In Bob We Trust.

As a conservative, I cherish traditions and institutions that keep our collective culture strong and bind us together as a people. Like Pizza Bob's. Tonight my son and I found ourselves 'round suppertime at the corner of State & Packard in Ann Arbor. There was only one course of action to satiate our hunger pangs. We walked into the store and images of Bob's stout face greeted us from a dozen framed tee-shirts ringing the walls. On the timescale of campus establishments, Bob's is as old as the Sequoias, going back to 1972 (and Bob worked in the original store before that time). The United States was born in Philadelphia, but the Chipati was born in Bob's. I think that the original Chipati is now in a hermetically sealed, blast-proof case right next to the Declaration of Independence. Paul Revere's ride has been immortalized in prose. And there is Pizza Bob Haiku.

To paraphrase James Earl Jones' character in Field of Dreams, buildings and men have come and gone, the face of country has been wiped clean like a slate. But Pizza Bob's has marked the time.