Brad Brown

“Suspicious ingredients, suspicious employees, suspicious pizza.” - that’s the Papa Jones’ promise!

During the summer before starting college, I worked at a pizza store [not to be confused with a “pizza restaurant”]. It was a rather unique place, where the pizza was hand-made, but not cooked. The customers would take the pizza home and make it when they were good and ready [”How soon is now?” says BradBrown.com]. The theory was that there was a large market segment of pizza consumers that wanted to buy a high quality pizza at a discount price. By cooking it themselves, the consumers saved a buck or two off the price of a store-baked pizza. Today, we would call that segment “people who buy DiGiorno.” However, in the old days before DiGiorno, stores like these were all the rage [for about 6 months.] I was pococurante (?) about where I wanted to work that summer, and Papa Jones’ seemed like a good, random alternative to typical employment at McDonald’s or Burger King. I was just happy to be making minimum wage.
 

Morton’s Salt

One afternoon, we ran out of salt. My manager asked me to go down to Piggly Wiggly and get some. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill. I walked down, grabbed a buggy, leered at the cashier, and sought out the aisle of salt. To save money, I opted for the generic salt, which also happened to be on sale that day. Since I had been edumacated ™ in the finest of Alabama schools, I quickly came to the conclusion that I could buy about 51.28 containers of salt. I started filling my buggy. At around thirty containers, I thought to myself “Wow, that’s a lot of salt,” but I kept filling my buggy up - no sense in disappointing my manager.
 
I rolled back to the shop with my buggy full of salt. My manager looked at the buggy, then looked at me, and asked “What the hell is that?” “The salt you asked for,” I replied. “You got all that for twenty dollars?” he axed. Apparently, he thought that salt cost four dollars per container. Having never bought salt, I had no clue. “That’s enough salt to last two years. If the owner sees that, he’ll kill us both. Go hide that in the back,” he instructed. I went back in the stockroom, moved the giant bags of flour (and miscellaneous rat droppings) out of the corner, and made a stack of salt containers in a nice 3×3x4 arrangement. I then hid the stack behind fifteen large bags of flour. Don’t ask, don’t tell. That was our motto with regards to the secret stack of salt that summer.
 

Surprise Inspections

The phone rang around two that afternoon. My manager picked it up. “Thanks. We’re on it,” he said. Instinctively, I could tell from the tone of his voice that we were in for a surprise inspection. About every two months, the store owner would send one of his friends to buy a pizza from us. That friend would take the pizza back to a secret lair, where the owner would dissect the pizza with the skill of a TV surgeon. He would separate the ingredients into containers for weighing. He’d measure the distance from the outer ring of pepperoni to the edge of the crust. He’d count the pepperoni. Finally, he’d cook the pizza and look for bubbling in the crust; bubbles would indicate that we hadn’t properly punctured the crust during creation (doing so lets the air ex-cape). If anything violated the standard pizza construction rules, we would receive a stern lecture the next day.
 
The good thing about the surprise inspections was that we were always aware of them. Some kind soul at corporate would always call over twenty minutes before the mole was to arrive, and then we’d switch into pizza perfection mode. I would immediately move to the crust-making station, and the girls (Mimi and Kristi) would switch to the topping placement station. We did this because:

• a. The girls sucked at making crusts, whereas I excelled.
• b. I sucked at ingredient placement, whereas they excelled.

For the next hour, we took our time making each pizza. It was a labor of faux love. I made sure that the crusts were perfectly round (they were typically oblong), and I poked holes in the crusts to prevent bubbles from forming during baking. The girls took care to make sure that the pepperoni were placed in nice circular patterns that extended to the edge of the crust. At about 2:30, a suspicious-looking white guy driving a BMW pulled into the parking lot. Obese - over 45 - balding. It was him. The tension was so thick when we made his pizza; sweat was dripping from everyone’s face (onto the dough, into the sauce) while we worked. I took the finished product over to the wrapping station, wrapped it like a baby, and walked to the front counter. “Here you go, sir, and please have a coupon for a nickel off your next order,” I said. He took the pizza and left. A wave of relief swept over us all. I returned to making oblong pizzas, and the girls returned to flirting with the manager.

Even though I have fifteen working titles and five draft articles, I’ve lost the urge to write. I’m hoping that after a couple of nights of good sleep, it’ll come back to me. In the meantime, check out these wholesome articles you may have missed:
 

Seven Ways to Become a Better Prostitute
 
Inside the Mind of a Female Driver
 
Inside the Mind of a Male Driver
 
Top Ten Lesbians I’d Date
 
Seven Ways to Become a Better Burglar

 
In the event you’re suffering from reader’s block, I’ve also included photos of women in bikinis:

The Bradley Memorial Library

The elevator stopped halfway between the first and second floors. It was stuck. I pressed the “Emergency Call” button and waited while the phone rang. A guy on the other end answered. “Hello, I’m stuck in the elevator at the library,” I said. “Why are you calling me?” he replied. “Your number was dialed automatically when I pressed the emergency call button,” I explained. He told me he worked at the school administration building next to the library, and after a minute of hemming and hawing on his part, I finally convinced him to call the proper authorities.

Twenty minutes later, I heard someone yell “It’s the elevator repairman. Are you ok?” “Yes!” I yelled back.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he yelled back, laughingly.

Prostituée

I was spending the night in a hotel in Paris with my sister. We were both lounging around the room, watching the French version of “The A-Team” [which is suspiciously like the American version, only with more articulate voiceovers. “Pardonnez-moi,” said Mr. T to Hannibal.]. We decided to order room service. I ordered the boulette de crevette and some frites; Karla ordered the roast beef au jus. [I really don’t remember what she ordered; I just have a fondness for the sounds “awe” and “jew.” I would use them in every article if I could get away with it.].

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the door. My sister, not wanting to be seen looking her worst (she was in a robe, and her hair was a mess), ran into the closet, and closed the sliding door partially. “You get the food; I’m going to hide in here.” I often wonder why she just didn’t go into the bathroom and close the door. I opened the door to the hallway and the waiter brought in two trays, and then he stood at attention like a soldier, waiting for tip. I had no cash, so I did the logical thing - I walked to the closet and said, “Hey, do you have any cash? I’m all out.” “Hang on a sec,” Karla replied, “let me check my purse.” She had stashed her purse in the closet earlier that day. There was brief series of rattles and jingles as she blindly dug through her purse. The waiter looked confused, as if my talking to a closet was abnormal.

“Here, take this.” Karla said. I reached into the opening in the closet door, pulled back a small wad of one dollar bills, and gave a couple to him. The look on his face had transformed from indifference to confusion to astonished amusement. He took the money, smiled, and gave me a wink as he left. It was the universal wink that said “You suave American boy - not only do you have a naked hooker in your closet, but she’s paying you!”

Barry’s II on Hillsborough

My roommate Mike Dyess and I decided to go club-hopping one night. We had been living in Durham for about a month while working for “the man” at IBM, but we hadn’t been out much and we were getting bored. So that Saturday evening, we hopped into El Presidente and took I-40 into Raleigh. We drove down Hillsborough Street, which borders the N.C. State University campus. Parking was scarce, so we turned onto some side streets and found an empty church parking lot. We walked back to Hillsborough and starting walking up it, looking for a good bar. If I remember, “good” in this context meant attractive, scantily-dressed college women, and inexpensive beer.

As we were walking, we were passed by an attractive, tall girl with multi-colored hair. She was wearing leather dominatrix boots and a leather storm trooper raincoat. “Gots to get me some o’ dat,” I thought to myself. I turned to Mike and said, “We should go where she’s going!” As if by divine providence, she stopped about twenty feet in front of us in order to light up a clove cigarette. “Excuse me,” I said as I approached her. “My friend Mike and I are new in town and we’re looking for good bars. Any recommendations?” “You could try The Dungeon,” she replied. “That’s where I’m going.” She put her lighter away, abruptly turned, and kept walking.

We followed behind her down Hillsborough for about two hundred yards. She took a sharp right and walked up a narrow flight of stairs into a nondescript bar. The sign above the door was designed using metal chain - “The DVNCFON.” Rule #1 - when creating a sign using metal chain, lay off the booze, and have a friend double-check your work.

Mike and I approached the doorman, a chubby multi-pierced gentleman covered in leather [envision Jabba the Hutt in biker garb, or a La-Z-Boy leather recliner with eyes]. “How much is the cover charge?” I axed. “It’s free,” he replied. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s a true miracle…no cover!” We walked into the dimly lit entrance, standing there briefly till our eyes adjusted. Mike and I immediately scoped the place out. Them: leather clad, pierced, covered with chains and metal. Us: Polo shirts with Dockers and penny loafers. In an act of synchronicity, Mike looked at me, and I at him, and we both simultaneously whispered to one another, “Let’s get out of here.”

For the rest of our bar crawl, we looked for people dressed like us (a principal I call “Safety through homogeny.”). We wound up at Barry’s II, a tiny second-story bar, filled with college girls. This was exactly what we were looking for. It was “Dollar Rolling Rock Night.” Even though I had volunteered to be the designated driver, I decided to have one beer. After about six beers, I stopped keeping track. I don’t remember much after that. I do remember Mike attempting to dance as well as a white guy could. I remember hearing “Been Caught Stealing” and “Blister In the Sun.” I also remember being irritated two hours later when the bar mysteriously ran out of one dollar Rolling Rock, at which point they switched to a five-dollar premium brand (Milwaukee’s Beast or some other crap).

The bar closed around two or three, and Mike and I staggered down Hillsborough. We took a brief, drunken tour of the campus. N.C. State has these two concave, concrete obelisks sitting smack dab in the middle of campus. They’re designed such that if one person sits on one, and the other person sits on the other, you can whisper to one another and actually hear what the other person is saying, even though the other person is one hundred feet away. Mike and I sat there whispering nonsense to each other. After thirty minutes, the thrill wore off, so we dismounted our obelisks and headed back to Hillsborough. It took us twenty minutes to find El Presidente, but we found him.

“Mike, I am so wasted. I apologize for neglecting my duties as designated driver. I’m afraid we’re just going to have to sleep in the car until one of us gets sober enough to drive.” I took the utility blanket from the AAA emergency road kit, unfolded it, eased the seat back, and rested. I awoke about three or four hours later at about six A.M. I had no idea where I was, so I quickly sat up, trying to get my bearings. The gallon of beer in my belly started jostling, rousing the vomit police. “Oh shoot, not a good idea,” I said to myself. Just as soon as I swung the car door open, the previous night’s beer made a guest appearance as it shot up through my throat and onto the parking lot. After three generous vomits and numerous retchings, I reclined again. Once I was able to sit up straight without getting sick, I pulled El Presidente onto Hillsborough, leaving behind a generous helping of vomit in Deacon #12’s parking spot. To this day, I wonder what went through Deacon #12’s head when he pulled in and stepped out into fresh vomit. “Damn those dirty, stinking, filthy, college kids!” I can hear him yell.

 
[Author’s note: The name “The Dungeon” is fictional, but the bar itself did actually exist. BradBrown.com doesn’t remember the actual name of it, but it was one of those places where guys in Dockers should never go. The name “Barry’s II” is real. However, I Googled it while writing this article only to find out it had closed a while back.]