Gladys Pies

My grandmother Gladys was a pie baker.  She wasn’t a professional or anything but she was very well known around town.  And when I was a kid, for one week a year, she would put out as many pies as many bakeries.

During the week of the county fair, my grandmother sold pies and other baked goods in the Country Store.  My whole family was involved in selling baked items there.  The Country Store is still a part of the fair but no longer sells any food products.  At some point, I guess in the 80’s, the local health department decided that it was too risky to let little old ladies bake pies and sell them to their friends and neighbors in this way.  Believe me, there were long time customers of those fair pies that were very disappointed.  I suspect she may have even sold a pie or two from her house those first years after we were banned from the fair to keep a few people from having withdrawals.

I also remember her making quick breads, Oatmeal Scotchies and some sort of maple walnut cake.  Well, actually, I don’t remember ever seeing her bake any of those things.  What I remember is seeing them ready to be sold.  I remember packing all those pies in crates and loading them into the back of my uncle’s truck for the short trip to the fair grounds.  You could walk to the fair from her house but not with pies, cookies and cakes in tow. 

We stayed with my grandmother for the whole week but I never saw her making the pies because she was up before dawn and done before I ever stumbled into the kitchen for my bowl of cereal.  By the time I was waking up, the oven had been turned over to my mother who was baking off white bread and cinnamon rolls.  All of the quick breads and cookies were usually baked ahead of time, packaged up and frozen until the day they were needed.  

I also never remember my grandmother baking anything that wasn’t for sale, either for the fair or the yearly lawn sale.  I have no fond memories of eating my grandmother’s baked goods.  I am sure that we occasionally got to eat things that were leftover but never the pies.  The pies were never left over.  I never gave away any of the things that I baked for the fair either.  If my dad or brother wanted a cookie or piece of fudge, they knew they would have to pony up the cash.  This was the lesson I learned from my grandmother instead of learning how to make pies. 

I am not a pie baker.  It is ironic that pies are the item I least like to make.  I find working with pie dough to be difficult and messy.  Pies are not a favorite treat to eat and I am likely to only make one or two a year, usually at Thanksgiving.  But when I do make them, they get rave reviews.  Hmm, genetics?