How Not to Move a Blueberry Pie
August 3rd–4th was Maine Wild Blueberry weekend. As you may read these words at any time through the month of August, it is likely still Maine wild blueberry season. I am inspired to write about those little treasures, but alas, I am easily distracted by the idiocy of my fellow human. Please accept the following rant in the spirit of fun; it’s a short season.
Without stretching our intellects or philosophies too far, we might imagine that how one prepares to pick up a warm, juicy, Maine blueberry pie, ordered from a back-country baker, could be seen as an exemplar of how one manages life, and adult responsibility, in general.
It's very likely that the people who order a hot blueberry pie, and then show up to collect it at the appointed time (so that it is still warm and juicy) without any thought for the pie’s transportation, are the same high-maintenance individuals who will need help at every turn. Those same folks expect a propane delivery to their remote cabin at 8:45 p.m., because they’ve just run out while steaming mussels.
They quite possibly come for the pie riding a bicycle, and of course, there is no basket, no milk crate tied to the rat-trap over the rear wheel, no plan to walk the bike carefully over the rough spots of an island highway. Keep in mind that even the main roads here are not paved; the dirt tracks accessing the rental cottages (where the customers who invariably show up on bicycles tend to stay) are exceptionally rutted and ledgy.
“I brought my backpack,” says the customer, hopefully. You can’t make this stuff up.
Sometimes they’ll even send a small child, alone, to collect the pie-- a small child on a bicycle, with a backpack.
One of my regular customers beat all this year when he showed up for his pie with one arm in a sling. I’m thinking, “Is he just messing with me?” I asked him if he’d brought a helper. He said he should have thought to look me straight in the eye and innocently reply, “No; why?” just to see the look on my face. Yes; he had a helper. Whew.
“Don’t you have a box?” they generally ask, when I suggest that they cannot up-end the hot blueberry pie into their LL Bean rucksack. Sure, I’ll find you a cardboard carton or lend you a pie-sized plastic container, but look here: there is no device—no purpose-built, pie-carrying Tupperware with detachable, harvest-gold handle; no handmade ash-splint basket from some Passamaquoddy artisan, and no glossy white cardboard bakery box lovingly tied up with red string-- that can suspend the law of gravity. To get a juicy pie home without it looking you dropped it off a cliff, you need gimbals. Stabilizers. Outriggers. You need two human hands, as a rule, or at least a good set of automotive shock absorbers. On island roads, which are primitive and stony, even those might not be enough.
An awareness of the basic physical principles of our universe—you know, gravity, the normal behavior of liquids, stuff like that, helps. Some of these people act like they have never before seen a blueberry pie in the wild. They open their backpacks as though preparing to insert a frisbee.
I submit that any adult who has not yet figured out that a hot blueberry pie cannot be transported in a knapsack is not safe to be let loose on civilization. One might wonder how they manage to drive, or manage their accounting, or not wander aimlessly off into open man-holes willy-nilly. They seem to score very low on the “real-world skill” exam. They also probably never took much science in school.
A hot blueberry pie is a lot like a bowl of soup, at least in terms of its carriage and delivery needs. Well; a nice, homemade pie is. A structurally sound pie heavily reinforced with large quantities of starch, assorted vegetable gums, bathtub caulking, Portland cement, and school paste will endure clumsy transport as well as any patio paver. I do not bake those.
I am considering asking my customers to sign a waiver or a hold-harmless agreement, documenting that they understand the appearance of the pie after they have carried it is in no way my fault.
They say they don’t care, and that it still tastes the same, but I have my pride.
I am also considering commissioning a Keith Haring-style logo for my little bakery: a stick figure man with a hot pie—heat waves and steam rising—held aloft in one hand, as he pedals his bicycle over stones and lumps—the bike’s jolting motion shown by all sorts of cartoonish lines of movement.
Some of them still won’t get it.