In June of 1964, I decided to drop out of the Brooklyn Polytech Aeronautical Engineering program and settle down in Brooklyn. My parents went into orbit (there's a joke in there), but I held my ground and got a job at Lenny's Pizzeria on 86th street, as a delivery boy.
I didn't like Bensonhurst. I liked it when we lived in Coney Island, before the big money shredded our lives, tore our house down and kicked us out so they could make more dollars per acre, but that's another story. I didn't like Bensonhurst because it couldn't replace the Coney Island of my mind (there is another joke there that only I will giggle at).
Most of the other pizza boys made jokes about my education (science high school and two years of engineering college) but Lenny, the owner, treated me well, and, on more than one ocassion, I had to politely turn down his prodding to take his daughter out on a date. I would have, but she was French Canadian (his adopter daughter), and I had heard enough about those chicks to politely decline. "Lenny, I'd love to take her out, but this . . . . or but that . . . . or but the other thing . . . . "
One of the problems with being a pizza delivery boy is that the job doesn't bring to the surface the higher skills that a person might have. I never quite figured out what was needed to excel in the job. At night, I'd lay out a few logic diagrams or try to develop an equation or plot a graph of special skill versus job performance, but the puzzle never came together for me. So I got promoted to Manager of External Distribution and Internal Sanitation. Which meant that, in the years that followed, I kept track of the call-ins, passed them to the kitchen and checked them off as they went out the door, and also kept the place "continuously clean", as Lenny put it.
Over time, delivery boys came and went, and I ended up being the senior team member and, by default, glory fell upon me. So, when Lenny retired, he sold out (to me) for a bargain, because, as he put it, I was the only guy who refused to date the boss's daughter (she had run off with a religious guy who was later busted for things you read in the newspapers that religious guys get busted for).
And, in 1976, a sign that read "Dave's Pizza" replaced the sign that had read "Lenny's Pizza" for the previous 37 years. Now . . . I thought . . . how exactly do you make pizza ?
Competition in the pizza business, in Brooklyn, in those years was brutal. When Lenny retired, our chief cook was lured away to one of the "big" Manhattan boutique pizza houses, for an "upscaled" salary, and I went hunting for a local guy to fill the void.
I had no luck at all finding a good pizza chef. Then one day, in walks Vasili Brodskya. "I pizza", said V. "You Tarzan", joked me (he not laugh). "I make pizza", said V. "You joke", said me. "Not joke, I show." So I called into the kitchen, "Yo, Ronnie, let dis guy make a pizza, will yous" (my Brooklyn accent slipped out every time I talked to my cousin Ronnie, who was our kitchen manager).
Thus, we became the first Italian pizza joint in Brooklyn with a Russian pizza cook, and that was how our wildly famous Pizza da Vasili was born (most people believed it was a recipe from the town of Vasili, Italy 
). Business and profits went through the roof, and I boosted Vasili's salary to twice what the Manhattan boutique was paying my old chef. The money flowed in for years.
I was in my early thirties and still single (working day and night) and living in my parent's Bensonhurst apartment (I was an only child). The only time off that I allowed myself was Sunday, and I always had the typical Italian Sunday dinner at home (dinner at 1:00PM !) with my folks. We always ate alone on Sundays (to "catch up" with each other), until the fateful day that two people joined us for dinner. Mrs. Scapolini and her (lovely, if I may note) niece Violetta.
At 28, Violetta Farvalle was at the very top of the Italian fashion industry. "The Diva of Milan", they called her. She was smart (her PhD disertation was titled "13th Century French Art: Why it Sucked"), she was beautiful (Ms. Venice, 1970; Ms. Italy, 1971; Ms. Universe, 1972; Ms. JiffyLube, 1973), she cooked (her best seller "Italian Food for People who Hate Italian Food" was still a hot item), and she drove a Harley Davidson (Softail in "Death Black" high gloss).
By the time dinner ended that Sunday, she threw that all away (except for the Harley) to marry me.
Three weeks later, we owned a house in Bay Ridge and had a baby boy (Alonzo) already taking his first steps and saying "mama" and "papa". I joined the Knights of Columbus, Violetta started her first novel ("High School Vampires") and The New Yorker named Dave's Pizza the really very best of the very best of the really best pizza places in Brooklyn.
Over the years, five kids have been added to Alonzo's list of siblings, Vasili's son took over the head chef job when V retired (his "V2" pizza recipe launch a new era in our history . . . the minced yucca root was a stroke of pizza genius), and every Sunday afternoon me and Vi ride along the shore on the Harley.
page written by Dave Leo