🎱 Friday Nights and Pepperoni Lights

By Mark Morgan

If you grew up in Waldron around 1979 or 1980, you already know where the Pizza Barn sat — right there on the bypass, glowing like a neon miracle in the Arkansas night. One side of the building smelled like heaven’s kitchen — hot pizza, toasted subs, and laughter. The other side? A full-blown arcade and pool hall, where teenage dreams went to live fast, die broke, and respawn with another quarter.

It was a split personality kind of place: pizza on the right, pinball on the left. The left side blinked and buzzed with Galaga, Pac-Man, and Asteroids — each one a test of reflexes, patience, and allowance money. The right side stayed warm and steady, filled with the smell of dough and triumph.

If you were lucky, you’d score a booth near the window where you could see both worlds at once — the glow of the arcade reflecting off a greasy pizza pan, like heaven and mischief sharing a table.

The pool tables in the back were a mix of skill, strategy, and pure luck. And then there was that snooker table, big enough to park a Volkswagen on, sitting there like a foreign diplomat nobody understood. Nobody really knew the rules, but that didn’t stop anybody from pretending. Around here, confidence was the only thing you had to bring.

Every Friday night, the whole town drifted there. Cowboys in dust-covered boots, football guys still smelling like victory, girls with perfect feathered hair and plans to make somebody regret something. And in the middle of it all — a jukebox that knew everybody’s business and wasn’t afraid to tell it in song.

Dragging Main was the warm-up, but the Pizza Barn was the main event. We’d loop the square till the gas gauge got nervous, then roll toward that glowing sign like moths chasing mozzarella. Inside, the noise was perfect: clacking pool balls, laughter, and someone shouting, “Who’s got next?”

The pizza was thick, the sauce was bold, and the pepperoni curled just right at the edges like it was proud of itself. You could feed three teenagers on one large — or one teenager if he’d had a hard week.

And oh, the stories. A few romances started in that parking lot, a few ended somewhere between the pinball machine and the jukebox. Someone always thought they were about to “go pro” in pool, and someone else always dropped their Coke right when they were about to make a shot that mattered.

It wasn’t just a hangout — it was a rite of passage. You learned hand-eye coordination, social skills, and the art of stretching five dollars through divine intervention. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were practicing adulthood — badly, but with enthusiasm.

The Pizza Barn gave Waldron something priceless: a place to be young, to laugh too loud, and to belong without explanation. Nobody checked your name, your grade, or your bank account. All that mattered was how you handled a cue stick, a joystick, or a slice of pizza so hot it branded your tongue.

When it finally closed, it left a hole bigger than the snooker table. The lights went dark, the jukebox fell silent, and the smell of pepperoni faded into memory. But the laughter stuck around — the kind you still hear when somebody says, “Remember Friday nights out there?”

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We thought we were just killing time at a pizza joint, but we were really learning the good stuff — friendship, humility, and how to find joy in small places.

And maybe that’s the real lesson: life’s a lot like an old arcade game — you lose a few quarters, laugh a lot, and if you’re lucky, you get one more turn before closing time.