Luiggi's

My mom worked at Luiggi's Pizzeria in the 70s. It's still in Lewiston, Maine, where, according to my mom, "all the riff-raff hang out" - never mind that she once lived in Lewiston and attempted to raise two children there.

I took Gerard to Luiggi's last week.

I know, it's the second story in a row about Gerard. My writing class - the people who told me to "concentrate on the carnage!" for my lobster story - pointed out to me that he is my comic foil, and gushed all sorts of things about how brilliantly hilarious I was for writing him as my straight man. Unfortunately for Gerard, he is not a made-up tool of humor, but a real man who simply has no choice other than to go with me to these things and try to remain calm.

Thus, I took him to Luiggi's, and, because it has TWO "g"s in the name, I could offer him TWO promises: 1. a better understanding of my childhood and 2. the off-menu sandwich known as "the A-bomb."

We parked outside the Blue Goose, a dive bar to which my 15-year-old future mother once delivered Luiggi's lunchmeat pizzas. All the pizzas at Luiggi's are lunchmeat. Even the "cheese" pizzas come with thin shavings of salty deli ham. The restaurant has many signs that point out this unflinching commitment to sticking it to vegetarians, but no signs explaining why.

Luiggi's offers no such thing as a "dining experience." If you asked one of the middle-aged counter workers about "ambiance" they would laugh you out the door. There's a counter, where you order your pizza or spaghetti or sandwich, and there are some booths and tables, where you eat them. The lighting is fluorescent, the decor wavering between non-existent and bizarre. There is no memorable color to the plasticky tables and chairs, no pictures - and no visible health department rating - on the walls.

This was a cherished piece of my childhood. Though I had not intended to fill Gerard's head with visions of little me as a grimy street urchin, I was sticking by it. This time around, I would not be embarrassed by Gerard's compassionate gaze as he stared deep into yet another Bell family vacuum of reason and good taste. I braced. I set my eyeballs to "blazing with pride" mode. I stared him down, and...


The power of a good sandwich is amazing to behold. With an A-bomb throttling down his gullet, Gerard no longer cared about my childhood or how to judge it. He forgot that I was even with him. He may have forgotten his own name. We were just two people, enjoying lunch in a regular, nondescript place. Nothing embarrassing. Nothing to be weird about. And then I had to go and ruin it.

I felt the urge to photograph everything - the menu board, the meatball sub, the paper placemat with the tagline "Your home our only competition!" I wanted to capture these things, to bring them home to my friends and family as a consolation prize for not being able to bring them all there personally. I wanted to make them feel as though they, too, had sat listening to Tom Jones on the jukebox; I wanted them to share in my confusion over the meaning of a mural that showed modern day children at the beach surrounded by grown-ups in Victorian garb (ghosts?).

This was a cool place, dammit! I was cool, I had a TOTALLY NORMAL childhood, and people were gonna know about it!

I just had to figure out how to make them know about it without ruining the "totally normal"-ness. I couldn't go all Vogue cover story on my meatballs. I knew I wasn't some hipster cultural tourist, but what about the 87-year-old who had parked his overalled rear into the corner booth? Would he be weirded out by my dogged pursuit of the finest Instagram filter  - one that truly revealed the soul of melted mozzarella?

I wanted to tell Overalls, "Don't worry! My mom worked here in the 70s! I am not trying to take any type of legitimacy or realness from you!" but that would have probably made me seem even more like a high-strung city person from far away.

Instead, I pretended not to take pictures - holding my phone at nonchalant angles and subtly - SO SUBTLY - flicking the camera button with my thumb. I whistled to myself. I fiddled with a coke bottle with one hand while photographing with the other. All the while, terrible scenarios flashed through my head: Mr. Overalls would say something snide, and Gerard would have to fight him, ending in the tragic crushing death of my meatball sub. Or some Luiggi's -branded bruiser would come out of the back room, ask if I knew about their "no flash photography" policy, and fling me out the door.

Of course, no one was actually paying attention to me (not even Gerard, still immersed in his A-bomb). We were at Luiggi's. They didn't care where I was from - I paid, I ate, and I didn't start a fire at the booth. This landmark of my childhood, though delicious, was wholly unremarkable - no landmark at all to anyone but me.

As we walked outside, Gerard stopped and asked me if I wanted my picture under the old Luiggi's sign. I posed - utterly casual. No one was around! No one in Lewiston cared! A car pulled up at the stoplight next to us. The driver looked at me. I looked at him. Nothing to see here! Just some riff-raff on the street! He grinned. I grinned. Making friends! That's what you do on the street in totally normal places where you are not a tourist! Then he laughed. And as he drove away, he cackled, "Luiggi's IS famous!"