Extra Meatball Please: Fire At Tony's

Tony's Pizza in downtown Fort Mill burned Saturday morning.
Owner Joseph Randazzo says he thinks he is going to build back, but it's too early to tell.
I understand it being too soon. The fire started around 3 a.m., and it's just about 1 p.m. now.
But he needs to build it back. Not for his own business plan or for its historical value.
No, it's just that I think Tony's Pizza is tied inextricably both to my life in Fort Mill and my marriage.
When I was a' courtin' my wife, many is the time I would drive up to Fort Mill. The first place she took me to lunch in Fort Mill, when I came up on a Friday afternoon, was Tony's Pizza.
She said I had to have the lunch special.
Yumola.
The lunch special. Spaghetti and meatballs and garlic knots.
It might have been that first lunch there, but it was there I met Jeff Updike.
He was having the lunch special. I think, for some odd reason, he did not have the meatballs. There certainly weren't any meatballs on his plate when he invited Patricia to come on over to his table and sit. They were Rotary buddies.
He looked me up and down kind of like he was a big brother checking me out, knowing that Patricia had a new "beau."
I guess he found me worthy enough. At Patricia's prompting, he told me all about about his work with the Nation's Ford Land Trust, a conservancy to protect land in York County. Despite his unredeemable character flaw of being a Clemson fan, I made a friend that day.
That was just the first time I had lunch there, just the first of many fine Fort Mill Township people I met and befriended.
And the special was always so good, I took to ordering an extra meatball.
I branched out just once, and tried the lasagna.
With an extra meatball on the side. I just had to have it.
Yumola.
There are other restaurants in the Township. But Tony's Pizza is just a piece of downtown Fort Mill that needs to be there. Since I ate there with my fiancée who has since become and remains my wife, the two are linked in the back of my mind in some weird way. It is not logical, I admit. But it is what it is in my mind.
If Joe Randazzo and building owner Bayles Mack do not build it back, who knows what will happen to my marriage?
It's not just me. When my brother and sisters came to Fort Mill to meet Patricia, they went downtown. It was lunchtime, late in the week. So they went to Tony's.
They know it too, though they rarely get to downtown Fort Mill when they get here.
So Saturday, May 5, 2007, might end up bring a real sad morning, if the fire marks the end.
It has to come back. I need my lunch special.
And an extra meatball.

Check out the Fort Mill Times breaking news coverage of the fire here.