Cajuns, Pizza, Hard Work, and Friends

I’m a big fan of New Orleans and have had the pleasure of three trips to the Crescent City since November. The city is very walkable, features eclectic dining adventures, and portions have an old world feel with tight streets immediately lined with storefronts and home facades. The cemeteries are rows of above ground crypts with gothic images fashioned in stone or otherwise molded.

If you overhear some natives in a heated exchange, odds are that you won’t understand a thing. Shopkeepers, restaurateurs, hotel staffers, and strip club hucksters all appreciate tourists (or at least their dollars) and will hurl happy welcomes your way.

My first trip to New Orleans still remains a fresh and happy memory. In 1986, a colleague from my Domino’s Pizza days, Jeff Smith, and I went to some sort of transportation trade show in the Big Easy. Jeff was a veteran visitor to the city and easily guided us through the French Quarter, the Garden District, and the Warehouse District. Among my firsts from that trip:

- My first meal at K Paul’s (sharing a table with Paul Prudhomme)

- My first soft shell crab sandwich

- My first craw-fish meal, and

- My first encounter with a naked woman holding a twelve-foot boa constrictor (well, in truth, my ONLY such encounter)

Jeff had hired me at Domino’s after the most unique job interview I’ve ever experienced. The odyssey began with the accidental reunion between a childhood friend, Kevin M., and me at the free taco happy hour one evening at the Ann Arbor Sheraton.

Kevin had been with Domino’s in a variety of roles for a few years when we ran into each other – as I remember; he was in town solidifying his new role in national purchasing for the distribution division. I was there because I was broke and was plying a well-practiced skill of nursing a single beer while gorging on free food.

Survival through graduate school and early employment days (earning about $8 an hour) required a thorough knowledge of the town’s happy hour schedule: Wednesday, free tacos at the Sheraton; Thursday, shrimp night at the Hilton; Monday was happy hour pasta at another venue. But I digress.

Kevin ended up moving to Ann Arbor, spending his first few months living on my couch, and eventually buying a house just north of Ypsilanti. During his time on my sofa, he apparently had a conversation with Jeff who was responsible for the fleets of semi-trucks that serviced the pizza stores. He called.

“Hello.”

“Kevin says you do trucks – is that right?”

“I guess, I work for Jones. . .”

“Good enough, come to my apartment 10 am Saturday morning for an interview. My address is. . .”

I managed to capture most of his address before he hung up.

Jeff lived in an apartment complex in northeastern Ann Arbor – about 30 buildings, all identical and laid out in a pattern that would challenge a Minotaur. Despite getting to the complex a full twenty minutes early, I was 20 minutes late knocking on Jeff’s door.

I’m dressed in a natty gray tweed jacket, wool slacks, shined Weejuns, and, I’m embarrassed to say, a knit tie. The door opens and Jeff snorts, “You’re late – if you want any coffee, you'll have to make it.”

Jeff, easily six and a half feet tall with a barrel chest of at least sixty inches, was clad in a Hawaiian shirt and jean cut offs, he was barefoot, and spent most of the interview splayed across a couch. Interview is, perhaps, a generous term for our hour together: after I made coffee, he and I argued over Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus. At the end of the hour, Jeff asked if I could start Monday.

Although I didn’t start the ensuing week, I found myself part of Domino’s Pizza Distribution Corp. working with a variety of excellent people whose energy and good faith more than made up for our youth and inexperience. We grew some 300% annually; we burned out, recharged, played hard, worked harder. Many of us, today, would fire us for decisions we made in those early days but we learned, innovated, executed, and somehow did a lot of things right. Today, most of us from those early days are spread throughout the nation in other pursuits. We do share battle scars that will forever keep us friends.

My last contact with Jeff was just about 13 years ago – by then, he had an Iliad of other experiences and more than his fair share of road dust on his soul. I hope he’s well; he came to mind as I lunched at K Paul’s this past weekend. I hope he and I can share a Cajun martini and the shrimp etouffee together someday.