The next time you want a pizza or a sausage biscuit or a bagel, or get hungry for what we like to call Mexican food, just know that there was a time when these were not just uncommon but totally unavailable in central Arkansas.

My family is made up of railroad people. We moved to North Little Rock during the 1940s. My maternal grandparents were immigrants from Zagreb in what is now Croatia. For 200 years the Venetians occupied the coast of Croatia, during which time they introduced pizza to the region. The Croatians liked pizza just as much as most Arkansans do today. You can buy it on street corners like you might buy a hamburger or hot dog here in America.

Coming from a Croatian-American family, my mother, needless to say, made pizza from scratch. Our home became........

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