as we began summer in 2005, i was looking at a lightnin’ salvage that looked like this….

THIS summer i have hurt my knee, which could be related to the incredible charlie horse i got also on my left leg, during the fire remodel, when i was trying to push the shed over… my knee has been injured for going on 3 months now and wow. funny how the physical body can put a guy in his place so quick, how the fire can throw a guy into a complete hurricane full of emotion and fatigue and depression and mental exhaustion…

my personal writing has slowed quite a bit. my time for art diminished but i feel a change coming in that regard. my new kitchen is really a thing to behold. my trauma is waning. my apprehension is lessening.

i’d like to get over my fear of public speaking. i was considering working up to a story at the conch as a way of addressing that fear. i’ve been approached about a tedx story and feel honored but also unsure if i am ready for that stage…but maybe it’s something i could challenge myself toward.

i think that, for now at least, this is my favorite part of the new kitchen. i won’t lie that the 4 ovens in the corner are about as cool as a pizzeria can get, but this area we designed, where we set the clean dough trays to dry, is a daily sculpture. each day we fill all the empty trays and each night we have a new stack of clean trays waiting for Shon and mike.
i planned it down to the inch. the two stacks of cross stacked trays is 52″ wide…. and we planned 53″ for this to happen. i don’t think i ever realized how revolutionary it would be for us.

i’m truly happy. i feel like i have a pretty incredible hold on the concept of happiness. this thing, this machine, this “satchsquatch” … it is a performance piece. it has it’s many flaws. it is imperfect. it is so much bigger than me….

i have a renewed appreciation for my community.
i have a new respect for my customers.
i have an ongoing debt to my employees.
i have an unpaid debt to my contractor.

my family didn’t miss a beat which speaks volumes. my sanity seems almost intact. my resolve is even stronger to continue to improve and invent something new something changing something alive and thriving in a potentially bleak world outside (think media onslaught)

so danny at LSE, he is full of good ideas. he designed our retro Op shirt from the last couple years, with the silhouette of the oak trees and the cool yellow and orange stripe with the words, satchel’s pizza, written small and in cursive. he drew the awesome design of the pizza cutter in tattoo style with the satchel’s pizza wrapping the pizza cutter handle in a banner… my 7 year old wears this one in red with 3 color ink and it is just as classic as can be. it was danny’s idea to just put flames on the existing van shirt and call it the fire shirt. my brain was fried and i had given up any hope of a fire shirt and danny saved the day. anyway, he’s got a bunch of ideas in the works that i can’t even divulge here (like the ninja design and the van idea….) and i can’t forget to mention the “drop in for a slice shirt” where the kid is dropping in the bowl that is a slice of pizza and his wheels are holding on the crust…. he found and commissioned the art on that, and the employees only hoodie from a few years ago…. but what i was trying to say was….

his latest t-shirt related idea is satchsquatch. he has found the artist, josh, and is getting the image together. while i can’t leak the entire design at this point, i have been authorized to release it in part….

are you kidding me? what kind of a crazy world are we living in? i seem to have founded a company where the employees are helping to grow and shape the company in amazing ways. am i lucky? the luckiest. am i happy? you betcha. am i special? not really. well, i AM special in that i get to enjoy this life. i guess i MIGHT BE special in that i really love the people i encounter every day. I’m totally NOT special in the sense that i didn’t graduate from college and i never studied any business models…

geez. tedx. i’ll admit i have been watching ted videos since i was asked and am very conflicted on how to find an idea worth spreading, and turn it into a 15 minute talk that could inspire and resonate with someone. and then also match this with the theme presented and then stand in front of so many people and not shake and stutter in fear…. anyway, it feels like an honor to be asked. it feels like an opportunity waiting. it feels like a challenge to be met. i guess my favorite part would be getting slides together to share. i love images.

my friend peet:

i had some good ideas for the banner but in the end it was the racist joke the guy told me that had me not buying the airplane ad…. i’m sorry, but if the first time i meet you you tell me a racist joke, chances are pretty good, you won’t be getting my money, even if you have an airplane that can pull a banner.
i don’t know whether to celebrate or panic, business goes from slow as a turtle to fast as a cat from one day to the next. we all get into poke along mode and then wham, we are busy. then back to poke along mode. the truth is that business for us is down about 8% from last year, although it seems that that number is still rising, i’m very pleased with our business and it’s service to the community. i am ready for whatever direction we go, but as we “settle in” to our skin now as an established local place, i think we will learn to roll with the punches and react to the situations that come.
i have an idea for a kid’s book entitled: water milk juice vs. coffee soda beer. when can i find the time to write it though? my current draft is way too simple and short. i find myself telling you about it and then deleting my thoughts.

okay, so i’m not doing the banner, but what i wanted to do was the old plane pulling… “SATCHEL IS MY CO-PILOT” but that one got the ax from mom, plus mr. d renfroe was concerned that tebow could miss the humor and that would be really bad. and there were other good ideas that emerged but it was basically the racist joke that killed the deal.

i compromised after writing the title tonight and had a can of amstel light, left over from some long ago party we had. i figured, amstel light from a can is almost like water, right? i could tell you 3 more good things but i gotta go do something else. remind me to tell you about the gator games on lsetv….. say whaaaaaaaaa?

remind me to tell you about the cada cats too….

this blog site changed their whole look on me and i am having a pretty hard time adjusting actually. blogs now take me three times as long which is a deterrent. maybe i will learn it. anyway, i should try another gator logo but i’m too busy to think about that now, but i will show you the not so great one i did draw.

newsletter went out. changed the tone a bit. less formal, more conversational i guess. don’t know if it was a good idea…
we lost a new employee now, on top of all the old employees we lost. geez. makes me feel defeated, like it’s our fault, we’re doing something wrong… and sometimes the fit is just wrong, like putting on a size 9 shoe and you actually wear an 11… i just always feel guilty like i must be a bad boss or my place is not right.
i should take it easy on the band peeps… i respect following music, it just hurts to pour so much love and attention into people and see them take off. it’s like i thought they would stay forever or something. but then they come back and you know they know what to do, but you have a new crew, a new attitude, and a new machine by then. tonight i railed on about “don’t hire people in bands” and i’m staring straight at daniel the whole time. i’m glad to have daniel. i think he’s a good worker and pleasant to have around and adds to the conversation… but he did just return from a long tour, we need him to work some shifts now that he is back… i don’t know. i don’t want to give people a hard time for liking music a lot. i like music too. i think i just want employees who know all the details about how the place is supposed to run. the restaurant. it’s hard when they leave. sometimes i wonder if they know how hard it can be to adjust.

satch and dog??

i’ve told you before, i have to write a newsletter as part of my job. besides a blog, which you can choose to bookmark and follow, i’ve started a “newsletter” which you have to sign up for and it gets emailed to you about every month or more… i guess it’s kindof for people who are too busy to follow blogs weekly, and check their email enough to think that they will follow a newsletter…. i don’t care. i’m glad to collect the email addresses and send out emails about specific news stories… and that’s what is happening with the newsletter. it’s about to go out and if you are somebody then you better have gone to our website and signed up… if you follow the blog you might as well get the newsletter…. it’s bound to tell you something you don’t know.

my blog host has changed the layout of and design of the place i go and write blogs. i can’t be certain my photo is above or if i will ever even figure out how to post this… man, it’s hard to keep up in this digital age…

the more i work, the more i like work. tonight was fun and chaotic for me. i’ve told my manager before, don’t send a soul home until 8:30. bet he forgot, and it was real slow… until salad man got sent home and i walked in and put everyone in new positions they had not done before. if it’s slow, train. train train train.
but i got to wash some dishes which i love, and watch everyone sweat some. it’s actually more fun when it’s slow. and this is the week our business drops. the families are back in school and bedtimes and dinner at home. the college kids are getting books and trying to figure out where the grocery store is and waiting for financial aid checks. the seniors? they are out in normal numbers, and they are a dependable customer set…

i am generalizing of course, but we are living the slow time for us… if i could just use this time to train all the new people…
ah-ha. maybe i’m on to something!

brent seems to have fixed the blog problems so i may start to get back into it. here’s a photo of brent at his recent 40th birthday party. we had jacksonville’s best bar-b-q and beer. oh, and the cake was amazing too.

now that school is open again i am busier than ever, getting up early with the kids and working long hours at the restaurant. i have lots of fall plans, like getting the new walk-o-junk happening and decorating the privacy fence in the back and secret stuff i can’t even tell you about yet. the orange and blue shirts should be out in the next day or two. there’s new orange and blue stickers available, so as you can see we are fully engaged in gator fever. everyone with half a brain knows the gators will be undefeated this year and win the championship again.

so, brent found the missing posts and allows the blog to continue… i have a lot to talk about but it’s too late. i had a good and long day at work. i had pizza for breakfast and pizza for dinner and hogan’s in between. what could be better?

i will try to give you better info soon. i have a backlog of work and the blog is just waay down on the priority list.
i tell you what, i’ll give you a photo to tease you along. i am not buying a boat, but if i was, this one looks nice…

this is the raymondale family band who played thursday night. what a good bunch of people. music was nice too. it’s great to see so many different types of music and acts come to LSE.

a busy friday night. we have lots of new people now. if you have been following then you know that we lost a lot of people and are still losing some. that means we are training new folks nightly and daily. it’s a bit of a struggle. we are seeing some mistakes. but the food quality is fine and the new folks are awesome. in a month or two we’ll be back to solid.

i still plan to get you pictures of the gateway. i hope to get out there tomorrow to photograph on my way to work. stay tuned good people, stay tuned.

tonight i met the guy who designed the eastside gateway feature. that won’t mean much to most or all of you but it means a heck of a lot to me. the eastside gateway feature is a new landscape that i drive by numerous times per day at the splitting of east university and hawthorne road. it is gorgeous. just a stop and stare stunning piece of roadway landscape. by some long turn of events i had emailed the gcra (gainesville community redevelopment agency) to compliment them on the newly finished gateway feature. the man i met tonight was the guy who got that email and this guy is part of the team who makes things like that happen. it was exciting for me. like if i could meet the person who made the waldo road greenway happen… but that’s another story. the story tonight was about being able to meet the man who envisioned the gateway. i love it. for me it is government money being used wisely. thanks to anthony lyons.
i tell you what i will do to prove this point. i will photo this feature tomorrow, as the website only shows an artist rendering. i will photo and report back here to show you the kind of things that really excite me.

well, i am on vacation. not literally but in some ways.
i am working but not as much as in the past 6 years. i am enjoying my kids more and family life and success. i am a happy guy. so happy i sometimes seem distant because in a way i am distant. i am enjoying my life more than ever and getting some perspective on my business.

distant from the blog because i am eager to be distant from the computer and phone and all that…

anyway, there are basically 8 old timers leaving satchel’s this summer. weird for a place where turnover is so rare. 2 have opened a restaurant and bar downtown, boca fiesta. 1 is going to open a restaurant in the old second street place, civilization, i think it might be called. 3 are in the same band that is going to tour europe and russia for 6 weeks. 1 is going to open a pool hall with the possible name of bizmark. and the final one is going to CIA in california, which is fancy cooking school for those of you who don’t know. i think it may cost him $75k over the next 2 years to get a job making $30k a year.

8 employees! can you believe what a blow that is? these are all 2 plus year people, a couple over 4 or 5 years with us. 5 of them are kitchen. so we are going into training mode here. august should be a real challenge for me. i needed all the vacation to prepare myself for this… not that i have been on some extended vacation but i have been working less, let’s put it that way.

notice anything interesting in this photo my wife took recently?

i am happy for the employees who are moving on. one old timer tonight said i should be the proud papa. look at how their lives are shaping up. look at the incredible things they are doing. i am happy for them although i don’t think i had anything to do with their choices. i think instead i just have some great employees who strive and succeed. maschino will be the 5th to open his own place from satchel’s… tommy’s brick oven, the jones, boca fiesta, and soon civilization and bizmark. pretty cool. the first 3 are still going and the last 2 are coming soon.
(could the jones not have a website? i am surprised at that. )
got a lot of work to do this weekend. i plan to work though my weekend and start some new projects at work.

last weekend we had 9 guys show up at the beach for the first ever “guys weekend”. since some of the antics are not suitable for all viewers, i’ve made this video private. if you know the password you can view it by clicking on the link for guys weekend under the image and putting the password in. if you don’t know the password, you probably wouldn’t want to see it anyway. if you work at satchel’s you can get the password by asking me.

guys weekend 2009 from satchel raye on Vimeo.

you see, THIS is what makes your life interesting. viewing photos of fossilized poop on the world-wide-web through your favorite pizzzeria’s owners blog…this poop is on display in lightnin’ salvage currently…the newsletter is on it’s way… there is different info there than here… the info here is more graphic and for specialized viewers only… and you now know that tonight we had two injuries and sent 2 employees home even before the rush ( a burn and a bruise). soooo…. it was a bit on the challenging side but here’s a shot i got… large major, medium garlic artichoke hearts and bacon, and large half banana peppers, green peppers and feta and half black olives, red onions and roasted red peppers…

this weekend could get interesting…
i will let you know.

our local station, TV20, ran a short feature on us tonight, click here for the link to the video.

we were busy tonight, we actually filled the ovens at one point and had a pie waiting to go in… maybe it was thanks to TV20, maybe KCountry, as i heard that one of the deejays was in last night and said he had a good time and would talk about us on his morning show this morning.

i’m about to send out a newsletter, so if you haven’t signed up yet, go to the homepage and look for the signup at the top of the page. i know it’s redundant, to have a newsletter and a blog. really, if i have a blog then why do i need a newsletter? well, i’m not sure. i went to a lot of trouble to set up the newsletter and collect emails, and i guess the reason is that i don’t expect those hundreds of people to keep up with a weekly blog, but a monthly newsletter they can handle… but so far i am having just a tiny bit of trouble trying to figure out how to make the newsletter interesting and with different info than the blog. anyway, i hope to get a newsletter out tomorrow night so there you go. if you get the newsletter then you will be entirely up to date with the public available info on our humble pizzeria, and you might start to see, like me, just what new info is there that you don’t get here…

click the link to the news story. i must admit, i didn’t want to do the story, i hate seeing myself on camera sometimes, and i was worried it would be all cheesy. but then this woman, erica, shows up and does the whole thing herself… she filmed me, interviewed me and then edited and put together the whole segment. she’s easy to like and i was impressed with her skills. so, it was erica that made me feel at ease and finally erica who put together what surprised me as a great little home-town piece. i was nervous when i was spinning the pizza so it looks like i’m an amatuer, and when i mentioned the pecans we get form a tallahassee pecan man, i should have made a joke about the seminoles, but overall i thought it was some of the best reporting done on the place, and it was done much better than the may southern living article that mentioned us and got it pretty much wrong. however, i should mention that the one paragraph in the new york times was written very well, and is a close second to erica’s video.

there’s a 30 second commercial you have to watch before the piece, but hey, it’s america.

this photo will only be interesting to folks who know what LSE looks like now… these pictures from march 3, 2006, isn’t that the first day we opened? well, that’s not bad for day 1, right?
anyway, i am sorry for not keeping you updated. showing you a 3+ year old picture is evidence of my slack-ness in the blog department. shoot, i am so behind the times, i do not even keep up with my blogs, the ones i like to visit everyday, but now am out of touch with the internet…

with family in town for extended stays, i am happy to say i am enjoying some time away from my regular routine, and away from the computer and only loose contact with the phone, well, loose by my standards and tight by other standards… i am getting some needed perspective on my projects, and trying to understand how to …”weave it all together, like a fabric or a quilt…” to quote the practically unknown new film, Lightnin’ Salvage, the Movie.

there was a time, not so long ago, when i thought that i had to make every single pizza for it to be perfect, and fortunately i have wised up. i heard a story on npr the other day about a conductor. for some reason i thought, ” i wonder what the new york philharmonic would sound like without a conductor?” it’s a weird thought from the start and later i realized it was connected to the fact that at times i wonder if that is what a conductor does, pulls back entirely, feels the music a bit, breathes the music a bit, and then dives back in? anyway, i wonder if there are recordings of what i described?

here’s another snapshot to leave you with…

notice the happy customers, and notice the piano in the dining room… the more things change…

it was not stephanie m, but stephanie w. stephanie was back tonight and corrected me, which means she actually found herself on my blog.
so sorry to stephanie about that, and it’s south carolina that jason is from not north, so i got that figured out….

sorry i have not been taking pictures. i’m a bum. will get some good ones next week i promise. i’m caught way up in my favorite season summer and am really loving it. i’ve got lots of friends and family visiting and lots of trips to the ocean. love love loving life right now. i have to be a bit bored to blog. so when you don’t get updates and photos much here, it’s because i am having a really good time.

another slooow friday night, seems to be a trend. i had some out of town friends come in and i was able to sit with them and have a beer. probably the first friday night sit down in years. i could get used to this.
i get to roam and talk to customers. i like that.

last saturday, no wait all night. first time in years… then tonight, friday, short wait that’s gone by 8:30…. first time in years we’ve had a friday night like that… 8:30 and there are empty tables and lots of parking spots. lavell is playing the hell out of LSE and doing a stevie wonder impersonation and there are 2 people back there to witness it. he said he forgot his sunglasses and danny i arrived at the same time with a pair, making the audience now 4 people strong….

now wednesday and thursday were crazy and lunches are strong all week, but friday night… not so much.

hey, i will not pretend to understand how this business works. i’ve only been in this line of work for 25 years so i’ve got a lot to learn… but it doesn’t bother me because i got home in time to see my son to bed, and the food we make now is just as awesome as it ever was. i didn’t have my camera with me today, sorry.

so here is a day in the life of satchel raye:

started today here, with my boy, on the way to camp invention. i never have a good enough excuse to drive 25 minutes, in my small town, to the closest WH… the actual close-by-one closed down. anyway, camp invention is even farther and further from us so we got to go to WH. “double waffle, hash browns smothered and crispy, and a large and small milk, with the meal.”

my dad loved the waffle house too.

and then a stop at ishvan’s, to drop off a broken dvd player, because ishvan can fix anything, although i think i have finally stumped him with this road view dvd player…. man does ish have the sacred spot…

lunch at satchel’s, with the new guy jason here, just moved in from south carolina? or north? i wish i was a better listener.


then deliver some pies to peace camp, throw a couple pies for the kids, give them some peaceful cheese pizzas….

then to dr. stoer, and he thinks maybe a basil cell carcinoma but what i call “clump of lumps”, on my face. chuck loves to hunt and i couldn’t help but snap a couple photos in the waiting area.

and then evening at satchels was it stephanie m? and her friend staphanie m? turning 23 and 22 respectively? this is another place i could have listened better and filed away her name. i was, after all, taking photos… for now, i am sticking by the stephanie m. i am fairly certain that is correct.


basically, this was a party of 28. geez.

party of 15, 11, 8, 9… 28? where are they all coming from?

i am thrilled to be making your dinner. i am loving life with my family. i love the day crew about as much as they love me. lol
and thanks to dr. stoer, for being an expert with skin… even though i cannot imagine, in my wildest dreams, ever wanting to shoot a bear that is 9′ tall, or a moose that is much larger than my refrigerator. you, like to shoot big animals, i, like to paint abstract paintings. fair enough.

(click any of the above images to view them better, like the one of the juke box at waffle house is especially nice…)

i probably showed this photo before, but i have been spending my time getting my computer back working and not taking new photos. i will get some new ones this week. this guy had some of the best pizza i had in new york. i love this picture because the pie is so burnt. but that’s how he did it and his pizza was awesome. just goes to prove the “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” thing.
i have this issue with electronics and machines… i touch them and they like to break. i want to live without a cell phone and computer but i manage my business with those tools and so i put up with them. i try to embrace them, i really do, but i think deep down the machines know i don’t really like them.

tonight we sent out our first official satchel’s newsletter. we sent one out before but had some problems sending them without looking like spam. now we have a mail service and the test run went pretty well. if you follow the blog, you might want to also sign up for the monthly newsletter. there is a link to sign up on the satchel’s homepage. we have 161 people signed up currently. now i just have to figure out what’s so important to tell them.
i’ve been so long without a computer now, that i’m going to have to work at getting back in the groove.
stay tuned. i promise to find something worthwhile to tell you about.
remember to check out boca fiesta, downtown gainesville, if you haven’t already. it’s a taco place/ bar that a couple of our employees left to open. it’s such a tough business to be in, i know they are sleep deprived and learning daily.
more later.

my computer is still in the shop, but i am coming to you from a remote location, and uploading photos to strange computers…
i snapped this yesterday of a deep dish. the blackness on the edge is the melted and carmelized cheese that hardens there on the lip of the pan it cooks in… it is the best part of the slice as it is crunchy and sweet.

i met a woman last night who said she read the blog. i felt bad that i have not given blog readers any new info in a while… my kid’s computer broke, my wife’s computer does not work so good… but the truth be told i don’t really like computers that much despite how much time i spend with them…
the top van is one i drove for 10 years and slept in and went on my honeymoon in and traveled in and worked out of… the bottom van is a wooden replica i made for my wife…

and i probably linked to it before, but here is the link to another pizza place owners blog i follow from far away in oregon….i know she is in some remote oregonian village, and it reminds me of my very dear friends who live there, in some remote coastal town… lord knows i need to get to see them, where is it they live again? port orford oregon i think. anyone know the distance from port orford oregon to baker city?
anyway, sometimes i’ll show some pictures just for the sake of the paizano pizza lady… her pies look pretty awesome i must admit.

and thanks to the folks in gainesville who are following the satchel’s story…. and next week (or so) i’ll be sending out the newsletter, which you can sign up for by going to our homepage and looking at the top of the page for the green band where you can sign up. there will be different info there, info that you won’t find anywhere else… just another piece to the puzzle that is the pizza.

more later…