Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 37

DETROIT FREE PRESSWEDNESDAY, JULY 19. 1978 1 iscalation of the Great Detroit Pizza War It 's even hotter now that Louis Tourtois has gone on his own By LAURA BERMAN Frtt Press Staff Writer In the beginning, there was Buddy's Rendezvous Pizza and life was very simple: If you cared at all about the pizza you ate, you went to Buddy's. This was because Buddy's had thick-crusted Sicilian pizza that was light-years removed from the thin, round stuff you got in the suburbs and well worth the drive to 17125 Conant in Detroit just to get it. Buddy's also had Louis Tourtois, who managed the kitchen and pizza, until he fired the first shot in the Great Detroit Pizza War. He quit Buddy's to make pizzas at Shield's Bar just a few blocks from Buddy's in 1970.

Now, Louis Tourtois, the man who left his thumbprint in the crust at Buddy's and Shield's, has struck out on his own. And Loui's Pizza (someone else had Louis' Pizza) is wreaking havoc In the already raging pizza war. Buddy's and Shield's are holding strong, but the lines are long at Loui's at 23141 Dequlndre In Hazel Park, even on weekday nights. Competition between the three spots is growing ever fiercer. "We've got cooks here who can tear a pizza apart and analyze every Ingredient In it," says Bob Jacobs, Buddy's co-owner, from a battle-station seatin the bar at Buddy's.

"We've eaten Loui's pizza, sure. It's good, very good, but then so Is ours." The truth, Insists Jacobs, Is that when his father Bill Jacobs bought Buddy's In 1969, the famed pizza formula was part of the deal. And Buddy's still has cooks who have been making it for 20 years. Meanwhile, Dean Moraltis, who bought Shield's only a year ago, claims that he too has scouted out the competition and his pizza is even better. On the other hand, he admits to tampering with Louis' formula, replacing water with milk in the crust and adding wine to the sauce.

Moraitis talks more about the atmosphere at Shield's than the pizza. Bob Jacobs, who talks very fast and drives a tomato-sauce-red Porsche with BUDDY'S license plate, maintained that the secret to the pizza is making the dough. "Our cooks have been making this for years," he said. "They know how to work the dough to the right consistency." How to compensate for weather conditions. How to mix it How to let it rise.

SO DOES LOUIS TOURTOIS. he too has mastered the vagaries of pizza dough and knows the secret of the sauce. All this he says he learned from a legendary cook named Dominick who owned Buddy's In the late '40's and early '50's. "Dominick," says Tourtois, with reverence in his voice, "he was the best" However, since Dominick long ago retired, Louis now figures he is the best "I am never satisfied," said Tourtois, from a booth at Loui's. "I am always making changes, making my pizza better.

Pizza has changed a lot since I first learned how to make it." In the old days, said Tourtois, who moved to the United States from France when he was in his teens and still speaks with an accent, pizza came with cheese, pepperoni and mushrooms. No hamburger. No Italian sausage. No green peppers even. Pizza has gotten better, he added.

Competition has Improved the quality. OVER AT BUDDY'S Bob Jacobs agreed. Til be really 71- KtvKf- -''1 jt I fff honest. A few years ago, when Louis was making pizza at Shield's, his was better than ours. We had some people managing Buddy's who let the quality slip." Canned onions were going into the pizza then, and only 24 slices of pepperoni Instead of the 36 to 40 that goes on a large pizza at Buddy's now.

But that's all changed, said Jacobs. "Our quality is batik to where it should be. Everything is fresh. And we use more cheese, more pepperoni, more everything." At Shield's, Moraitis insisted that pizza quality has not slipped, that his ingredients are fresh too. All three pizza parlors feature a pizza that looks roughly the same which they should, since they're based on the same recipe.

They charge similar prices for their pizzas ($4.85 to $7.30 for a large at Loui's) and rely on volume sales to bring in the profits. Their owners each boast about the Celebrities who dome in and the requests from Hawaii, or Arizona or wherever from displaced Detroiters who want a mail-ordered Shield's or Buddy's or Loui's pizza. STILL, ONLY Louis Tourtois who, after all, Is the only Please turn to Page 5C Craa Pratt Phntnt hu I ON A O'CONNOR unrt Hlir.H CBAWWIIAA Louis Tourtois, only one oithe owners who also cooks, has attained local folk hero status in the big battle. lvy- Take cliches with a salt? grahfcctf Ffew alternatives open if you're really a tin can Sometimes I act like a tin can. Some klutz wanders by and kicks me in a seam, and I just clatter and bounce along, suffering the dents and dings, until I come to rest a little further down the littered sidewalk of life, where I am all set up for the next punt.

Who, me, complain? Certainly not! Somebody might thnk I'm uncool. Somebody might suspect I am not made out of sheet steel. Well, spinach! Monday evening I met some friends at Nemo's In Renaissance Center. We coaxed our livers to sop up two or three belts of Scotch whisky, gabbled about a variety of nonsense, and departed, one hour and 40 minutes later. I reclaimed my car from the valet parking booth.

Ultimately, the cashier decided I owed $4 American for the service provided in parking and fetching my car, which, as previously noted, had been in storage for less than two hours. Did I squeal? Did I forcefully protest this usury? Did I even whine a little about being ripped off? No, no. Not Sweet Glennie Sue, not the Dimpled Darling of Detroit. I smilingly peeled off a $5 bill and even managed a bland look when I had to remind the person that she owed me $1 change. She had temporarily forgotten this detail in the complex mental exercise of handing my car keys to a rctricv6r.

Then may the IRS forgive my Idiocy I even tipped the retriever 50 cents. Why did I do that? I had two quarters. If I had not, I would have handed him the 1 change I had just eked out of the cashier. What I have just described Is the behavior of a tin can. On the way home, I did some mental calculating.

Let's see. If I park for one hour and 40 minutes a day, every day for a year, and tip the retriever 50 cents a day Just to be cool, It will cost me precisely $1,642.50 a year, not counting aggravation, to park my car. If I do this for four years, the amount of time I have to pay off my car loan, I will pay $6,570.00. That's more than the car cost! And that doesn't count increases in the valet parking rate, which will no doubt come along on the same schedule as oil changes. It's worse than that.

At the end of four years, I will have a heap of rust and loose rivets plus six points and a couple of unpaid parking tickets. The dowager empress of China who is no doubt the person running the valet parking concession will have my $6,570.00, plus Interest, sitting In her bank account, probably in Switzerland. Either that or she will have used my money to buy a handful of rubies. Rubies will be on the way up. Geez! She can't be paying the cashier much.

The retriever probably gets paid off in fish heads, plus 50-cent tips. The parking areas, wherever they are, must be owned and maintained by Henry Ford and his gang. What does the dowager empress have to do with my $6,570.00 EXCEPT buy rubies? Mine is only one of hundreds of sucker cars. If we all parked for more than two hours a could buy Switzerland! It is depressing to be a tin can. There are few alternatives.

I could park in the public parking area. It is slightly less expensive. It is also farther away, on the wrong side of the Renaissance complex, and the last time I tried it, I followed a guy driving a blue Lincoln who seemed to know how to find entrances and stuff. I ended up two levels underground in the reserved Ford Motor Co. parking area.

A security guard was definitely huffy. It took me 10 minutes to find my way back out Into the sunshine and another 10 minutes to locate the Plebeian Parking. Then I had to walk through the Plaza Hotel and I got lost. I finally phoned the person I was supposed to meet at the Hiroshima (or whatever the name of that Japanese restaurant is) and told him to come and get me. I was just to the left of the banner flying over the moat, and I wasn't going to move another step in this jungle without a native guide.

Valet parking is the answer. There are entrances to the various towers, and they make it possible to get within range of various destinations without having to get lost first. But tin cans can't use valet parking without acquiring additional, hurtful dents. You're supposed to be a tycoon to use valet parking. You're supposed to be the financial equal of the dowager empress.

On advice of my CPA, I am sticking to the London Chop House. It only costs $2 to park there for as many hours as it takes to drop a bundle on the important things lobster bisque and a Doc Greene salad. By LOUISE COOK Associated Press Writer Quick as a flash, what's deeper than the deep blue sea? Faster than a speeding bullet? Deeper than the deep blue sea. Oceans cover some 140 million square miles or 70 percent of the earth's surface. The average depth is 12,700 feet Just under 2 Vi miles.

The deepest spot 36,500 feet or almost seven miles Is the Marianas produced 307,000 metric tons or 677 million pounds. In the same year, India produced 471,952 metric tons. Cold as Ice. Pure water generally freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit But at Ice Harbor Dam, the temperature hit a high of 118. degrees Fahrenheit on Aug.

5, 1961. That's hotter than hell. Al Culp, president of the Hell, chamber of commerce says the record Is 1 05 degrees, set In 1974. The coldest day was In Please turn to Page 2C The National Rifle Association says a standard 150-graln bullet fired from a 30-06 rifle travels at 2,900 feet per second, almost three times the speed of sound. A grain of salt.

Nobody's counted the grains in a shaker. A grain is also a measure of weight however 7,000 to a pound. The Salt Institute says U.S. consumption Is about 6,000 tons a year. That's 84 billion grains.

As much as all the tea in China. "They've kept it a pretty good secret," says John Anderson, executive director of the Tea Council of the United States. In 1973, however, the International Tea Committee, In London, estimated that China- Higher than a kite? i You can take the questions with a grain of salt. The cliche, says the dictionary, is trite. Worn out by constant Worn out maybe, but think about It How quick is a flash? 'i "4 The expression originated In the early 1900s, along with the photographer's flash bulb.

The total duration of the light produced by the flash is about .004 seconds. The photographically useful part of the light lasts .001 seconds. Trench In the Western Pacific. Higher than a kite. The Guinness Book of World Records says the greatest reported height achieved by a single kite was 28,000 feet, a little over five miles.

The American Kitef Hers Association says any kiteflier who's an "altitude freak" considers 1,000 feet the minimum. Faster than a speeding bullet Southern 'chefs': locals made good Stereotype holds, but changing times make it almost a rear-guard action. now sheriffs. One third were BornTn the same state, and only four percent were born outside the South. WHILE THE SURVEY tends to reinforce the stereotype of the southern sheriff, Handberg and Unkovlc found that, like much else in the changing South, the stereotype is fading.

Crime is increasing in rural areas, racial attitudes are changing, and, voters ar favoring younger, more professionally trained candidates. Handberg noted, for example, that In 1974, there were 15 sheriffs in Florida with 20 years or more in their Job. Now there are three "The Southern sheriffs reputation took a pounding during the 1960s as they attempted to stem the tide of social and political change," the study says. "The sheriff's role was usually that of reslster of change and defender of the old segregationist status quo." To separate the shadow from the substance, two researchers at the Florida Technological University of Orlando are conducting a study of the Southern sheriff. Some of their preliminary findings: The Southern sheriff of reality is white, middle-aged, ill-educated, a home-town boy and typically Southern in short ncivs to use I by--'f ill 1 If 't i Neither Dr.

Charles M. Unkovlc, chairman of the sociology department nor his fellow researcher, Dr. Roger Handberg put it precisely that way, but Handberg did note in a professional By WAYNE KING New York Times Servic ATLANTA There is a story that Is told in the South about a venturesome New Yorker vacationing Jn Alabama who decides to pull off a country road for a bite to eat He enters a country roadhouse, orders, eats his catfish and hush puppies, and then, while he is relaxing, a big man with a toothpick in his teeth bellies up to the table, smiles, says howdy and Introduces himself as the chef. "Oh, delightful," says the visitor. "The, uhh, fish was very good.

You prepare food very well, not as greasy as one comes to expect down here, ha, ha The smile fades as the big man hitches his belt, extracts the toothpick and explains again real slow, that he is the chef the CHEF. "Well, uhuh, I liked the collard greens, too," says the visitor, "and the ice tea and "No, dammit, boy!" the big man explodes, pounding the table. "I'm the chef, the chef! I run this whole dad-blamed county! I'm the chef, the chef of this county!" WHETHER IT IS "CHEF," the way they do it in parts of Alabama and Georgia or "shurf," the way they do In coastal Carolina, the southern sheriff is indeed likely to be the man who runs the whole county. He is also a man swaddled in legend, a Buford Pusser hero, a wheezing villain out of "The Heat of the Night" and a hundred television late shows. The Southern sheriff of legend is white, middle-aged, Ill-educated, a home-town boy and typically southern In short, a good old boy, or a redneck, depending on one's point of view.

It also says that "the sheriffs visible way that the sheriff is "an anachron-public record is often spotty, with epl sodes of lawlessness flashing into public ism Designate child support Aitoclated Prat Payments intended as child support must be specifically designated in the divorce settlement to avoid tax problems, the U.S. Tax Court points out. The court noted that the Supreme Court's 1961 "Lester" decision says that alimony is included in the taxable income of the person receiving it And, under that decision, unless payments are specifically designated as child support, they are considered taxable alimony payments. "It Is regrettable that taxpayers, such as this petitioner, apparently only lira about Lester after it is too late to do anything about itthus adding tax grief to domestic grief," the tax court said. The decision came In the case of Carol Anne Zettlemoyer of Glenside, Pa.

In her divorce settlement, payments from her former husband were designated for the support of both Mrs. Zettlemoyer and their child, but not broken down as to alimony and child support. Because of that omission, the court held that all of the payments were taxable Income to Mrs. Zettlemoyer. view.

IN THE 1960s, there were manifold instances of that perhaps the most impressive the indictment of a sheriff and his deputy in Neshoba County for the murder of three civil rights workers In 1964. The sheriff was acquitted, the deputy convicted of conspiracy. As late as 1972, the flamboyant sheriff of Lake County, Willis McCall, was implicated in the beating death of a mentally deficient black prisoner who had been picked up for a traffic offense. Witnesses testified that the prisoner was beaten and kicked as the sheriff said, "He aint crazy." McCall was exonerated, as he had Please tvm to Page 3C The study, based on questionnaires filled out by 198 sheriffs in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina, found that they are typically middle-aged (average age 47), white, male, with a 12th-grade education, although 20 percent have less than a high school education and 20 percent have college degrees. Almost half, 40 percent, received military training and more than 80 percent had some kind of in-service police training.

The older ones tended to take office without previous experience, the younger ones with other police experience or military service. "Sheriffs tend to be local boys made good," said Handberg, noting that nearly half (47 percent) were born and reared in the county in which they are Joe Higgtos image in a series of 'Southern sheriff commercials sticks in people's minds..