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  This is one of several Fun Pix resulting from my experiences with Habitat For Humanity.
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Catfish Pizza Breakfast

catfish1a.jpg (12690 bytes) 07011998

This restaurant is at an intersection I've passed many dozens of times on my way to the Kansas City, Missouri, affiliate of Habitat For Humanity.

It was in August of 1997 that I first showed up on a Habitat construction site, and since then I've logged thousands of hours as a volunteer and a few hundred as a paid site supervisor.  All of the Fun Pix in this series are in or within the sphere of the Habitat neighborhood.

 

It was only in July of 1998 that I finally decided to park my scooter and take a photo of this sign for a restaurant that so proudly offers catfish pizza breakfast (and hogies).  It's a good thing I did, because the sign has since been changed.

 

As a side note, you'll see in the window just below the word catfish a smaller sign.  It refers people to the door to the right -- under the letter "H" of "CATFiSH" -- and that sign reads as follows:

BEYOND THE FOUR WALLS
B  BLE FELLOWSHIP
CHURCH

 


Update of October 12, 2011: Today I received an entry in the guestbook for this site advising that there's a blues album titled Catfish Pizza Breakfast, the name for which arose from the signage above.  The principal vocalist is Kansas Citian Jim La Forte, and you can buy his album by writing lafortemd@gmail.com.  Here's what his son, Matt La Forte, says in an email:

"The album cover was illustrated by Mo 'St. Louie Mo' Paul, Dad's longtime friend, who plays one hell of a blues harp.

"In 1986, Dad founded a Saturday open jazz and blues jam session at Harlings Upstairs (at 39th Street and Main), along with Rich Van Zant.  This jam continues to this day and is now hosted by another life-long friend of Dad's, Diane 'Mama' Ray, at BB's Lawnside BBQ (at 85th Street and Troost Avenue)" [emphases mine].

Guess where 39th Street and Troost Avenue intersect.  Yep, at the Catfish Pizza Breakfast restaurant.

(Also, you'll remember from here, unless you haven't gotten there yet, that this sort of coincidence is not the least bit ironic.  Fun to relate, yes, but not even the teensiest smidgen ironic.  Although, not to go on too long, it also has to be pointed out that if such coincidences never arose, that would be truly unlikely.)
 


Update of September 22, 2017: I volunteer at certain events for the local NPR station, which is KCUR at 89.3 FM.  At the Plaza Art Fair this evening at KCUR's booth one of the most popular personalities on the station for the last 30 years has been Chuck Haddix, who hosts a music show called "The Fish Fry" where he goes by the name Chuck Haddock.  He performed his show live in the street, which attracted quite a few people, many of whom of us danced.

Anyway, tonight he was wearing a tee-shirt that I momentarily mistakenly thought displayed a duplicate of or at least alluded to the album cover above, which I hadn't seen or thought about for eight years.  The photo at right is of Chuck's shirt, and they both show (1) a reference to music in Kansas City, (2) food, specifically the word fish, (3) round, flat cooked things, (4) a catfish with whiskers and barbels (5) wearing glasses, with (6) a cigarette between his teeth in one version and a toothpick sticking out between them in the other.


 


 

The next Fun Pic in the Habitat series goes on rather at length, so you don't have to read it all if you don't want to.  Just move on to the next one if you don't mind missing a few pages.

 

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