First Name Basis

I grew up in small-town USA.  I moved to a military town with my husband.  Then, we uprooted ourselves and moved to even a smaller town.  We are talking tractors on the roads, people actually are friendly, I know my neighbors’ names and their dogs’ names, people at the grocery store know the twins’ names, etc…. small town stuff.

For the few years we have lived here, we had been ordering pizza from a certain place that supposedly won all these awards.  Supposedly, the best place in the county.  Home of champion winning pizza.  Personally, didn’t think it was all that great.  Their subs kinda sucked, to be frank.  (Which, side note… this town is so weird.  Not one of the pizza places have ever heard of mushroom gravy on steak subs.  Really?  Where I came from (about 40 miles south of where I am now) the bomb was a pizza AND mushroom gravy steak sub.  Go figure. )). 

One day, we wanted pizza and ordered it from this hole in the wall in a little strip shopping area.  The.  Best.  Pizza.  Ever.  We’ve never had anything bad there.  We order there once a week (at least.)

So, earlier I mentioned how small the town we live in is.  We call the pizza place these days, they ask us our name… and they ask “the usual?”  Ummmm.  I think we order pizza and subs too much.  We go in to town to pick it up, walk in and they just hand us our order.  They know us by sight.  They give my kids candy when we go in… literally taking change out of the cash drawer to buy it out of the machine for them.  They know I don’t like lettuce on my Italian sub.  They give us extra hot wings.  They’ve given us free subs because they weren’t toasted perfectly.

Don’t get me wrong… I love living in a small town.  I love that I know my neighbors.  I love that on a clear, quiet morning I can hear the cows mooing from the farm down the road.  I love waving to the farmers on their tractors as they pass by.  But, I am on a first-name, recognizable basis with the smallest pizza place in town.  I don’t know if this is good or bad. 

Do you think if I asked, they’d get me some mushroom gravy?