The raison d’ etre of my writing this piece was teased out of my dream-like memory-store, in the form of the theme song of The Jefferson’s, an old television show. It went like this in my head: “we’re movin’ on up, to the East Side, to a de-luxe apartment in the sky…we’ve finally got a piece of the pie-ie-ie-ie.” Then there were references to baseball, “Now we’re up in the big leagues…Gettin’ our turn at the bat…”.
Back in the day, the 1990s specifically, and before a certain friend called Pam Foor rocketed to the top, and deservedly monopolized the genre, I won the Hershey Cocoa baking contest at the Bedford County Fair. I have the brown ribbon from Hershey and the Best of Show blue ribbon from the Fair, stuffed in a cupboard behind some old cookbooks, to prove my win.
My next-door neighbor deemed me Betty Crocker or Suzy Homemaker or some such moniker indicating my locally publicized baking prowess. For five minutes, it was heady stuff being recognized for something I had baked. I didn’t fare so well at the Farm Show in Harrisburg in January, searching high and low for fresh mint in the middle of winter, and failing, to garnish my mint chocolate cake. I knew nothing about nor cared one iota for “decoration.” My poor step-sister of a cake looked anemic and sad. But those who love me assured their Cinderella, “I’ll bet it tasted better than those ‘show-pieces’ that probably tasted like cardboard.”
It’s been twenty-five years and compared, I don’t bake much anymore. I lost the verve. Besides my specialty Christmas cookies, birthday cakes for my husband and daughter, dictated by tradition, and the odd enticing new recipe, baking is in my past. Until this week.
My other next-door neighbor and I share a “waste not want not” philosophy about food. Having to throw out food feels to us like we’ve squandered a resource. So, we both have been known to get creative with our food stores and often bake or make meals with what’s on hand.
We have some apple trees. Last year’s apple harvest was good and given my relative disinterest in baking, I had quite a bunch of apples stored.
This week, “quarantine boredom” hit me. I’m ever so grateful to be healthy and safe. However, the stay-at-home rule, for those of us who have abided by it, has made a few of us, the word for it in the common vernacular is, crazy!
So, yesterday I baked an apple tart, from a recipe found many years ago in a Gourmet Magazine. It became a favorite apple recipe, first for my mother-in-law, then me. I also tried an apple ginger upside down cake which sits firmly in the okay-but-will -toss-the-recipe, category. Given my baking reluctance, recipes that don’t rate in the can’t-live-without-this, category, get binned, as the Brits say.
Tomorrow or as soon as I can muster the baking-energy, it will be an apple cake and an apple pie or two, for my husband. He’s a “real American,” who loves apple pie.
“As American as apple pie,” originated in the 1860s. The 1974 ad jingle touting apple pie along with baseball, hot dogs, and Chevrolet, personified this pie as American.
I don’t like apple pie. Not even a slice, a piece, or a taste. In fact, pies in general get a response from me of a neutral or disinterested “meh.” Of all the dessert categories to choose from, pie is at the bottom of my list, unless we’re talking peanut butter pie. But I would argue it is a parfait atop a graham cracker crust.
And, cutting a pie into pieces. I can do precision but I’d rather not. I’m not all that fond of rulers, and in my kitchen they just don’t belong. I’m not even keen about the pie chart. It’s too exact. I want some leeway, wiggle room, space for creativity and imagination.
It comes down to temperament. I’d rather write the explanatory essay than answer true or false; “well, if you mean this…, then it’s true; but if you mean, that…, then, it’s false.” For me, there are too many ifs, or if you need to be scientific, variables, in the true or false and multiple-choice question-answer format. I’d rather explain, sometimes in detail.
So, the American dream of upward mobility, with its baseball and apple pie were alive and well in the 1970s when The Jefferson’s aired. I wonder if the American Dream, the concept coined by Writer and Historian, James Truslow Adams, in his 1931 book, Epic of America, remains relevant in today’s cultural landscape?
“That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In 1931, the same year the Star-Spangled Banner was adopted as the United States national anthem, and the nation saw the Empire State Building completed, experienced the Dust Bowl and lived the Great Depression, those words outlining the American Dream were penned.
Notice that in 1931 the apple pie of opportunity was divided among each and every person who contributed to America via “ability or achievement.” In a way, we were all relieved of the duty to contribute to the nation through our abilities or achievements, when President FDR, from 1933-1939 instituted The New Deal as a temporary umbrella to help America through the financial storm of the Great Depression that produced widespread financial hardship.
The Jefferson’s worked hard to climb the ladder to their de-luxe apartment in the sky and to get their turn at bat. It “took a whole lotta tryin…Just to get up that hill.” And, they were African-American. No excuses. Opportunity was limited. However, those who were determined to accomplish the dream, worked, sacrificed, and persisted, until they achieved their goal, located some steps up the ladder.
Theoretically, those who could not work, via disability of any sort, were and are helped by the necessary New Deal programs that remain as an umbrella for the hard times. Social security and Medicare, although part of the New Deal, were and are “insurance-like” programs that workers invested in through payroll deductions, to reap the benefits at retirement when working would no longer be an option.
If nothing else, I believe perhaps today’s perceived path to the dream has put a kink into the dreaminess of the dream. Are today’s American dreamers biding their time with hands out, hoping for pie in the sky?
Work was always built into the American way. The predominant rule for getting a piece of the pie, which is to work hard, can be followed by anyone who wants a chance at the opportunity formerly known as the American Dream.
Have some pie, and Bon appétit.