The sun poked through the clouds on the morning of Oct. 23, 1975.
Duck hunters were out in force on the crisp autumn morning; the crack of shotguns punctured the peaceful cool air.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was continuing his Western Canada tour after being booed in Winnipeg.
The average weekly wage for industrial workers in Canada had climbed to the lofty sum of $205.60.
Postal service was on hold as 22,000 Canadian Union of Postal Workers went on strike … again.
Guy Lafleur had an early lead in the NHL scoring parade.
Ontario Energy Minister Dennis Timbrell warned Ontario Hydro customers to brace for a 25% rate hike.
Meanwhile, in Cornwall, fire trucks dashed to a blaze on Brookdale Avenue.
There was nothing they could do to save the large two-storey, white frame building.
Gone was one of the city’s most famous eateries, a landmark of sorts.
Gone, too, were a thousand memories.
It would be hard to find somebody who grew up in Cornwall in the late1950s or 1960s who never tasted a Zappia pizza or hung out in the restaurant.
It was a great place to take a date after taking in a movie at the Capitol or Palace, or the drive-in.
It was the kind of place where The Fonz would be expected to hang out, if he were a real live person.
Actually, Zappia’s deserves a place in Cornwall history. It was the city’s first, bona fide Italian pizzeria. Giuseppe Zappia, an immigrant from Italy, owned the restaurant.
Like so many immigrants of the day, he wasn’t afraid of hard work.
The Zappia family lived upstairs. The stairway was at the south end of the front porch.
It was the quintessential family business.
All seven kids – three boys and four girls – were involved … working in the kitchen cooking pizzas and doing the dishes, serving tables or delivering pizzas.
It was the place to go, especially when the gang came back (to town) from down east (Lalonde’s or the White House) or Massena on weekends.
There was even the occasional personality.
Eddie Shack showed up one evening (or was it early morning).
Shack was a big star with the Leafs at the time and after eating one of the Zappia pizzas wanted to know how they were baked, so in the kitchen he went for a pizza-making lesson, Zappia style.
The secret to their pizzas?
They baked them start to finish on a stone slate.
And there was the “secret” Zappia sauce.
Many imitators followed but to this day, nobody has matched a Zappia Italiano pizza.
Zappia pizzas were in such demand the restaurant had four delivery vehicles working on weekends. On a good weekend, they delivered a couple of hundred pizzas.
Actually, Zappia’s wasn’t destroyed in the October 23, 1975 fire.
By then, the elder Zappia had died of a heart attack suffered at work and the restaurant had been sold. It became the Olympic Flame.
Baby Boomers had moved on; the new generation and the renowned pizzeria never connected.
It was the end of an era.
Then there was Shirley’s Restaurant, a great hangout for teens.
The name is gone, but the building lives on as a Chinese restaurant.
Booths at Shirley’s, owned by the McDonald family, were hard to find for latecomers after Cornwall Collegiate and St. Lawrence finished for the day.
Same on Saturday afternoons. Best seats in the house? Right up front, at a table next to the windows.
One of the rites of passage for Grade niners was going to Shirley’s afterschool.
Teens in those days didn’t have much disposable money. What they had was shared with the pool hall and/or the Friday night dance at the Knights of Columbus, and a Coke at Shirley’s.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
– Benoit’s on Montreal Road. A hole-in-the-wall bar and a sometimes proving ground for rookie coppers.
– The Edgewater Inn, Summerstown. During the early 1950s it was a going concern with live bands. Colonial coach ran a bus to and from the Edge on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday afternoons. It had little to do with drinking and driving, but a lot to do with the fact not everybody had a car.
– The Chicken Palace on Pitt Street between First and Second. Burned down in the 1960s.
– City Smoke Shop on Second Street East. Was there a better lunch counter?
– New York Cafe. It was where rides to Massena assembled on Friday nights.
– Reg Woodward’s eatery on Pitt Street. Reg served up barbs and steaks.
BACK IN 1957 – Mrs. Alsime Bazinet, mother of 16, could be forgiven if she couldn’t remember the names of all her grandchildren. After all, she had 124 of them. She also had nine great grand-children. She was pictured in the August 7 edition of the Standard-Freeholder with one of her grandkids. … L.G. (Archie) Lavigne was council’s unanimous choice to succeed Mayor Emile Menard who died just seven months after being elected. … Louis Emard Petroleum opened a third station. This one at Glen Walter. Pump price was 37 cents a gallon. A free yardstick came with every purchase. … Rookie Morrisburg town cop Ronald Pitt suffered serious wounds on August 24 in a gun battle with two car theft suspects in the village. One of the three bullets ripped through his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He died a month later in a Montreal hospital. The suspects have never been found.
TRIVIA ANSWER: First parking meters in Cornwall were installed in 1946. They accepted one-cent coins.
TRIVIA: Survivors reported that his hymn was the final piece of music played by RMS Titanic string ensemble before the ship slipped to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
QUOTED: Anyone who thinks sitting in church makes you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car. – Garrrison Keillor
