.

As a student in Italy, I found the home of pizza. Well, actually, the origins of the dish go back to Greece where the locals covered their bread (pitta) with oils, herbs and cheese. It wasn’t really pizza yet, but the Romans liked the word pitta and got to thinking. What if you took that dough and pinched it down (pinsere, to press, in Latin) into a flat bread (a pittsa – starting to sound like pizza) and baked that pittsa with oil and cheese on top in an over? Presto, Change-oh!!! Those Italians had invented pizza, and the folks down the coast in Naples did it best. Their Neapolitan flatbread pizza with tomato sauce (red), basil (green) and mozzarella cheese (white) looked so like the Italian flag that Queen Margherita named it her favorite. You can still find that red, green and white Pizza Margherita in just about any good pizza joint in the world.

I looked and I did. I found the Queen’s pizza and many other varieties. I became something of a pizza junkie. But, I never found that first pizza. Where was it? I dreamed at night of that original thin delicious sausage pie that had introduced me to the pizza world. The taste of that pizza pie remained forever locked in my taste buds waiting to be reawakened and released.

Louis Canelakes moved from Waukegan, Illinois to work in the restaurants of Fort Worth and Dallas. By all accounts, Louie was a very likeable fellow who made friends easily. Yesterday’s paper described him as something of a streetwise Greek philosopher who treated princes and paupers alike, could talk with anyone about anything, and made strangers feel like regulars.

After serving in other people’s restaurants, Louie decided to open his own. In 1985, he found what looks like and old gas station on the east side of Dallas, painted it white and put up a small sign with his name.

For the new establishment, Louie wanted something special. He wanted to serve pizza, but not just any pizza. He wanted to serve Waukegan-style pizza with box-cut slices. With his brother, Louie did just that. The restaurant was a success, and the pizza was rated Best in Dallas.

I did not know any of this when I moved to Dallas in 2006. I was just hungry for pizza. One evening a friend suggested we try a place she’d read about in the paper, a hang-out for newspaper reporters, a local joint with a reputation for good food.

Sure, why not?

When we walked through the door, I wondered at the framed hand-drawn caricatures covering the walls. The interior was dark and small. Friendly faces talked at the bar and around at the tables. The tables and chairs were definitely not fancy, mostly old plastic lawn furniture. When we sat down, the smiling waitress propped up a table leg with a folded paper napkin to keep the top from rocking. We ordered pizza, and we waited. Nothing seemed to move fast. I watched other pies delivered on round metal plates. I could see the pizza was definitely a thin crust with an odd cut, in little squares. I noticed no one was leaving any food on their plates. We talked and sipped and waited. From the kitchen, I spied our waitress approaching, a pan over her head. With a flourish, she swung the pizza down to the middle of our table and whisked away.

We looked together.

I carefully extracted a square from the steaming pie and slid the piece onto the small white plate. It was hot. I waited. I lifted the square, blowing on it, opened my mouth and bit into the crust and cheese and sauce and the small mounded morsel of crisped sausage. . . .

I never met Louie. He died Sunday. I know one thing. He makes the best pizza in the world. With that first bite, I found the pizza of my dreams. I’d come home, and I haven’t stopped coming back since.

I think the best people in the world are those who spend their lives making others happy.

Thank you, Louis Canelakes.

Grandpa Jim