COLUMN: QC Pizza

Dear Dispatch-Argus Guest Columnist Josh Boelter,

J'ACCUSE!

You, sir, are a heretic! A blasphemer! A very incorrect opinionator! Dare I say... you may even be a PIZZAIST.

But you're also a funny writer, and I laughed my way through your recent column, "Floppy Pizza... A QC Tragedy." Just, please, let us know where to forward the hate mail.

I've been blessed to own this little parcel of newspaper real estate for some years now, and I'm still learning as I go. When I was first given this outlet to spout my weekly nonsense, I was SUPER intimidated. I wasn't sure what to write about, how to approach it, or if anyone outside my friends and family would remotely appreciate anything I had to offer.

The first time I heard positive feedback from a reader, I was over the moon. The first time someone recognized me on the street, I felt like a rock star. Honestly, whenever anyone takes the time to read this column, it fills me with sincere gratitude and sheepish pride and I want to grab the nearest microphone and have a Sally Field "you like me... you really like me" moment.

But oh, how the tide can turn. A few years back, the Rock Island City Council was debating whether or not to allow residents to keep chickens within city limits. As in real chickens, not the Kentucky-fried variety. In my usual role as an allergy-riddled weenie with a well-established fear of nature, I decided to write a cutesy little anti-chicken column. As it turned out, the local pro-chicken contingency did NOT find it cutesy. People showed up at the office wanting me FIRED. My inbox flooded with hate mail. My house got egged. Someone covered my back steps in chicken poo.

There are some column waters not worth wading in and certain topics best left to poles longer than ten feet. Thankfully, most don't apply to me. I don't care about the Cubs OR the Cards. I hold no ill will toward Iowa drivers. I am relatively ambivalent about the fate of the county courthouse. And I know some things in the Quad Cities are sacred. Whitey's Ice Cream. Boetje's Mustard. Combine harvesters. And above all else, Quad City style pizza. Never criticize our pizza.

Don't feel bad, though, Josh -- once upon a time, I held a similar mindset.

It was September 1988. I was a young, sheltered, extremely naive high school graduate experiencing freshman orientation weekend at Augustana. With few exceptions, it was my first real weekend away from home. I was excited, terrified, intimidated, and guided only by a desire to fit in and make friends. At some point during that weekend, Augie threw a pizza party for the entire freshman class. Cool, I thought. In this crazy new world I found myself in, one thing I could cope with was pizza.

But instead of a slice, I was handed this weird strip of... what WAS it? It looked like a rectangle of pure cheese. How do you even eat this thing? Do I use a fork? THERE WERE NO FORKS. The only thing I could think to do was flop it over onto itself, shovel half of it into my mouth -- and almost retch at the weird sausage grit I'd never before experienced. I was clueless at living on my own. I didn't know how to cook food, I didn't know how to do laundry -- and now it was clear that either I or the Quad Cities didn't even know what pizza was.

I was a kid from the country experiencing city life for the first time ever. But most of my Augie friends were from Chicago. To them, Rock Island WAS the country, and I'd have to listen to them bemoan about being trapped in a town so hick it only had (gasp) THREE major shopping malls (sob!) You backwards "townies" took a lot of ribbing, as did your weird backwards rectangle pizza strips.

So much so, in fact, that I never touched the stuff again. Until, that is, I took a job at a plucky daily Moline newspaper, who once rewarded their hard-working staff with a pizza party. "YAY!" I thought, until I saw them bringing in boxes of weird rectangle pizza strips. Eww! Not townie pizza! But I was a new employee once again eager to fit in, so I grabbed a piece and this time I DID have a fork. "Okay," I told myself. "You'll just have to suffer through this. Don't think about how gross this weird pizza is. Just take a bite and try to get it down quickly." I steeled myself, grabbed a forkful of rectangle, begrudgingly stuck it in my mouth, and... and...

OMG. It was good. It wasn't just good, it was delicious. Wait, was this the best pizza I'd ever had in my life? How could I have ever found this gross? Thus began my love affair with Quad City style pizza. I'm Team Harris all the way, but any will do in a pinch. And now our beloved pizza strips are written about in major publications and considered a delicacy in Chicago.

Poor Josh has already seen some negative comments for daring to critique our pizza in his debut guest column. But you guys need to cut him some rectangular strips of slack. If you bothered to read past the headline, you'll find that Josh actually LIKES QC-style pizza. He's just new in town and doesn't understand why its cut into strips. But here's the thing, Josh. If you took a Harris Pizza and sliced it traditionally, it'd fall apart in a heartbeat. That delicate malted crust can't support a mountain of cheese and a metric ton of sausage. Just slide it onto a plate, grab a fork, and deal with it. It's way worth it.

No matter how you slice it, Quad City style pizza is a treasure. Maybe it's why I never left after college. Or maybe it takes becoming a townie to properly appreciate our townie pizza. It sure worked for me. So stick around for a while, Josh. You're a great writer and I look forward to more guest columns. Next time you're at the office, stop by my desk and let's do lunch. Your next rectangle's on me.