The Pie That Started a Bidding War
At the Panhandle youth livestock sale, one lemon meringue pie went for more than a steer, and two preachers were involved.
Every fall, the youth livestock show in our county ends with a charity auction, and every fall I go to bid on a steer I do not need. It is the kind of event where grown men drive up prices to please a fourteen-year-old in a clean shirt. Last year, I arrived early with my wife, took a seat in the bleachers, and prepared to be generous. The auctioneer, a big man named Cecil, cracked his gavel and opened with a pen of lambs.
Halfway through, he held up a pie. It was a lemon meringue baked by a widow named Mrs. Haverty, whose pies are the stuff of legend in this county, and the meringue stood about eight inches high. Cecil said it was for the library fund, and he started the bidding at ten dollars. A rancher near the front said twenty. A man behind him said forty. In about thirty seconds, it was a hundred, and I realized that this was no ordinary pie.
Two men fought it out. One was Brother Wendell from the Baptist church. The other was Father Tom from the Catholic parish down the road, who has a sweet tooth he does not deny. They bid against each other with growing seriousness, and the crowd leaned in like it was a heavyweight match. Each time Wendell raised, Tom raised right back, with a polite smile that did not match his eyes. At three hundred dollars, the bleachers were on their feet. At five hundred, Cecil had to sit down.
It ended at six hundred and twenty dollars, with Father Tom the winner. He walked up to the pie, lifted it with two hands, and turned to Brother Wendell with a gracious bow. Wendell, to his credit, laughed, and said he would be over for a slice after the benediction. They cut it in half in the parking lot. The library got its money, and Mrs. Haverty got a standing ovation. I mentioned the whole thing to a friend at the farm.FM recipe desk, who said the pie is the best-selling food in rural America. I will add that the FDA says nothing on the subject of meringue height, but I am sure it would approve.