Chapter 4
Smokey Moses’ Pizza Co.
Amelia loved riding with her dad in Johnny Cash. The two of them, cruising along the Wyoming back roads, oftentimes without another car in sight. Music up, windows down. Life is good.
However, outings with her dad – especially these special trips – inevitably made her think about her mother, Theresa. Even though Amelia was young when her mom died, she still had memories of her. But as time passed, the memories started to fade. At times she’d catch herself with eyes closed, conjuring up a memory in her mind, trying to restore a brightness to the dim videos playing across the back of her eyelids.
Most of the time, Amelia kept these memories to herself. Talk- ing about a lost loved one is always a tightrope — especially when it’s a child and a parent. There’s a tension there that even a child is aware of. The truth was that Amelia thought about her mother all the time. She wanted to know as much as there was to know about her. But she also didn’t want to make William sad.
To William’s credit, he always answered any question she had about her mom. In fact, he loved talking about her. But once the conversation was over, Amelia could feel his sadness rippling off of him in waves. For this reason, she tended to hesitate before starting down the “mom path,” not wanting to upset her dad. However, what she didn’t understand was that while her dad was sad, it was not totally because he lost his wife. Of course William missed her. But he also knew that in some ways, it had to be harder on Amelia than it was on him. Girls need their mothers. And what did he know about raising a daughter? So when they talked about her mom, yes, he thought about how much he missed her. But he also couldn’t help but think about all the things Amelia missed out on growing up without her.
“Do you think mom would’ve enjoyed taking these trips with us?”
The question just kinda fell out of her mouth. She didn’t even mean to ask.
“Are you kidding?” William answered without skipping a beat. “Of course she would have. She loved being outdoors almost as much as you do. She’s the whole reason we live here in
Sundance. And why I became a ranger.”
Amelia’s parents both attended the University of Wyoming. William was a star football player. But off the field, he, in his own words, “didn’t exactly apply himself.” So in order to stay eligible for his senior season, he sought out help with tutoring. As fate would have it, he was paired with Theresa.
It turns out Theresa wasn’t a big fan of football – a fact that still makes Amelia laugh every time she sits down to watch a game with her dad. As William tells it, Theresa would rather spend a Saturday afternoon in the fall doing something active, not sitting on cold metal bleachers watching grown men run into each other. But William grew on her. And so did football. Eventually.
To thank her for her help, William treated Theresa to a Moose Tracks milkshake every Thursday night after their study session. Halfway through the season, Theresa attended her first game. As William said, “the rest is history.”
Amelia didn’t know much about her mother’s side of the family. Not because William didn’t talk about it, but because William didn’t know much about them either. All he knew was that they lived in Sundance and died while Theresa was in college. She spent her first two years of university driving the four and a half hours home every weekend to see them.
Theresa loved Sundance. It wasn’t even a question that she’d move back there after graduation. Which meant that if William wanted to be with her he had no choice but to pack his bags and head to Sundance.
So he did. And here they were.
Amelia spent the remainder of the drive thinking about the Grey Lady. And the way those wolf pups ran around. And how she wished her mom could join them on these outings. And how Amelia was sure her mom would’ve been the best mom.
There was a lot of emotion bubbling just beneath the surface. If she were being honest with herself, she hadn’t even known these things were there. She prided herself on not having those “girly” emotions. But there are some things you can’t avoid. You’re born with them.
Amelia’s introspection continued up until the point a familiar scent began swirling around the car. She’d caught an unmistakable whiff from a wood-fired oven. Which meant only one thing: it was almost pizza time.
***
Technically, the sign read “Smokey Moses’ Pizza Co.” But over the last eighteen years, as Smokey Moses’ Pizza became a pillar of the Sundance community, everyone just calls it “Smokey’s.” Need something catered? Order from Smokey’s. Need a sponsor for the little league uniforms? Call old Smokey. Looking for a place to unwind after a day spent out in the Bear Lodge Mountain wilderness? Stop on in at Smokey’s.
During this same stretch of time, William and Smokey became close friends. Like William, old Smokey was a transplant. And in a small town like Sundance, transplants were the rare exception, not the rule. Being the great American West, there were always people passing through in search of one thing or another. Most of them were simply looking for themselves. But very few decided Sundance was the end of the line. In William’s case, he didn’t have much say in the matter – thanks to his wife. Smokey, however, put down his Sundance roots on his own recognizance.
In the early days of being a newly-single dad with a 24/7 job — and no real culinary skills to write home about — William regularly brought Amelia into Smokey’s for dinner. He’d get a hot meal and some cheap entertainment for Amelia — a win- win situation. And dinner wasn’t always pizza. A couple years into his operation Smokey found – and then converted – an old truck into the coolest salad bar in all of Wyoming. William tricked Amelia into eating some vegetables by taking her to look at the truck and getting some “shnacks” — what Amelia called carrot sticks for some reason — in the process.
Eventually the men’s friendship expanded beyond the pizza shop. On the second Thanksgiving after losing Theresa, Smokey asked William what his plans were for turkey day. William sheepishly mumbled his way through an answer that sounded like it included something like a frozen turkey and watching football with Amelia. By this point, Smokey knew William wasn’t in a position to tackle a Thanksgiving dinner. So once William was done rambling, Smokey invited himself over.
“Look, us flatlanders have to stick together.” The pair jokingly referred to themselves as “flatlanders” when talking about how they weren’t born and raised in Sundance. “And, while I love making pizza, I actually look forward to cooking something different,” Smokey continued. “So how about I cook dinner and we have it at your place? It gets me out of the restaurant and gets you something other than a frozen dinner on Thanksgiving.” And just like that, a new tradition was started. It’s also about the time Amelia started calling him
“Uncle Smokes” while she was his “Meemers.”
In its previous life, the building the pizza shop is housed in served its duty as a workshop. The building hadn’t been in use for some time before Smokey bought it. It was all boarded up, which with Sundance being such a small town, made the building stand out. But once he was able to get a good look at the place, Smokey got to work turning his dreams of a pizza shop into a reality.
When designing the space, Smokey stayed as true to the building’s history as he could. The old truck that he converted into a salad bar still had “Carney’s Cows: Udderly Fresh Milk” (4) — the name of the local dairy farm he bought it from — painted on the side of it. And the pizza counter was bricked with old Wyoming license plates. As the years go on, the license plate decor spreads – both in terms of where they are displayed inside the restaurant as well as where they are from.
This “license plate sprawl” can be traced back to the Sundance Spectacular. One of the side effects of this growing event is that it’s starting to attract a lot of people from outside of Wyoming. And all of these out-of-state visitors love Smokey’s – even the New Yorkers.
It’s like clockwork. An East Coaster comes into the pizza shop with their haughty New York pizza pride dripping off of them like melted cheese. “This town is just so quaint. And the festival?? Totally adorable. By the way, have you ever tried a New York slice? It’s the water, you know. New York’s water just makes the best dough...”
And then they leave with their eyes wide and bellies full. Every single time.
(4) Carney’s Cows → Award Winning Ice Cream Recipe
Even those one-bite experts whose pizza radius extends up to the hallowed coal-fired haunts of New Haven can’t believe what their taste buds tell them once they try Smokey’s. More often than not, they hurry back to the East Coast, dust off and package up their own old license plates, and send via Priority Mail out to Sundance. All with the hopes of returning to Smokey’s in the future and seeing their contribution on display, cementing their association with the best pizza place in the United States.
Hence the license plate sprawl beyond the counter.
Once you’re inside, and you start to make your way past the counter and towards the booths, you can’t help but notice the wall art. Hanging above the booths are framed funky shop drawings. Some look like they are machine drawings for some kind of patent pending device. Others look like they are something out of da Vinci’s notebook. And then there are the astronomy-type diagrams showing which stars were where and when, in the night sky above Sundance.
When she was little, Amelia would stand on the booth bench and trace the constellations with her finger. William would try to stop her but Smokey told him to let her be.
“With the last name “Moon,” how could she not be interested in the stars?” Smokey would say to William. “Besides, it’s just a couple of fingerprints. It gives the place a touch of home.”
As the father-daughter team walked across the parking lot on this afternoon, William made a confession to Amelia. “Ya know, after all these years, I’d think you’d get tired of pizza.”
Amelia, looking as if she’d been shot through the heart, actually was offended. “Me? Tired of pizza? That’s blasphemy. Mention it again and I’m telling Uncle Smokey.”
William made a motion of zipping his lips with his right hand while his left hand pushed open the door. The little bell attached to the inside door handle rang true. Smokey, standing behind the counter, looked up at the sound. Amelia smiled and waved while William gave a nod. Smokey raised his arm and pointed for them to take a seat at Amelia’s favorite table.
Technically, it was Amelia’s favorite “summertime” table. Which was not to be confused with her favorite booth. Amelia loved this time of year — not only because it meant that school was almost over, but also because it was getting warm enough to eat outside. The building has two big bay doors facing the street. In the summertime Smokey opens them up so people can eat outside. This also caused a ripple effect of filling downtown Sundance with the smell of a wood fire. If Amelia could bottle up a single scent to keep forever, it would be that.
Smokey came right over to take their order — even though he already knew what it was going to be. “Where are you two coming from?” he asked as he approached the table.
“Dad took me up to Bear Lodge Mountain to check on the wolf pack,” Amelia answered. She was still visibly glowing with excitement from the trip.
“Aww, that’s too bad. It looks like you didn’t have any fun,” Smokey teased before asking, “Are you exotic adventurers going rogue today? Or sticking with your usual?”
“You already know what I want,” Amelia confirmed with a smile.
William meanwhile wore an expression signaling that he was deep in thought. “You know, Smokey, I think I’ll try something different.” After pausing for effect – as if he were really wrestling with the big life choice he was presently confronted with – he took a deep breath and shared his decision. “How about that wood-fired chicken parm sub?”
Amelia fake laughed. “Ha. Ha. Sweet joke, dad.”
William always ordered the chicken parm and then helped himself to a slice or two of the large pepperoni pizza Amelia ordered.
William shrugged. “Hey, dad jokes are one of the perks that come with the job.”
Smokey grinned at the two of them before confirming, “Comin’ right up.” He took a step towards the kitchen before turning back around and asked Amelia, “You warm enough,
Meemers? Should I move the heater a little closer?”
Sundance hadn’t yet hit the warm summer days which meant the air was still crisp at times. So Smokey added a couple of tall heaters to extend the outdoor eating area on both ends of the summer season.
“I’m good, Uncle Smokes,” Amelia answered. “Thank you.”
Smokey gave her a nod and smile and then headed back behind the counter to get their order started. Amelia and William were content to sit in silence, listening to the din of kitchen sounds from inside the restaurant while waiting on their food. Smokey returned shortly with their order and a to-go box. He knew there were always a few extra slices that served as the next day’s breakfast.
Once they were finished, Amelia gave Smokey a hug while William paid. They walked over to Johnny Cash, got in, and headed home. Pulling into the driveway, Amelia unbuckled her seatbelt. As William put the truck in park, Amelia leaned across the front seat and gave William a hug. “Thanks, Dad. Today was perfect.”