The Lost Pizza
Last Friday night Ray and I picked up a bake-at-home pizza at Papa Murphy’s. When it was ready to eat, I cut it into fourths and then cut one of the fourths in half. When one piece apiece was plenty for each of us, I was happy to have three more meals to put in the refrigerator. I put each of the pizza fourths in a gallon bag. I zip closed one of them, left it on the table, and went on to other kitchen tasks.
When I got ready to zip close the last two bags, one of them was missing. I was completely mystified. I began to look around the kitchen. I couldn’t find it anywhere. “Did I absent-mindedly put it in some odd place?” I wondered. I looked in the refrigerator, in the oven, in the sink, in the dishwasher, in the trash can, in the cabinet. I looked in the pantry. I walked to the laundry room and looked in the freezer.
I went to Ray in the living room and laughingly said, “I’m losing my mind. I can’t find one of the bags of pizza.” Also mystified, he came to help me. I laughed as I again looked in one odd place after another. Ray finally gave up and went back to his task. I kept looking.
Finally, I looked behind the metal rolling cart that sits next to our stove. I cherish this cart because Daddy gave it to Mother for one of their first Christmases. I think it was this Christmas.
There was my bag of pizza, lying on the floor behind the cart. Evidently I had placed one bag on top of another and sometime while my back was turned or I was out of the room, the top bag slipped onto the floor. Whew! I was glad I wasn’t losing my mind!
Images of pizza in Ziploc® bags didn’t seem like a very interesting illustration for this post. In a search of the Library of Congress, I found some interesting pizza places around the United States. These photographs are part of Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Dough Boys, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Ruby’s Inn and Pizza Parlor, Nanticoke, Pennsylvania.
Tomato Pie vendor truck, Geddes, New York
Fulgenzi’s Pizza and Pasta restaurant, Springfield, Illinois, on the old U.S. Route 66
Sam’s Famous Pizza, Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan Borough, New York City
Mural on the side of Red 7 pizza restaurant in Columbia, Tennessee, also known as Mule Town, USA
Looking back on my determined search, I identified with the woman in a parable Jesus told in the Gospel of Luke:
“Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins
and loses one coin,
does not light a lamp and sweep the house
and search carefully until she finds it?
And when she has found it,
she calls together her friends and neighbors,
saying, ‘Rejoice with me,
because I have found the coin which I had lost!’
In the same way, I tell you,
there is joy in the presence of the angels of God
over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15:8-10