In the 1970s, I worked off and on at an Auburn, Alabama pizza restaurant. There was an employee there; I’ll call him Tom. He was a lot older than the rest of us.
Tom made pizza dough and fresh bread most days. His bread was delicious, and his pizza dough was usually perfect.
He would mix the bread dough and let it rise for a while before punching in back down, cutting, rolling, and baking the loaves. Once he mixed fifty pounds of bread dough and fell asleep behind the store while the dough rose and eventually expanded all over a counter behind the ovens. As the dough began to hang over the counter edge, a coworker woke Tom, who went to work on the giant blob. The process took longer than usual, but eventually, the dough was rolled into loaves and in the oven. That batch of bread was one of his best.
Tom would also work in the kitchen if needed. He’d work the counter, answer the phones, clean the dining room, deliver food; he’d do whatever jobs needed doing. Tom was also happy to sit around and chat during business lulls. Often, he just seemed to be hanging around.
Once, Tom had a car wreck while delivering a pizza order. He walked away without a scratch. The wrecked car had pizza sauce all over the interior. When the police arrived and saw the dripping red interior of the vehicle, they thought it was someone’s blood. Tom laughed and told them what happened. I guess you had to be there.
Tom claimed to be in his 50s but looked older, and when he told us he saw Jack Dempsey fight (while Tom was in the Navy), we decided he must have been in his late 60s/early 70s when we knew him.
The last time I saw Tom, he was working at a Tuscaloosa, Alabama pizza restaurant in the early 1980s. I was visiting the area, and he talked me into working for a few hours. Tom was in an upbeat mood, and I was glad to spend time with him.
A few years later, the FBI visited the Auburn restaurant, looking for Tom, but he was long gone. Long after that, I read that organized crime sometimes hid members from the law by placing them in small-town restaurants around the country. I still wonder if Tom was one of those hidden criminals.
He wasn’t a criminal to me; I liked him. Good luck, and probably RIP Tom, wherever you are.