THE PIE SHOP
THE PIE SHOP
BY JOHN TUFT
About an hour north of Phoenix is the small town of Black Canyon City in Yavapai County. The elevation and population are pretty near the same number, roughly 2000, give or take. I-17 gets you there and the first climbs on the road are only hints of why might lie ahead, as farther peaks loom large on the horizon. Everything around is desert. Endless desert. The coolness of Flagstaff is still more than an hour away and the giant cacti watching over the Sanoran Desert look tired of the whole enterprise. The McDowells are to the south, then Scottsdale and you get thirsty just thinking about going outside. If one gets tired of endless brown there is the endless blue overhead. Adobe is de rigueur as far as building style and the wildlife knows enough to stay out of the heat of the day.
Not so those who are making their way to the World’s Best Pie Shop, in existence since 1918, in Black Canyon City. The building takes a running start at ramshackle in all directions away from the parking lot. Inside it is still early twentiety century and the owners seem to prefer it that way. If the desert and all of its faatigued sentinels don’t have to change, why should the human endeavor of pies? The parking lot is nearly always full and if you have a hankering for pie on your way home late Sunday, heading back from Flagstaff, you might have to wait in line just to park in the lot. There is a restaurant to one side of the pie laden entranceway, and a cafe to the other side. All of it “early American no nonsense“ in style, bring your American sized appetite, and for God’s sake, try the pie.
I look around as I climb down out of my brother’s pick up truck, in itself a marvel of projected strength and a 12 speaker sound system to boot. Our touchstone is music and we have spent the hour on the road listening to our shared treasure of lyrics and harmonies. Across the way, shimmering in the heat, the mountains appear to be giving a collective shrug at how humans express themselves in food and song. They appeared before the human race of bean eaters and bean counters, and they shall still be there, shrugging, as the race passes from the planet. Makes them no nevermind how long it takes. Dust is always welcome in the desert.
Inside the first part of the building are stacks of fresh pies. Our mission is to procure a blueberry one to get us through the songs still to be sung, the memories to be gently laid to rest, the celebration of mysteries involving love of women, love of family, and the wonder of music as the true language of the human spirit. We are both in our 70s yet we both believe in the promise of more good days ahead. And that it is up to us to seek out those good days and cherish them for we both know the costs of the bad ones and their scars which can leave the heart as fragile and dry as the landscape surrounding the pie shop.
Up until this moment, the desert had only existed in my imagination. Now it is everywhere that I look, inviting humility and fortitude, warning of foolishness of those who would conquer, offering a terrible beauty and a finality of solitude. As precautioned, I had been drinking water ever since I arrived and now it was time to pay the piper. We wend our way through the ramshackle to the rear to seek the unction of relief. When we are back among the pies, I have a stray thought about my mother. And hospitality as a virtue. How the act of hospitality, showing someone with our actions, that they are welcome in our presence, invited to share our meal, may be the purest form of being human…together.
A piece of pie and a good song. Held up as a candle against the chaos and dismay and despair that marks our current world of everybody wanting to know everything about everyone through the wonder of electronic media. We procured the aforementioned blueberry pie and retreated to the airconditioned sanctuary of melody and memories. Someone sending you a picture of the piece of pie that they are about to eat is an impoverished substitute for being at the table with them, tasting that same pie, hearing that same music. But such requires effort, commitment to make it to your friends and family’s presence, a retuning of one’s will to what will actually bring joy.
That evening we watched a movie about a musician and songwriter. While we feasted unapologetically on blueberry pie and ice cream. Please don’t tell me that you wring your hands at the disconnectedness and despair of our world if you are unwilling to make a trip to the pie shop and share it with someone who wants to know you. Someone who wants to know how music saves the mortal soul and believes that you, at least, are in the right key. Don’t worry about the desert. It will still be there. Those cacti never get too excited about anything. We all are just passing through. Once you know that, and that the good folks at the pie shop welcome all comers, you can focus on what really matters.
Words are magic and writers are wizards.
