In the March issue of Memphis magazine, I gathered the children around me and told them the beautiful, inspiring, and ultimately heartrending tale of Cibo’s Pizza. The story was so compelling that now Hollywood has come a’calling, and I’m presently reviewing several scripts for a movie to be called Searching for Cibo, with Johnny Depp slated to play the lovelorn chef, and … well, I won’t give it away. But let’s just say that Julia Roberts was such a hit in Mystic Pizza that it seems (to me, anyway) a natural career move for her to star in another pizza movie. It can only help her.
For those of you who have yet to to read the March column, Cibo was a short-lived pizza chain in Memphis, and in my typically thorough telling-you-more-than-you-asked manner, I even tracked down the addresses of all the branches in town. According to old telephone directories, one of them was located at 4495 Summer, close to Perkins. But they all closed years ago.
So what am I to make of this photograph, submitted by my pal Pat Rohrbacher, showing a genuine old Cibo’s sign mounted on a pole behind Grahamwood Cleaners, close to the intersection of Summer and Graham, which is quite a long way from Perkins? As far as I know, no Cibo’s was ever located here. Furthermore, the sign isn’t even visible from either Summer or Graham.
Now, just as soon as I can borrow a quarter for the pay phone, I’ll call the folks at Grahamwood Cleaners to see what they know about it. I’m pretty sure I dropped some change in the sofa here . . .