I’m Fixing to Have a Slice of Pie
I’m fixing to have a slice of pie.
What is it about pie? Just the mere mention of pie leaves a lighter heart in the bosom than was there before. The thought of it drives all hateful and fearful thoughts from a troubled mind and turns your thoughts to sweet fruits, crunchy nuts, creams and flaky crusts.
Mark Twain often used just “pie” to mean pleasant or accommodating in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Remember when Huck said, “You’re always as polite as pie to them.”
Pie has woven its way into our American food culture becoming a symbol of home, tradition and plenty. It’s become such a national symbol of our food heritage that the familiar phrase “As American as apple pie” was coined, which can be applied to almost anything that’s strictly American. Baseball for example.
How about “Easy as pie?” that’s another coined phrase using pie. How though are pies thought to be easy? They are not easy to make. Pie, in this sense signifies the easiness with which we accomplish something. In May of 1886 in an article in Sporting Life magazine a baseball player, while being interviewed said that once he got on base, “Stealing second and third is like eating pie.” Eating pie is easy!
How about “Pie in the Sky?” This is also an American phrase which refers to “pie” as something pleasant we are promised and will eventually receive. Or, it can mean that some idea is just a pipe dream and there won’t be a pie at the end of the rainbow.
So I figured that if I eat pie every day everything will be easy and pleasant. My next thought was to make a list of 52 different pies so I could have a different one every week of the year. That was before I realized that I didn’t particularly care about rhubarb or oatmeal pie. The ones I came up with included apple pie, strawberry pie, cherry pie, banana cream pie, chocolate pie, pear pie, peach pie, Kool-Aid pie, peanut butter pie, blueberry pie, key lime pie, lemon pie, blackberry pie, coconut cream pie and pecan pie. That’s only 15 different ones, but I think I’ll be all right if I start over every 15 weeks.
The last one I mentioned—pecan pie, could be the most American of any pie. We grow a lot of pecans in the South, but I think that Texas is the state that grows the most, and I think they must have come from that state because fossils indicate that pecan trees were in Texas at least a thousand years before any humans arrived. But when they did arrive, legend has it that they invented pecan pie by using wild honey instead of cane or corn syrup to make them.
My momma was a legendary pie baker—and I think she must have had some magic in it because it seemed as if she could take a spoon full of flour and and a handful of berries and whip one up.
I remember one time she made a banana creme pie. I was the youngest and a little boy at the time and so I got the first slice of it. When I put that first bite into my mouth my cheeks tingled with the sweetness of it. Between bites I asked her how come pie was so good?
She told me the reason pie was so good was because it was a lot like life.
When I asked her how in the world pie was like life she told me that the crust represented the principles we live by, the filling represented the actions we took and that the meringue was the sweet reward we got for living right.
I also remember she used to use “pie” to tell how she felt about people. I knew she liked somebody when she would say, “Why, she’s just as sweet as pie!”
Sadly, “American Pie” can also be connected with tragedy. Fifty-four years ago a small plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa. The crash killed the pilot, Roger Peterson. Three American rock and roll icons, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, also perished in that crash.
Singer and songwriter Don McLean called it The Day The Music Died in his famous song “American Pie.”