All Those Cherries

I have always liked cherry pie, but I didn't fall in love with cherry pie and Montmorency cherries until I got married and moved to Canada.  The reason?  My former wife's Aunt Kay.  She made the best cherry pies I had ever tasted.  The filling came from cherry trees in her back yard, the pie crust was always homemade, and perhaps the crowning touch was that the pies were baked in her old-fashioned kitchen stove.

This couple was unlike any I had ever met.  Kay's husband worked as a border guard at the US/Canada border crossings south of Vancouver, and Kay, trained as a nurse, dutifully stayed home to raise their two children.  In some ways, they were quite ordinary people, but in other ways, they were extraordinary.  I had never met a couple who had so many hobbies.  

Kay and Verne's house in White Rock, British Columbia in 1995.
  They purchased it furnished in 1953 and still had the same furniture 50 years later.

They both loved to travel, and they had an old van that they had converted into a camper, in which every summer they would take trips literally all over Canada and the United States.  Because they were into photography, they had literally thousands of slides they had taken on these trips as well as at various family gatherings over the years.  

The rear of Kay's house, showing part of her large garden.

Kay's husband, who was a Canadian paratrooper who had been captured on D-Day and spent almost a year in a German prisoner of way camp, was a Scout leader for many years.  He also collected butterflies, and his collection was proudly displayed in cases on the wall of their modest living room.  Later in life, he took up rock polishing.

Verne with his troop.  He is the leader on the right.

Verne reading to Adam, spring of 1992

Kay was not a whit behind Verne in her own hobbies.  She loved to garden.  Their home won a number of prizes for landscaping over the years (she once surreptitiously clipped a starter of ivy from Kew Gardens in England and smuggled it back home so as to be able to plant it in her garden), and she had a large vegetable and fruit garden in the back of their home that included two large Montmorency pie cherry trees. She also loved to read.  She had, for example, every single issue of National Geographic and had read them all - more than once.

Kay and Verne in their living room in 2000.  Part of Verne's butterfly collection is visible to the left, and part of their huge collection of slides is visible in the closet to the right.  They are sitting on their living room couch, which had come with the house when they purchased it in 19533.

My four older kids in Kay's kitchen in 2000. Note the propane kitchen stove behind them. This, too, had
come with the house. This and a hotplate were Kay's kitchen appliances used for cooking and baking.

As I said, I loved Kay's cherry pies, and she always brought one to a family gathering because she knew I liked them so much.  She also eventually let us pick a pail or two of cherries off her trees that we used to make crisps in the middle of winter or to use in Black Forest cakes or to make sauce for pancakes and waffles.  Yum.

About ten years ago, we discovered a place north of Ogden, Utah that grew pie cherries commercially.  The area between Ogden and Brigham City is famously called "Fruit Way," and Highway 89 is lined with peach, apricot, apple and cherry orchards, as well as farms that grow produce.  We started going up their and purchasing large pails of cherries which we then froze to use throughout the year.  The flavor was incredible, and they were far, far cheaper than those available in cans at the store (which also had little flavor).

Fast forward to last week.  I drove up to the place we had always gone to purchase a couple of pails of cherries for my former wife and the children and also to get some for Mark and me.  While there, I noticed that they had pre-cooked frozen cherry pies for sale for $10 each.  They were not doubled-crusted, but were more like a cherry glaze pie (with no sugar, at least according to the label).  I purchased one to try, and Mark absolutely loved it.  He suggested I go back up and purchase a bunch of pies to keep in the freezer, to be used throughout the winter.

So, that's what I did yesterday, taking a cooler to put the pies in.  As I drove up, I could see the older gentleman who owned the place, standing in his garage, where all the freezers containing the cherries are located.  He watched me pull my cooler out of the back seat and walk towards him.  As I got closer, I could see that he had a perplexed look on his face.  I walked right up to the freezer containing the pies and started loading them in the cooler.  There were eight pies in there.  I was going to purchase his complete inventory.

He walked over.  The perplexed look on his face had not become one of concern.  "What 'you doing?" he asked.  "I'm going to purchase all your pies," I replied, as I continued loading. 

"You're going to buy all those pies?" he asked, incredulous.  I replied in the affirmative.

"But what are you going to do with all those pies?  Oh my word, my wife is not going to be happy.  She hates making cherry pies."  The irony of this, on several levels, was not lost on me.  First of all, he was expressing concern bordering on panic that I was going to purchase his complete inventory - as if he wasn't in the business of selling cherries and cherry products.  Secondly, they had a cherry farm, and his wife hated making cherry pies?

"I'm going to freeze them," I replied, "and use them throughout the winter."  As an afterthought, I asked how long the pies would keep in the freezer.  

"Oh," he laughed, "they'll keep for a hunderd years!"  I wouldn't need them quite that long, but I was reassured that they would last for a number of months in the freezer.

"But what are you going to do with all those pies?" he again asked, nervously glancing toward the door into the house.  "My wife is not going to be happy."

By then, I had loaded all eight pies into the cooler and had gone over to another freezer to get another smaller pail of cherries to take home.  He looked at the pail, then at me, and with almost a look of desperation on his face, he pleaded, "Why don't you make your own pies with them there cherries?"

I laughed and said, "I don't make cherry pies."  The look of deep concern on his face persisted.

"My wife is not going to be happy," he again said.  "But I guess your money is as good as anybody else's."  I think it had finally dawned on him that the purpose of making the pies was to sell them, not for them to stay in his freezer, and he could just as easily sell them to me as to others.  But, I could imagine that he had made a deal with his wife that she make so many pies to sell throughout the season and that was it; no more.  Now, he was faced with a quandary.  Should he accept the fact that he had sold out and ask his wife to make some more, or should he just take the sign down on the pie freezer.  I'm sure this had never happened before.

"But what are you going to do with all those pies?" He hadn't given up yet.  Another nervous glance toward the house.  

I simply repeated what I had previously said, several times:  "I'm going to eat them."  I wrote the check, handed it to him and felt a bit sorry for him.  He looked crestfallen, no doubt dreading the discussion he would be having with his wife.  It simply didn't occur to him that he now had the opportunity to make even more money by selling more pies.

"Oh," he muttered, "my wife hates making cherry pies."

I smiled, picked up the cooler and the pail of cherries and headed toward the car.  The man simply stood there, holding my check, a dazed look on his face.