Pizza Eating Contest, 1998

Jeff Dujardin elaborates:

Remember the time Grandpa Uno took us all onto the roof of Uno's Pizzeria (the one in Providence) and he set up his telescope - which was so old it had a family of mice living inside of it - and we looked out into the stars and at the moon? When you (Andrew) were looking at the moon," he turned from us and his eyes started tearing up. (Later you told me you weren't looking at the moon at all, but rather some "attractive teenage girls" at WaterPlace Park - you were 13 at the time).

Anyway, recent posting about Grandpa's expedition as a cosmonaut finally identified the reason he may have been crying.

Then Grandpa told Ferguson that the moon was made of cheese (he always thought Ferg was kind of gullible) and so Ferguson took that moment to cut the cheese and we all started laughing ferociously. Then Phil made the comment about the sun being made of Gas, and so Grandpa Uno let one rip. Then we all almost died of laughter.

We went downstairs and Grandpa opened the Uno's and held a city-wide pizza eating contest? He gave us two hours to eat as many pies as we could. The winner was to receive a "mystery prize." (He told us later he just didn't have anything he really wanted to give away). Ferguson was in the lead with 8 pies (Ferg wasn't big but he could eat). I was up to 5 pies and you (Andrew) were up to three when my brother Phil (who had run off to see these so called "attractive teenagers" you had spotted in the telescope) arrived with twenty minutes left (dressed in sweatpants) and devoured fifteen and a half pizzas!! Grandpa was ecstatic, and told Phil he could make out with his niece from his first marriage, Jenny. Phil declined because he was in a relationship. Ferguson hoped to take the prize in his place (it would have been his first kiss) but Grandpa declined and gave him a chess set instead. Ferguson was devastated, and never really got over it.

RIP Ferguson.

UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR: Uno Co-Authors with Simpson, 2008

Until his 2008 death, Grandpa Uno was the owner of the esteemed painting by Arnold Friberg, "OJ Breaks for Daylight" which was commissioned by Chevrolet for the University of Southern California in 1968.

While the ownership of the painting is not in question, nor being denied by this chronicling of Grandpa Uno's famed life and lifestyle, we would like to clarify that we are not sure of the reasoning behind his purchase of the painting in May of 1997, only months after the death of Nicole Simpson, OJ's wife.

The trial was monumental, and those who were alive for it remember it fondly. Johnny Cochran's "If the glove don't fit..."

After OJ was acquitted, he lost a civil trial brought forth by Nicole's family, and was left nearly broke. His troubled life, which was made more difficult by a failing acting career led him to attempt re-exposure through the publishing of a book entitled "If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer".

Many have speculated that Grandpa Uno was not only a co-author, but in fact a ghost writer, to this instant best-seller (on some obscurely developed bookselling lists).

THIS RUMOR IS NOT SUBSTANTIATED BY ANY REAL EVIDENCE. PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT WHATEVER YOU HEAR IS PURE RUMOR.

But, as the royalties of the book go to Uno's family, we urge you to buy a copy HERE.

Ferguson's Science Fair: 1994

Ferguson was a good kid. Smart kid, really. While he was often belittled, mocked, the butt of many childhood jokes, Ferguson pushed himself to the limits of elementary academia. In second grade, Ferguson won his CYO Spelling Bee, placing third at regionals. As a fourth grader, he traveled to Paris to compete in a math competition (he placed ninth of forty finalists).

Despite his many great scholastic accomplishments, nothing stands comparable to the project that Grandpa Uno assisted with in 1994. It was a science fair: sixth grade. While Ferguson longed to develop a safer method of harnessing nuclear energy, Grandpa Uno thrusted him into the spotlight by concocting a delicious new pesto sauce for his famous four-cheese deep dish pizza at Uno's.

The judges were not impressed, thinking that Ferguson should have entered into a cooking competition rather than a science fair. He was disqualified.

(Secretly, Ferguson had double-entered the competition, submitting his designs for a new nuclear reactor under a different name, which placed first in the fair.)

Grandpa Uno designed a makeshift plaque for Ferguson, which read: "First Place - Grandpa Uno's Pesto Recipe Contest, 1994." We all pretended to be proud of him. There was a picture of Grandpa Uno on it, molded in bronze. Ferguson's name was spelled incorrectly. The plaque collected dust until it was found two years ago in an attic where he was stashing a number of relics of his time with Grandpa Uno.



R.I.P. Ferguson.

Ferguson's nuclear vessel:

Campground in Wakefield: 1991

When I was a boy, Grandpa Uno and I were playing catch along side his flower garden at the campground he had a site at. I threw the ball so hard that it went right by him and rolled along the gravel and into the women's room of the public latrine building.


Grandpa was never one to turn down opportunity and sent me, a boy of seven, into the unknown place. It was dark, rank, and a 68 year old chain smoker named Gloria Gifford was stepping out of the shower. She taught me things I never wanted to know.


In sixth grade, Mr. Audet, my science teacher, tried to teach us about sex. I was the only one who raised my hand.


Thanks Grandpa Uno.

Krapp's Last Tape: 1995

I remember the time me, Jeff, Grandpa Uno, and a homeless guy named Bill Palansky improvised our own version of Krapp's Last Tape. God, Grandpa Uno shouted at the top of his lungs - stifling the passers-by of Kennedy Plaza: "May the excrement fly!!" It was a gut-wrenching performance, and perhaps the deciding factor in why Jeff became an actor.

The Great Grandpa Uno Mishap - Argentina: 1993

It was a mysterious event surrounding Grandpa Uno going to the Pampa Plain and upsetting that enormous herd of bovine and then mistaking the Aurora Australius for something quite different. While slightly acid tripping at the time, he punched a thirteen year old boy that had stepped on his shoelace earlier that day, and upon the sighting of the Aurora Austrialus, he confused it for the agoraphobia he had been cured of as a child. Standing distraught in the middle of the Pampa Plain, he manically sought out immediate shelter. The nearest place was Pizzeria Uno on State Road in Orlando. He ran the whole way, stopping only twice, for liquor and the loving embrace of an unknown woman.

Weeks later the unknown woman showed up at his doorstep claiming that after that last piece of pie they had shared together, she had fallen madly in love with him and had been trying to track him down ever since. The pie was lemon meringue thin crust pizza (something he had once proposed to Pizzeria Uno, though field-testing demonstrated it to be "too good for [their] clientele"). Grandpa Uno paid homage to the woman, though not willing to sacrifice his livelihood and future for her, by naming a small town which he founded in Western Pennsylvania "Meringue, PA." There he produced community theatre productions, including three works of Beckett and a musical version of 101 Dalmations.