Ahh, Lewisberry [part two]

On trash day in Lewisberry, pizza boxes jut boldly out of trash cans waiting to be taken to their final destination. Their inflexible corners stretch black trash bags beyond their limit, leaving holes and issuing an invitation to all prowling creatures: come and get it.

If Lewisberry has an official food, it's the pie of all pies that's not really a pie. With one pizzeria for every 29.2 households, tomato sauce and extra sausage are the bread and butter of this community.

I'll never forget the first pizza I ever ordered as a Lewisberrian. It was a chilly, damp evening in late March, and my shoes were covered in the soggy wallpaper bits I'd been tearing off the walls of our new home (goodbye cabbage roses and stripes; hello taupe #04).

When they're not grabbing a pizza--or one of Rock-It Pizza's famous cheesesteaks that take the average eater three days to consume--Lewisberrians grill. It is never too cold, too blustery, or even too rainy to grill, and the aromas of hickory and lightly charred chicken fill the streets almost every weekend.

The Silver Lake Inn--which just reopened in July--runs specials like "25-cent wing night" and "all you can eat shrimp," but as I haven't yet visited that curiously decorated venue, I have little to say about it except that it scares me to death.

For the budget- and nutrition-conscious who cannot live on pizza and ribs alone, there's the Manorette--L.H. Gross Manorette, to be precise--which carries a surprisingly large variety of lard products and canned beans in bulk. The Manorette (well, actually, the locals usually call it "Gross's") is also the perfect place to pick up the essentials--cigarettes, lottery tickets, chewing tobacco, and ice cream.

I stop by the Manorette once a month or so, usually in somewhat of a frenzy because I've already started dinner or baking cookies, and just realized we're out of some staple ingredient like eggs, milk, or cumin. I've never fit in well at the Manorette; all the other customers and employees know each other "from way back," and I'm just a newbie. I wouldn't even be suprised if they see me as a yuppie, because in comparison to them, I am. Owing to my aversion to NASCAR t-shirts and mullets, I don't look like them, and since we didn't go to high school together, the Manorette's customers and employees and I don't have much of a connection.

Or at least, we didn't--until last week, when I was actually engaged in conversation by a customter and employee who recognized me as "the woman who walks her dog all the time in any kind of weather."

And now, I'm finally a Lewisberrian.

[Note: Images added 12.19.2006]

To be continued . . .