Once Upon A Pizza: Eight crazy ways pizza wasn't really invented, and one it might have been.

By Gene Goldberg and Stephen Stone

Everyone loves pizza, but how was it invented?

Cheese and tomatoes falling from the leaning tower? Cartloads of ingredients crashing together? Or maybe someone slipped on a puddle of water, smashing the ingredients together? These zany stories tell several different ways the world's most delectable dish might have been cr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gene Goldberg
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736190715

Gene Goldberg

Gene Goldberg's varied background includes a tour of duty in the US Army, during which he was stationed in Naples, Italy, a career as an architect, mostly with the National Park Service, and a second career leading hiking and cultural trips to such varied places as the Colorado Rockies, Italy's stunning Dolomites, and the remote Kingdom of Bhutan. Now retired, he lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife dog, Bailey. Besides continuing to lead outings to Italy and Bhutan, he enjoys travel to other remote locations, most recently having visited Mongolia for the Golden Eagle Festival. Other interests include photography, contra dance, and cooking, especially Italian food though he rarely makes pizza; without a wood-fired oven he can't make pizza that lives up to the standard he learned to love while living in Naples. Once Upon A Pizza shows how he used his imaginative, architect's mind to entertain his son who, at age 9, asked for new bedtime stories. With no books to be had at the moment, Gene had to come up with something on the spur of the moment. These short stories, filled with improbable humor, are the result.

Book preview

chapter one

Galileo Had a Neighbor

Once upon a time, there lived a man in Pisa, Italy. His name was Galileo, and you probably have heard of him. He’s the one who did the experiment with the two balls, dropping them from the top of the leaning tower to prove his theory of gravity. But what you don’t know is that when he was done, his neighbor, Signore Vicino, didn’t believe him. So Vicino decided to do the experiment himself. Now, he didn’t have the patience to find two nice balls, but he did happen to have a large, juicy tomato and a chunk of soft mozzarella cheese in his kitchen that were about the same size but different weights. They had to be that way to prove that gravity was related to weight and not size.

Early one morning Vicino took the cheese ball and the tomato and hurried to the top of the tower. He had to drop them early so that no one was below and would get hit on the head. Carefully he leaned over the rail, tomato in one hand and cheese in the other. He held them level. He let them both go at once. But Vicino was not as early as he had planned. Before he had reached the top of the tower, some town’s people had woken up. Just as he dropped the cheese and tomato, Vicino saw the baker walking below, a large tray of soft bread dough balanced on his head.

Look out! yelled Vicino. The baker looked up. He saw the two round objects speeding down towards him. Quickly he jumped aside, flinging the tray from his head. Balls of bread dough went flying. Some collided with the falling cheese and tomato, sending them off course.

Kkllttrrr. The tray clattered to the ground. Plop. A dough ball hit the tray and flattened into a big, round, pie shape. Plop. The tomato, knocked off course by another dough ball, landed a split second later, not next to, but right on top of the dough on top of the tray. It smashed flat, instantly turning into a kind of sauce. Plop. The cheese ball, hit by another dough ball, landed on top of the tomato on top of