March 20 Pizza Meeting

By Tom O’Donnell

It was the first day of Spring and not very warm, so I expected that the signup sheet was correct in the number of members that were going to show up at Garibaldi’s for the meeting.  I arrived there at 6:30 and the parking lot was full and there were about a dozen high school age people heading towards the door to Garibaldi’s.  When I got inside and looked at the room that we were supposed to have and saw that it was full, I blew a fuse and my pressure relief valve was spurting some steam.  I don’t handle chaos very well.  There were about 16 Club members waiting inside and they were not happy. 

I talked to the manager and he agreed to have the high school group condense to one end of the room and started to seat our Club members.  He started to cook some pizzas and I tried to get some idea of who was there.  We had 45 members and guests.  Because the place was so crowded, some people couldn’t move from their chairs and there was no place to put the pizza. 

I collected the fee from Arlene and Ron Blum, Carolyn and Ken Bounds, Tom Buscaglia, Gladys Duzell, John Emmering, Kitty and Terry Freihage, Scott Gilday and daughter Ciena, John Judge, Frank Koeder, Phyllis and Frank Madrigali and friend Louise, Dee and Pat Maroney, Millie and Joe Novak, Roger Obecney, Tom O’Donnell with his son Steve, daughter-in law Ronnie and granddaughter McKenna O’Donnell, Dawn and Gary Osborne, Diane and Dan Pudelek, Este and John Scheve, Barbara and John Slobodnik with their son John, Jo Anne and Stan Stack, Ron Steck, Harriet and Jim Taylor, Jeff Trilling, Irene and Len Vinyard with their son Jeff and Dawn and George Zulas. 

The pizzas started to arrive and were brought out by the mother of one of the high school crowd.  She was very gracious in helping out and working with the manager to get enough pizza for our crowd.  Eventually everyone had their fill of the pizza. 

The crowd thinned out and I talked with the manager.  The high school crowd was supposed to be about 20, I had told him that I had 32 signed up, but we could grow to 40.  We both thought that our group would be less than 40 people and both groups exceeded the amount he planned for.  He was very gracious and offered an additional discount from our negotiated price, for our inconvenience.  We agreed on an amount and I left a tip for the lady that helped out.  I want to thank Dawn Osborne, Millie Novak and Dawn Zulas and any others that helped, for their help. 

I enjoyed the pizza and so did many others that I talked to.  I thought that the manager did his best to take care of a difficult situation.  I apologize to those that had to wait a long time to be seated and anyone that was disappointed.