The Pie War That Saved Our Fair

The oven fight took longer. Vernon rewired what he could, but the old panel in the Grange kitchen was original to the building, and the county inspector, a tired looking man who clearly wanted to be fishing, told us flat out the second oven wasn’t safe to run under load no matter what Vernon did to the breaker. That meant fifteen pies would need to bake or finish warming on one working oven, on contest morning, on a schedule, which sounds like a small problem until you have actually tried to coordinate fifteen women and one stubborn old man around a single oven door.

We fixed it the only way Hickory Flat ever fixes anything, which is by asking around until somebody’s cousin has exactly what you need sitting unused in a barn. Hoyt from the feed store had an old electric roaster oven from his mother’s estate sale pile, still boxed, and the Baptist church kitchen had two warming ovens nobody used except at Christmas, and between the three of us hauling appliances around in the bed of Vernon’s truck for two straight Saturdays, we cobbled together enough heat to get every pie finished and warm by judging time. Vernon called it “a fire hazard held together by faith and extension cords.” I called it Tuesday, because that’s about how most things get done around here.

By the last week of July we had our fifteen. We had twenty two, actually, which Delphine noted on her clipboard with what I choose to remember as the beginning of a smile.