I hadn’t set foot in Big Ed’s Pizza in at least five years, and I hadn’t planned to fix that on this particular Saturday either. I was driving back from a showing in Oak Ridge when I passed the place, neon OPEN sign in the window, that hand-painted cartoon of Big Ed picking his teeth over a slice, same as I remembered. I hit the blinker before I’d even finished the thought.
The clients I’d just shown homes to already work in Oak Ridge. They live in Knoxville now, and tired of the daily commute each way during rush hour, which increasingly in East Tennessee terms might as well be a part-time job. Cutting that drive down is the main reason they’re looking to move, and honestly it’s one of the most common reasons I hear these days. People aren’t just chasing square footage. They’re trying to get an hour of their life back.
They’d already headed home by the time I made my detour, so this one was just for me. I love to introduce folks to places like this, but sometimes it’s also fun to sit alone and soak in the culture!
I ordered a small pepperoni to tide me over while I waited, and a Coke, and then did the thing you do at a place like Big Ed’s when you haven’t been in years. I ordered a large to go. Big Ed’s Special, the works, ham and sausage and mushroom and onion and green pepper, headed home to my wife Amy, who had no idea a Saturday afternoon pizza surprise was coming.
Big Ed’s has been serving pizza out of the old Service Drug Store on Broadway since 1970, when Ed and Ginger Neusel moved their restaurant east from Huntsville, Alabama and set up in Jackson Square. Word is Ed served as a Marine in World War II before he ever opened a pizza oven, which might explain why the walls are covered edge to edge in flags and old photographs, fifty-plus years of regulars adding their own alongside his.
A long oar from the Rollins College Women’s Rowing Team hangs over the counter where I ordered. A 12’ 4” memento from a hearty meal after a competition on Melton Lake in ‘96.
The original booths from the drug store days are still in the building. The soda fountain is long gone, but the bones of the place never left. They make the dough and sauce from scratch every day, and as far as I could tell, they still only serve two things. Pizza and beer. No wings, no dessert menu, no distractions.
What hits you first walking in is the walls. Every inch of them. Flags and military patches, trophies, old photographs, an old jukebox still lit up in the corner, red and white checkered tablecloths on tables worn soft by decades of elbows. That kind of clutter only comes from a community deciding, one framed photo at a time, that a place belongs to them.
I ate my slice at the counter, reading glasses off, watching the place go about its Tuesday like it has for fifty-some years. Thin crust, the kind that folds instead of flops. I left a five-star review before the large pizza was even out of the oven, food and service and atmosphere across the board, no wait, and a staff that treated me like a regular even though I hadn’t been one in years.
I didn’t get to play tour guide this time. My clients were already gone, and the whole stop was really just me chasing a memory. But it’s exactly the kind of thing that reminds me why I love working in this pocket of East Tennessee. You take a day of showings in Oak Ridge, and on the way out you stumble into fifty years of somebody else’s history, and you come home with a pizza for your wife and a story for the blog. That’s not a bad way to spend a Tuesday, and it’s a pretty good argument for anyone still on the fence about a shorter commute and a town with this much character.
More stories like this one live at KnoxvilleRob.com. If a shorter commute or a move anywhere in East Tennessee is on your mind, I’d be glad to help.
Rob Howard – cell: 865-385-9070 @KnoxvilleRob on most social media
Keller Williams – Knoxville, Farragut & Hardin Valley 865-966-5005