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An Apple Pie Teaches About Life

By David Pego

That's how I was taught that life should be. A pie cooling on the windowsill. Friends and strangers heading toward your house. Drawn by magic goodness born of other’s gifts.

That was how my famous grandmother, Leno Pego Strong, used to create amazing weekdays that brought much our community together. We lived in a grey-boarded reservation home that in later years wore a handsome cloak of white aluminum. The shiny exterior hid the cracks that lay inside, just as my grandmother’s pies sometimes hid the truth of our being and meager resources.

I called her Granny. And she called me Davey. And she was proud that I loved her pies. But who didn’t? Apparently, no one – because many made excuses to come visit Granny’s house, where you didn’t need a reservation because we were on one. Heh. Heh.

Granny had a parking lot as large as the stores where she hunted for bargains early in the morning and gathered all sorts of items that could be made into pies or a day-long soup to feed anyone hungry who wandered along. Yes, hunters and gatherers we were – like those Indian history textbooks say.

She, in her comfortable sweater and me in my torn, secondhand blue jeans and always-puzzled expression. She, wearing an ever-present smile and me, looking at others and worrying that they might make fun of me. We hunted and gathered at several stores. Bargains from that morning’s newspaper ads. Bargains from the day-old bread bins. Bargains from anyplace, anywhere. We could only afford bargains and large soup bones that they used to give away free – and even some had meat on them, either carelessly left by the butcher on a previous day or generously left because he knew we would have gone hungrier without his uncareful, but saving slice of life.

When home again, Granny would cook and bake. Soon, there were warming smells floating through a cold Michigan house. And I never have felt so warm in my life as when I sat by her oven or when she was holding court at her tiny white table and I could sit on the floor, my arm wrapped lovingly around the bottom of her leg.

If you bake it, they will come. I have no doubt. I watched it happen. Even before the first batch of pies could cool and a second batch was begun, folks would show up. It was as if by putting that first pie to cool on the windowsill that Granny had raised a flag of surrender, saying we give up, come and share what we have. But not in a mean way. That was not Granny. It was just that she believed as her grandfather’s grandfather had. He had run 130 miles to save a white settlement once, because he believed that folks of all races could live here. He gave his life to save people that didn’t look like him. Granny, who took me and the family there from time to time to remember his lesson, had the goodness of Chief White Pigeon in her blood and heart. And in her pies.

Man, those pies were amazing. After all those years, I can taste and smell them still.

It was the only time a dust-poor Indian boy like me was going to shake hands with a mayor! When he came by to inquire about the reservation and ask Granny in quiet but as very official voice as he could if there was extra pie this late morning. And there always was. He loved to spoil his lunch but make his day.

Through the entire afternoon they came. Savoring the apple pie with suntanned crusts that had waves of dough rolling across their tops, looking much like the heartland of America with its rolling hills and persistent dreams. A first bite was heaven and a visitor would always nod thoughtfully in Granny’s direction and chew slowly so as not to miss a moment of goodness.

And often, those visitors would bring part of the next day’s pies. A bag of sugar. Some eggs. A couple of bags of flour. Maybe it was government-issued commodity food – items we knew were leftovers or throwaways from somewhere but something that kept us all alive. Another government promise kept. Oh yeah. Oh boy. Others, from town, like the mayor, brought stuff they had purchased from the eyesight shelves at Trojan Foods or the supermarket. Contributions from all kinds of Americans – for the next day’s All-American pies. It sounded like the reservation version of the children’s story “Stone Soup,” but I guess it was stone pies. Rock solid pies.

Whether she knew it or not, Granny was an ambassador of goodwill with apple pies as her calling card.

She sometimes talked about how she made baskets. I would sit at her feet and watch as her overly aging hands pulled the black ash splints together. She told me in times we shared that together the many colored strips of woods could not do much on their own - even when they were all grouped together, lying in a mass of a single color, looking as one but ready to be split apart. It was only when they were woven together that they made a strong container, sturdy enough to carry love-filled pies.

Remind me to tell you about her Indian corn stew sometime. As it turns out, the corn with many colors is more flavorful than those all-white, all-red, all-black, and all-brown varieties that you find in most stores today. I guarantee you.