Boarding house life was restrictive, constrictive and
downright asexual. It was way too structured for a young gentleman of my social
proclivities. I was a late bloomer and had a lot of catching up to do. On a visit to Art Center Michael
introduced me to Jerry Roman, also an Art Center student. Jerry and I hit it
off and soon we were living the California lifestyle in a standard issue midcentury
apartment complex, two stories, a rectangular footprint with a swimming pool in
the center courtyard. About that time, I got a job as a telephone claims
adjuster at Kemper Insurance which was an easy walk from our digs. The job was
simple. I settled telephone claims for predetermined amounts. Say your can of Hunts
tomato paste exploded in your kitchen and you insist on repainting. That’s
$500. Settling was always cheaper than a lawsuit. My grisliest claim
was for a human thumb in a can of the aforementioned Hunts tomato paste.
That's macabre I grant you but really funny.
Dave Burgraff, another adjuster, had a little house in the
Hollywood Hills. He gave fabulous parties, one of which was attended by none
other than Johnnie Mathis. Also attending was a young giant named John Elvin
who boasted that he was the best conga drum player in the world. When I asked,
“What about Preston Epps who did Bongo Rock last year?” “No comparison” he scoffed. Bongo Rock was
#14 on 1959’s Top 100 and Epps, now 86, still works as a studio musician. And
nobody’s ever heard of John Elvin.
Elvin was 6’-6’’ of blonde perfection. A movie star in
waiting. He told me that he’d been approached by Henry Willson, the man who invented
“Beefcake” and who had discovered, renamed and invented Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson
and Troy Donahue and Clint Walker among others. It was widely known that
Willson coerced heterosexual actors into sexual relationships in return for
publicity and roles. John was perfectly aware of it and said that he was resolutely
straight and committed to staying so. At least he didn't become Biff.
One day Burgraff didn’t show up for work and my boss Kazi
Kagao told us he’d broken into a house in Pasadena, pistol whipped the elderly
owners, rifled the safe and escaped with $500,000. He was rumored to have
escaped to the south of France and was never heard from again.
Three flight attendants, called stewardesses at the time, Linda
Moon, Stephanie Mirras and Grace Vallos lived across the way. Linda taught me how to drink chilled Chenin Blanc
from an actual stemmed glass and prepared macerated fruit to go with it. Stephanie,
a genuine 10, taught Jerry Roman the facts of life. Jerry was as handsome as
Stephanie was gorgeous. They were an item until she moved in with Rafael
Campos, an actor best known for playing street hoods in movies like “Blackboard
Jungle.”
After going back to college in the fall of 1961 I didn’t see
Jerry again till my epic August 1968 visit to Chicago. He was an art director
at a major agency and had a recently created a television campaign for Prudential
Insurance that featured a newborn baby and Barbra Streisand’s sonorous voice singing “Jenny Patricia five days old….” I located him and we arranged to meet downtown where he worked, and where I was
staying. He said, “Meet me at Pizzeria Uno on the corner of Ohio and Wabash.
I’m going to show you the best pizza you ever had.” It was like nothing I’d
ever eaten before and I was a seasoned professional when it came to pizza. I was
gob smacked by the rich, gooey, thick and artery clogging pie. Two inches thick
of Chicago sausage, that means fennel, baby, mushrooms, hand crushed whole
tomatoes and a pound of mozzarella. I fell in love with that pizza, the pizza Tom
Brokaw called “the best pizza in Chicago and the best pizza in the country, for
that matter.” Who could have foreseen
that eleven years later in October of 1979, I would become a partner and chief
operating officer of Pizzeria Uno and would personally take deep dish pizza
to every major city in the country. It would be a wild ride.
I had been offered a partnership position in Pizzeria Uno toward the end of 1978 a year but just become president of Zantigo, KFC’s Mexican fast food chain and felt I had to give it fair shot.
That was a mistake on two levels. First, had I remained a KFC vice president
for another year there’s every chance I would have become president of the
company, second, I detested the Zantigo gig. That made me rethink the offer.
Before finally accepting the Pizzeria Uno deal I made a
pilgrimage to the mother ship Chicago to confirm my feelings about the fabled pie. I guess I should say motherships since there were two locations a block apart, Uno which opened in 1943 and Due which opened
in 1952. While I stood at the bar waiting for a table at
Due I chanced upon the founder, Ike Sewell, holding court at the bar. I shouldered
my way through a bevy of female admirers to meet the great man. The gregarious
Texan, an All-America football player at UT, operator of barnstorming airshow
and longtime liquor salesman, invited me to join the festivities. He, his
cheerleaders and one 37-year-old interloper bounced from bar to private club to
bar until we stumbled home as the sun rose over Lake Michigan. I had a new
hero. I had been out-partied by a guy forty years my senior.
The next day I called my future partner. His first words
were, “You want to do it don’t you?” I said I did. I flew to Boston that
weekend, drove to his house on the Cape and did the deal. It was smooth sailing
till he wouldn’t let me locate the toilet tissue holders in the men’s room
stalls of our second location in Harvard Square. He had to make that critical call. It was an omen.
Ike and Florence Sewell had a floor-through apartment high above
Michigan Avenue. Florence, a former Conover model, was the female version of
Ike. She was improbably regal and one
of Chicago’s fabled hostesses. Ike and Florence had a refrigerator just for
champagne, Laurent-Perrier pour madam et Taittinger Comte de Champagne pour
monsieur. Florence always spiked a whole strawberry on the rim of the flute
before serving.
I had never seen that kind of style and haven’t since.
I had never seen that kind of style and haven’t since.