It had been three years since I’d visited family for holidays, not because I didn’t want to visit them but because I always had to work or do something. We were gathering for a holiday lunch, and I’d picked up a couple of vinegar pies, pies made by a bakery in the Appalachians close to my house that had origins dating back to the Depression era. They looked like lemon pies at first glance, a yellow, jelly-like substance that jiggled in the front seat of my truck when I hit potholes on I-75 heading South to the flatlands.
I’d sampled the pies at a restaurant in the mountains that had a vista that made the TVA lake below look like a mud puddle. My first bite tasted a bit like lemon with that bite back taste of vinegar, and I tapped my feet along with the string band as they played old favorites like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Memories of long-gone family members swirled into view and fueled my desire to visit family. The more I ate the pie, the more I liked it because of the juxtaposition of sweet and bitter. I figured if I took vinegar pies, the family would get to experience something new and different, a taste of the Appalachians.
When I opened the front door of my sister’s house, the smells triggered monster-like growls in my stomach. We had at least an hour before a line of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews pushed and shoved to be first just like they had done in elementary school to get the lunchroom pizza or to pee in the restroom. Hugging my sister, I noticed she hadn’t changed a bit if one overlooked the crow’s feet, stained teeth, and gobbler neck. Her look was the same as her 1980s high school portrait on the wall next to the television—teased black hair that looked like a bear cub on her head, a colorful sweater when the temperature was in the eighties outside, and a pair of oxblood penny loafers.
I’d forgotten all about family members’ polyps, car wrecks, arthritis, divorces, and addictions, but they refreshed my memory in their rehashing while in line—the colonoscopy that revealed nineteen polyps removed from cousin Nell, Uncle Frank’s being t-boned in his Altima by a beer truck that drove him to drink again, and Aunt Freda’s coming home and catching her husband Roger in bed with his high school sweetheart and her chasing him onto the roof with a shotgun, where the police coaxed her from lowering the gun and handing it over. She knew Roger wouldn’t press charges because she’d hunt him down and shoot him like an old buck standing in a clearing on a foggy morning, though he was way less valuable.
The plates weren’t large enough to hold the helpings spooned out and heaped together, but Uncle Frank announced, “It’s all going to the same place.” Smoked ham and turkey, lima beans, macaroni and cheese, corn casserole, squash casserole, sweet potato casserole, and more were squeezed together, and several of us went back for seconds.
My niece Sarah had reluctantly brought her new fiancé Tom who stuck by her side. We learned he was something in law enforcement, and while we all respected that when we needed law enforcement, most of the family thought they were fundraisers for the state trying to bring in revenue for newer and faster patrol cars, raises for elected sheriffs, and extras for the jails for sorry prisoners who didn’t deserve any extras. We’d all been recipients of law enforcement’s tickets, and learning what Tom did for a living set off a lot of stories, not ticket stories but illegal activities of which none of them had been caught.
Uncle Frank talked about not paying taxes for years, either trading services or dealing in cash, my sister’s husband Sam said he’d taken things from work when times were hard, but Cousin Nell’s confession of growing, selling, and smoking marijuana took the pie. Poor Sarah was laughing, and several relatives commented on Tom being baptized into the sins and crimes of our family. Tom, too, laughed and squeezed Sarah’s hand, a signal they should get going and take a dessert with them.
In the meantime, Uncle Frank cut the vinegar pie I’d brought, thought it was lemon without the meringue. I watched him cut, spoon it into his mouth, swirl it around, and swallow.
“What the hell kind of pie is this?”
“It’s vinegar pie from the Appalachians, Uncle Frank,” I said.
“You can take this shit back to the mountains. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s got sweet, and it’s got bitter. It was first made in the Depression when people were even poorer than now.”
“Should’ve quit making them after the Depression then,” Frank said. He was already back at the buffet, cutting a piece of pecan and buttermilk pies and flopping them into the lima bean juice still floating on his plate.
“It was great meeting all of you,” Tom said, as he and Sarah stood. We didn’t know if the relationship would withstand the family holiday lunch, but we figured if they stayed together, they’d have a destination wedding and none of us would be invited because of the expense, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time that a destination wedding had happened in the family. Some had been to a Florida beach, some had been to the Great Smoky Mountains, and some had been to a courthouse in an adjacent county, but everyone knew they’d expect wedding gifts. If Tom and Sarah got married and came to the next holiday lunch, relatives would claim fiction on the previous shenanigans. They wouldn’t want to get on Tom’s radar.
