Pie baking hands.

I wish I had my grandmother hands: Pie-baking hands, nimble hands that could mend or make anything. They were soft and smooth and always made me feel better. It's probably because she cooked with butter and tasted everything she made. She said that was the trick. The key to why no one could replicate her food. She said it was full of love and her saliva. We made the face of disgust in her direction and all she said was, "Do you wanna eat your momma;s gravy or mine?" We all knew no matter how hard my momma tried, she couldn't make gravy. That's the day I learned to make food with love and taste everything. Never over salt. "Let them ruin their own food she'd say."

People would travel from states away every Sunday to our flea market. Gram had a food truck where she slung burgers and dogs: homemade relish, the works. We'd sell out every weekend. Most people didn't drive more than an hour for a burger or a dog, although it was a wonderful perk. They drove for the pie: apple pie, strawberry rhubarb, peach and pear. We grew all our fruit at the yellow house on the hill. All around the barn, too. Scattered around the remnants of my great grandparents' diner that burned down before I was born. An imagination playground if you will. That barn was so big, it housed a small fleet of retired yellow school buses, a whole family of foxes, and a huge, male barn owl that came out every summer night at the same time. We would watch him swoop down into the field and snatch up those field vermin that would eat our fruit. The field that ran along the side of our treasure trove of adventure is where we grew strawberries as far as the eye could see. Some summer days we would fall asleep right there in a strawberry coma and bake our young, golden skin till we couldn't take it any more. Then we would run and jump straight into the pool.

We had our raspberries and blackberries growing up the side of the shop, ripening up in the morning sun. Berries so big! They would bust warm, sticky juice all over your face and chin. They were as big as a grown man's thumb print. The thorns were the size of small daggers. I was always amazed at how the birds could land over and over again without the fear of spiking their tiny feet, snatching up beakfulls at a time.

Back then the punishment for doing what ever was punishable was to go up to grandma's and pick, prep or bake. I would have rather picked any day. I mean the bees and the thorns were a down fall, but at least you were outside and had a breeze, and not in the 7,000 degree kitchen prepping or baking. The smell of the apples, cinnamon and allspice would be in your nose for days. There are worse things to smell I guess. My reward was some cold apple pie with Vermont sharp cheddar cheese. That always made it worth it. My siblings wanted hot pie and ice cream. I couldn't stomach it after hours of baking five pies at a time, sitting in front of that over-worked oven for hours, five pies out, five pies in. No matter how many pies we took to that old food shack placed in the corner of the field, with the shade of a hundred-year-old oak, we would always sell out. Never took one pie home. Sold out by noon. Even if we had another two ovens, I still don't think we could have kept up with the demand.