Crust Heaven

Crust Heaven—a strange name.

Crust Heaven is a retrospect, looking back from an adult’s perspective to a nine-year-old’s visions of the world surrounding him. Travel back in your mind to a time before computers, before cell phones, even before most homes had televisions. Back when life was simpler.

My grandson Joey had just turned nine years old. One day he said to me, “You know, Papa…. You cook so good you should open up a restaurant!” “I would if I could,” I told him. “You could call it Crust Heaven,” he stated. I have no idea where or how he came up with that name, but it stuck in my mind, so I started to write this story. I only wrote down the first chapter. After that, it just sat there. That was almost twenty years ago. I resurrected the story, but going back in time to the early fifties, to a simpler life when I was growing up.

I used my grandson Joey as the main character, basing much of the story on things he did and said as he was growing up. Other happenings and characters are fashioned after things the kids and I did that I grew up with. All the things that happen in this story are centered on real-life experiences. My life’s experiences blended in with Joey’s. There’s very little fiction in this story—most of it happened at one time or another. I am offering you the chance to live and grow up around Crust Heaven, and if you’re a baby boomer like me, you might get a few laughs. One of the many people who do proofreading for me and who grew up at the same time as I did wrote to me after reading the first drafts and said—

“Thanks for the memories.”