Charlie and the Jockey Trailer

Many moons ago, I was the manager of a pizza restaurant in Haughton, Louisiana. (Northwest Louisiana, near Shreveport.)

This was in 1985-1986.

Johnny's Pizza House, is a regional pizza chain, based in West Monroe, Louisiana. I worked for them for five years, during the time I was in college the first time, and then for a couple of years after I graduated. That's who I was working for when Lovely Wife and I got married.

I ended up as the manager of the restaurant they had opened in Haughton, La.

Haughton, at the time, was a very rural area/small town. (It might still be.) It had started growing due to the Louisiana Downs horse racing track that was there, sandwiched between I-20 and the old Highway 80. The Johnny's that I managed was a couple of miles east of this race track on Highway 80.

Like many of this type of business, most of the people I had working for me were teens in high school at Haughton High.

By the mid 1980's Dominos had spread all over the country, and they pretty much had all the pizza delivery business sewn up. Johnny's up until that time, were eat in, or pick up, only, restaurants.

Johnny Huntsman (owner and founder), and his minions in the corporate headquarters decided that we needed to start delivery of pizzas, chain wide.

Now this was all well and good, but like I had said, Haughton was pretty rural at the time. So it was up to me to create maps of our delivery area for the drivers I was to hire.

What a NIGHTMARE!

All available maps only covered most of the paved roads in the area. And in Louisiana, rural areas have many, many more roads in addition that are dirt or gravel.

I ended up spending hours and hours driving around the area for several weeks and had to complete what wasn't on 'real' maps of the area. By hand.

I knew I should have taken a cartography class in college!

Anyway the day arrived, and to make a long story longer, there were a lot of 'bumps' in getting the deliveries done. I had to hire a few folks 18 and over to do the deliveries, and for the most part, they were locals who knew the area.

Some of the problems we had to work out were all of those no-name gravel roads, and the people who lived on them who wanted pizzas delivered.

You might hear, "Just drive east of The Johnny's a bit and then turn north on Bodcau Road and go, oh, I'd say a couple of miles, until the road starts to curve some to the right. On the left, smack-dab in the middle of that curve, there's a gravel road where there's a break in the fence there. There's usually a cow or two there under that tree on the right as you turn in. Come on down that road to the trailer that's about a mile in. Can't miss it!"

Yeah, right.

Then you'd get out there and it would be a family of 6 living in a $4000, two bedroom trailer. But there would be a beautiful $15,000 (then) jacked up, chromed out, Ford or Chevy 4x4 pickup parked outside.

My absolute favorites, the request that really pushed this patient man's buttons, was "...Oh, and get your driver to stop at that 7-11 next ta y'all, and have 'em get me a coupla packs of Marlboro Lights, and a 12 pack of Budweiser, too."

Me: "Um, no. I won't do that, they have other pizzas to deliver."

Knucklhead: "But it won't take 'em but just a minute, and I'll give 'em a big tip."

Me: "No. I will not allow my drivers to do that. Period. Do you still want the pizza?"

Knucklehead: "Yeah, I guess so." or "You #$#%#@ $%&($#@$!" and hang up.

That's enough background.

One of my drivers was a Haughton senior named Charlie. Charlie was a character. A truly funny, very likeable human being. Plus, being from the area, he knew all the roads and would take deliveries to people I would turn down unless he was there to take it. Half of what made Charlie so funny was that funny things happened to him, and he could make the most mundane thing sound like the height of humor.

And I'm telling you, this was THE nightmare delivery area for ANYONE who has ever had to deliver pizzas.

So one rainy night we get a call for some pizzas to be delivered over kinda close to Louisiana Downs. It was several pizzas with the works on them, a nice cha-ching for the old cash register, and Charlie was working. The guy lost me, trying to tell me how to get to him, so I gave the phone to Charlie.

Charlie's end of the conversation was something like, "M-Hmm. Yeah. I know where that is. M-Hmm. Ok. Is this…? Ok, I know where you are, now. I'll have your pizzas there in about 40 minutes."

A while later, Charlie hadn't come back, but I wasn't too worried. When he did finally get back, he had mud up to his knees, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

"J.J. (my nickname back then, don't ask.) that was THE wierdest thing I've ever seen in my life!"

"These guys live in a trailer over by…, and I barely get my car up to the trailer on this dirt road, it's SO muddy, and I get out and get like this (pointing to mud on shoes and pants) getting to and from the door."

"Then, when I try to turn my car around, I GOT STUCK! I went to see if the guy had a rope, boards, anything, to help me get unstuck."

"The guy says to me, "No problem, we'll be out to help in a minute.""

"So I go back to my car, and at least it had stopped raining, ya know? And the door of the trailer opens, and 12 midgets, wearing nothing but their underwear and cowboy boots, come piling out of there. Man, I thought I was going crazy!"

"They said, "Get in your car, and we'll push you out.""

"So, I got in and started my car, and all these midgets got beside the car and behind it and pushed until I was back on the dirt road from turning around, and came on back here. I just waved and shouted thanks out my window, but I could see that half the guys were coated in mud from my spinning tires. I'm telling you the truth J.J."

I said, "What do you mean midgets?"

Charlie said, "Well they weren't really midgets, but the tallest one couldn't have been more than five feet tall. They were all jockeys for the horse track! A whole bunch of 'em, living in this trailer together during racing season."

I started laughing (everybody in the place was listening by then) and with his description, I could just picture it all.

I asked him, "Why do you reckon they wanted all of those pizzas? Wouldn't that pack the weight on them?"

Charlie said, "Oh no, J.J. They eat good tasting food like that all the time, then go throw it all up so they don't gain weight."

Yuck!

But I'm still left with the mental image of Charlie standing there muddy, and the mental image he word-painted, of the dozen or so jockeys who pushed him out of the mud while only wearing underwear and cowboy boots. But hey, it was out in the country, so who's to see them, right?

Fact really is stranger than fiction, isn't it?

And to this day, after eating pizza all over The South, Johnny's Pizza House, is THE best pizza I have EVER eaten. Hands down, the best. I try to tell people about it, but you just can't describe the flavor. It's neither New York or Chigago. Truly unique.