Early this morning, a 36-year-old tradition in my home town of Savanna, Illinois was gutted by fire. Beloved Manny’s Pizza, a Main Street focal point in this small town along the Mississippi River, was consumed by flames as firefighters from eight stations across rural Illinois and Iowa battled the tragic fire.

Savanna, Illinois is no typical small town (population 3,188). In a state where the median household income is $56,235 and where 10.7% of residents live below the poverty level, Savanna’s median income is $32,262 and almost 17% of the population lives below the poverty line.  The nearest city with a population over 50,000 is a full 40 minutes away. There are four grocery stores and 11 full-service restaurants in the entire county. This is a town where people rely on one another.

Savanna is also a fairly crime-free and trusting community where people leave their houses and car doors unlocked. If you get into trouble or do something good, you can be sure that everyone will know about it by the next day. The picturesque town is nestled in the hills behind towering bluffs that flank the wide and majestic Mississippi River. When I grew up there, extracurricular activities included boat trips and water skiing on the river, hiking in the tree-filled forests of the Mississippi Palisades State Park, reading books borrowed from the public library (where my mom worked), attending high school sports events, and eating Manny’s Pizza.

Suffice it to say, like the town itself, Manny’s Pizza is not your run-of-the-mill pizza joint. A visit there was always about far more than eating (although that was important, too). Manny’s was where the community gathered—for nearly four decades running until this morning’s terrible blaze. Birthdays, weddings, basketball game victories, tracks records, good report card grades, and the homecomings of former Savanna residents were all celebrated here.

When most children grow up and return home, they might return to the houses and the families of their youth. In Savanna, we also returned to Manny’s. No visit home was complete without it. And like Cheers, it was a place where everybody knew your name. Whether you had been gone for 2 years or 10, someone dining or enjoying a beer at Manny’s was sure to recognize you and say hello.

Manny’s was also the place the community came together in times of tragedy. This past spring, my heart and joy, my fairy god sister, Rachel, passed away. The night of her wake, Manny’s Pizza was the place where the community informally assembled. Former Savanna folks traveled from California, Colorado, Chicago, and the like to drink to Rachel’s memory and comfort our loss with the familiar taste of our hometown pizza. In pictures framed on the walls, Rachel smiled down at us, wearing her volleyball uniform and posing with her high school team. Old school uniforms hung on the walls. Manny’s held Rachel’s—and Savanna’s—history like a grandmother proudly displays her family memorabilia.

And of course, Manny’s pizza was without competition (and still is—they thankfully have a few other locations in the county now serving their pizza. Although none have the history or the memories of the Savanna location). An entire large cheese pizza there cost a mere $10. Served on a crisp, wafer-thin crust, the cheese had a way of melding as one with the light layer of sauce, forming a chewy, juicy top that was in perfect texture balance with the crust. I have eaten my fair share of pizzas in cities from Chicago to San Francisco, and I have never found a pie quite like this one. It simply can’t be replicated.

So, this morning when news arrived that Manny’s Pizza was on fire, the Savanna community (scattered as we are across the nation as folks have grown up and moved away from home) sent a flurry of text messages and Facebook posts about the news. This is not the loss of the mere bricks and mortar of a building. We know that buildings can be rebuilt (and according to one news story, owner Manny Castro intends to do just that). This is the loss of a space that contained all our many shared memories.

Hearts go out to the Castro family—owners of this irreplaceable community landmark.