by Steve Penhollow

In the summer of 2023, I went to Clay’s Family Restaurant in Fremont and ate 12 pieces of pie.

I don’t mean that I went to Clay’s 12 times and ate a piece of pie each time.

I don’t mean that I went to Clay’s six times and ate two pieces of pie each time.

I mean I ate 12 pieces of pie in one sitting.

Why would anyone do such a reckless and irresponsible thing?

How could you even ask me such an impertinent question?

Technically, it was I who asked myself that question, but that doesn’t entirely absolve you of responsibility for how bad I am still feeling about myself, even after all this time.

The only thing worse than your lack of sensitivity to my touchiness is my touchiness.

Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.

Believe me, I did not eat 12 pieces of pie lightly.

In fact, I was heavy when I started eating them and I only got heavier as I progressed.

My excuse, despite being called flimsy by prominent pie abolishers, for having eaten 12 pieces of pie in one sitting was something called Clay’s Pie Day.

You are probably assuming that Clay’s Pie Day must have involved a pie-eating contest, and while it might make me look slightly less piggish in your eyes if I let you believe that, I cannot tell a lie (not in this sentence, anyway): All the pie-eating that occurred as part of Clay’s Pie Day was noncompetitive and non-remunerative.

Clay’s Pie Day was an event that used to happen annually at Clay’s Family Restaurant before the original owners sold the eatery in 2022.

The restaurant’s new owners resurrected the tradition for one year before closing the restaurant in 2024 for reasons that probably didn’t have anything to do with Pie Day, although my pie paranoia is growing with each successive Pie-Day-free day.

I like pie, as is evidenced by the well-padded parts of myself that tend to grow in direct proportion to how demonstrative my love of pie is.

I had missed many Pie Days by the time 2023 rolled around and I was determined not to miss what turned out to be the very last edition of this event.

Why had I missed so many Pie Days?

Oh, it’s a pretty common story, really.

Before 2022, I was a prominent reporter for an Indiana newspaper covering the red-hot rutabaga-grower economy, rutabaga-grower nightlife, rutabaga-grower social scene and trends in the rutabaga-grower-driven luxury real estate market. I had won numerous prestigious rutabaga awards, all of which were slightly different from each other but all of which were shaped like rutabagas.

At least, I think they were shaped like rutabagas.

So busy was I covering rutabaga conventions and conferences and symposia and colloquia and confabs and convocaca that I never had much time for pie. I envied the paper’s pie reporter, who showed no signs of retiring. He once confessed to me in the break room that he didn’t even like pie. I was consumed with a murderous rage that burned in me like the heat of a thousand molten pies.

But that is water over the dam (or, if you will, filling over the pie plate rim). I am no longer a rutabaga reporter and that pie reporter is no longer a pie reporter for reasons that really aren’t worth going into now.

Actually, the truth is that I suffered from a laziness about driving far away to get pie that is common among pie fanatics.

Incidentally, pie fanatics also share an aversion to rutabagas.

When the new owners of Clay’s announced a reboot of Pie Day, I bought a ticket immediately.

Yes, a ticket!

Pie Day was a ticketed event!

For a pie lover, snagging a ticket to Clay’s Pie Day was like snagging a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert is for a Taylor Swift fan.

Actually, I shouldn’t be so quick to claim that. I am not a Taylor Swift fan (although I admire everything I have managed to learn in the course of only taking a casual interest in her). For all I know, comparing Taylor Swift devotion to pie devotion makes about as much sense to Taylor Swift fans as comparing macrame owl devotion to vintage gravy boat devotion makes to macrame owl fans.

Or to vintage gravy boat fans, for that matter.

Forget I wrote it.

I am merely trying to find some common ground here. I want to help people who could take or leave pie understand why some people take any pie they can get and can’t leave any pie untaken.

It may seem hard for you to believe, but there are people who are not satisfied with one slice of pie, but who would rather (if it were socially acceptable) eat great piles of pie in one stroke.

By “in one stroke,” I mean “in one fell swoop.” I do not mean “in one blockage of blood supply to the brain.”

That’s an important distinction to make here.

I don’t know whether any other restaurants across the country sponsor their own Pie Days, but if they do, Clay’s version must have been unusual among them.

On Clay’s Pie Day, the regular menu wasn’t available to people who wanted to eat something other than pie.

On Clay’s Pie Day, the restaurant was closed to people who believe that a meal should consist mostly of things that aren’t pie.

If you didn’t have a ticket, you didn’t get in.

Like a Taylor Swift concert!

It was clear to me that Clay’s had the courage to take a stand against society’s animosity towards pie eaters even though it didn’t technically exist.

Don’t let its lack of existence fool you into underestimating its toxic impact.

I appreciated that courage as I walked through the restaurant’s red front door and gratefully beheld what I took to be a safe space for pie eaters, probably the least necessary safe space of all possible safe spaces, but also the least controversial.

I don’t know whether you recall the layout of Clay’s but it was not a large restaurant. So Pie Day meant that there was pie on almost every available surface. It was like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with pie instead of chocolate.

Just to be clear: It was like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with pie instead of chocolate despite being inside a building that was roughly one-hundredth the size of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, rather than being inside a building that was 100 times the size of a building roughly one-hundredth the size of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

I hope that clarifies things for you.

There was a small buffet of delicious non-pie items for people who came to the restaurant believing they could eat only pie and then started to have misgivings after they saw pie on almost every available surface. This small buffet of delicious non-pie items was for the cowards in our midst and, while I did eat some meatloaf and no more than six other items from it, I did so only because I felt sorry for these pitiable traitors to pie and wanted them to know that I would not lord over them with my relative commitment and resolve.

What pie did I start with?

How could you even ask me such a personal question?

Technically, it was I who asked myself that question, but that doesn’t entirely absolve you of responsibility for how bad I am feeling about having forgotten the flavor of the first piece of pie I ate that day.

The only thing worse than your lack of sensitivity to my forgetfulness is my forgetfulness.

Let me just say that there were more than a dozen varieties, each one as perfect as the cooling pies that were filched from window sills in old TV shows, Saturday morning cartoons and thrillers about pie thieves who are also mass murderers.

I made a list: blueberry, blackberry, cherry, apple, apple crumb, peanut butter, strawberry rhubarb, banana, butterscotch, chocolate cream, several kinds of rhubarb pie that didn’t involve strawberries, pecan and something called Oops Pie, a combination of pecan and tollhouse.

As I ate, I locked eyes with a guy across the room.

This wasn’t a romantic sort of eye-locking.

This was a red-blooded and brawny eye-locking. We were two macho pie lovers and alpha males, quietly and manfully acknowledging to each other our virile love of pie.

We gave each other the sort of nod that is usually reserved for bros who want to acknowledge each other in hallways but don’t want to do anything so effusive that it would cause their wisely suppressed emotions to explode like a cling-wrap pinata filled with sheep guts.

This particular nod was a pie lover’s nod, and even though I didn’t know that Clay’s would close again for good, I think I understood at some level that it was the last pie lover’s nod that would ever be nodded in that place.

I felt like the pie-loving hombre at which I nodded was having similar thoughts, although I couldn’t be sure.

I wish I had more insight into his thinking, but he and I didn’t really talk much at a nearby hotel’s continental breakfast bar the next morning.