The Pie War That Saved Our Fair

The new fair board president is a woman named Delphine Ott, transferred in from the county extension office two years back, sharp as a tack and about as warm as a filing cabinet, though I want to be fair to her, because by the end of this she earned more grace from me than I expected to give. That June evening, Delphine stood up at the front of the hall with a clipboard and a face like she’d rather be anywhere else, and she told us the fair board had voted to fold the baking contest into what she called “a general dessert table, no judging, no ribbons, just a nice spread for folks to enjoy.”

The room went so quiet you could hear the box fan rattling in the window.

“You’re cutting the pie contest,” Vernon said. He didn’t stand up. Vernon never stands up for anything, he just gets louder sitting down.

Delphine said the numbers didn’t lie. Six entries last year. Four the year before. The ribbons cost money, the judges wanted a stipend now, the insurance rider on the tasting table had gone up, and the fair board operated on a budget that had not grown since the Clinton administration. She said it wasn’t personal, it was arithmetic.

“It is personal,” I heard myself say, standing up, which I also never do. “That pie table has been at this fair since before Delphine Ott was born, present company excepted, no offense to Delphine.” Delphine did not look offended, exactly. She looked like a woman doing long division in her head. “You want to save it,” I said, “we will get you entries. We’ll get you thirty entries if that’s what it takes.”

I had no earthly idea, at the moment I said it, how I was going to get anybody thirty entries. I had just watched somebody threaten to erase the one thing in this town I have poured a piece of my actual heart into since my husband Delroy passed, and my mouth got ahead of my sense, which my mother always warned me it would.