The Momentum of the Pita Pit.
There are few food experiences as satisfying as building your own meal. Standing at a food counter, and informing a disinterested teenager what vegetables you want on your sub, on your burrito, on your salad, or in this case, on your pita.
My love affair with the Pita Pit began in the land that owns my heart — New Zealand. At the time, there was no Pita Pit where I lived in Matamata, but I was a regular customer in Rotorua and Tauranga and Hamilton whenever my friends would drive through these places with my butt planted in their passenger seats.
My reverence for this restaurant was always a mystery to my companions. But there are very few chain restaurants with any decent gluten free modifications, and what beyond reheated falafel could be so greasy while still feeling healthy? I digress.
The only Minnesota location is in Mankato, several hours out of town. So upon my return home to the US, I resigned myself to the belief that I would be returning to a life without such a beloved establishment. …That was, of course, until my first trip down to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with my partner Taylor; where his family is from and where there is not just one blessed Pita Pit, but two locations.
South Dakota is a state West of my upbringing in Minnesota. It’s a place of layered and complex history, where for over 10,000 years it has been the homeland of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota peoples. Later came white settlers — when farmers from Norway and Germany fundamentally altered this area by the establishment of homesteads and lineage. And again now, in this age of computers and fast life, the state has seen significant expansion and city sprawl.
My own understanding of South Dakota being limited to a handful of childhood road trips to the Badlands and to the Corn Palace. To Crazy Horse and Wildlife Loop Road found within Custer State Park. The part of South Dakota I was least familiar with? The farmland and the country culture and the history outside our own vehicle.
Sioux Falls is not farmland, but it is surrounded by it. It is the largest city in South Dakota, and it still has nothing on the cities I inhabit. It is quite simply a different speed and style of life, and one that I have come to appreciate visiting on our bimonthly trips down.
Taylor drives around his hometown still with authority. He knows the roads and their turns. He knows the shops, and even though our life journeys to this point have been near polar opposites, he too has foundational memories at the Pita Pit.*
So in this small town, entirely foreign from the sulfuric-scented air of Rotorua or the bustling avenues of Minneapolis — imagine my surprise at the sudden appearance of my favourite build-your-own pita local. This first South Dakota encounter was at the beginning of my applications for grad school and Fulbright, when all I wanted was to be back in New Zealand and where all I felt was so far removed from that dream. Yet what was weird and exciting to me was entirely expected to him. And in this most ordinary of crossroads, I could not help but feel the presence of all the little milestones that led to this moment. It was as if the appearance of this establishment was the universe speaking loudly but in few words.
And perhaps it is being a bit dramatic to find such meaning in a chain restaurant? But perhaps I've spent too much time studying history — for once you start tracing the movement of one event into the next, it's difficult to stop. There are countless occurrences in my life that have inspired such reflection, when the placement of things seem too well fitted to be mere coincidence. Take for instance the Matamata Brass Band:
I first encountered the band on a hot, sunny, summer day in December 2022. I was on my way to the Hobbiton Football staff league game, being newly hired and still without out-of-work hobbies. On our drive to the football fields of rural New Zealand, in a town of little more than 9,000 inhabitants — I spotted a brass band, loading their equipment onto the back of a flat bed truck. Having considerably more interest in music than football, I had an email drafted and sent to the advertised address before reaching the sidelines. I came to learn that the band, a staple of the community, was fundraising for their annual trip to the National New Zealand Brass Band Competition. Importantly, they had room for another tubist to join them.
So that’s how I found myself eating at the Pita Pit in Dunedin, where the Matamata Brass Band took second place in our division. Yet the history of this band is far more extensive than my own participation; it dates back to 1934! A generational experience for some families, where fathers and daughters and grandchildren all wear the same red marching uniform. The band has been touring around town at Christmas time, fundraising from the back of flatbed trucks since the early 80’s, as well as performing at Anzac Day services and in national competitions all across Matamata’s layered and complex history. My involvement being only a heartbeat in the life of the band, it still meant everything and more in my own life; a major turning point in my story.
And I relived this momentum again just last week, when in my current summer-history-project on the University of Minnesota Marching Band, the first papers I came across in the archives was that of a brochure from the National New Zealand Brass Band Competition. A strange thing to find in Minnesota? But then again, perhaps it was only a chance finding.
The search for meaning and significance also can be less happy, particularly when it comes to illness. Momentum finding in insurance denials and global pandemics and surgery complications requires far more creativity than fast food, and it happens much further out. Why did illness choose me? And why did it all happen just as I was coming of age?
But if I had never been sick I would have never gone to New Zealand (or played with the Matamata Brass). And if I had never been sick, I would not be in school now.
And if I had never been sick I would have never met Taylor — and if I had never met Taylor, I would have never gone to the Pita Pit in Sioux Falls, nor found myself pondering the Big History of South Dakota (or Matamata).**
And perhaps that is what I am searching for in every Pita Pit or archive I visit: Where does today’s narrative fit into a continuous story, in a world with a much larger history than my own thirty years?
But maybe that is the point. Maybe the true value of experience and circumstance can only be found from a distance and in the collective.
Taylor and I’s trip to Sioux Falls this weekend may well have been bigger than our first. We came with many updates — the most significant being that of our engagement. Hot on the heels of that, we are both boarding a plane in just 6 days for our summer UK travels. And of course, there is our upcoming adventure to New Zealand — now only one year away.
After another round of hugs and handshakes and Midwestern goodbyes, we stood ordering at the counter of the Pita Pit in Sioux Falls. Over our meal we cheered to us and to history and to finding momentum in the mundane.
And until next time,
-HK
*Taylor would like to clarify that he did frequent or even go into the restaurant in his youth, but he still passed by it often enough.
**Learn more about Big History!
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