Piecrusts

Piecrusts
 
 
 
My piecrust, nowadays, would be made by Mrs. Smith or Pillsbury.  But once upon a time, and I do mean once, I did make a piecrust.  A piecrust for an apple pie, which if I do say so myself, turned out to be delicious.  I made it on a Saturday, in the winter, while living in a tiny, very cozy trailer on the grounds of the Florida State University Married Student Housing Trailer Park.  Today it’s probably called Merry Acres or Hilltop Haven or anything other than the FSU Trailer Park.  But I digress.
 
I was a newlywed and I was very serious about what “the wife” (that’s what Dennis called me to our neighbors)—about what “the wife” should bring to the marriage.  Dennis had already proven to be very handy with saws and measuring tapes, and hammers and ladders from the top of which he clearly expected me to be “the gofer.”  “Hey, Babe, can you hand me that screwdriver?  Hey, Babe, could you go for a cold drink?”  Half the neighborhood called me Babe, thinking it was my nickname. 
 
But back to the piecrust.  I decided that now would be a good time to branch out from spaghetti and meat loaf and baked chicken and mashed potatoes and pound cake, pretty much my repertoire when we married.  I got out my nearly new Betty Crocker cookbook I’d gotten for a wedding present from some of my college roommates.  It was the early ‘60’s.  In five years, no female college student would give another female college graduate a cookbook for a present, not under any circumstances.  They’d be burning cookbooks, along with their bras.
 
Anyhow, I had a cookbook—one cookbook—and it had 6 pages on how to make a piecrust.  I read them all carefully before beginning.  I’ll admit I was a little concerned that I didn’t own a special utensil—I forget what it’s called—for folding the flour into the lard.  Lord, now there’s a product I don’t use a lot of anymore. But I’ve always forged ahead, so without the special utensil, I made do with something.  After what seemed like, and probably was, hours later, out of the oven came the most beautiful, delicately browned, bubbling apple pie you’ve ever seen.  I set it to cool on the corner of our tiny kitchen table.
 
When Dennis came home from his job caring for laboratory animals at the end of the day, he stepped inside the door, took a deep breath, and said, “Wow, who brought us a pie?”