MODERN FABLE: MISS JACKSON'S PEACH PIE

 

Miss Jackson made the best peach pie in the county. She only made them while peaches were in season preferring fresh fruit to canned. The strategy lent to strengthen the popularity of the pies: like Christmas, her pies only came once a year (a few weeks) and that, along with their extraordinary flavor, made them special. So special, they were only sold by the slice for  the demand became so strong that it wasn't humanly possible to make enough entire pies for sale. 

They were sold out of a little roadside diner owned by Miss Jackson's aunt and was blessed with plenty of parking off a paved road. Miss Jackson grew up a few miles away on a sharecropper's plot and orchard. She learned cooking from her aunt as her mother had passed when she was 8. Her father never was part of her life. 

She was a quiet yet easy-going girl and her aunt soon recognized that Miss Jackson had a special talent for making pies. What started as helping out family in their business became a full-time job. Miss Jackson never did anything else. There was a brief marriage, she had fallen for a local fellow and they were deeply in love. But, it did not last. They both wanted children but all attempts ended in miscarriage. After the third one, the doctors told her that she would never produce a child. This news ended the marriage as the most prominent goal of her husband as a man, was to produce offspring, especially a male, to carry on the family name. He loved her but he had to have his needs met and left her. It broke her heart and she never remarried and for the rest of her life she was known as Miss Jackson.

Her pies became famous and she made them for 64 years. Folks of all kinds came from all over to sample a slice. Even the most hardcore racists could not resist. They would slink in, eyes averted in shame, feeling the hard stares that met them, murmuring their order. Miss Jackson never gave them a cross word or look as she took their order at the counter and while her usual smile was present, her eyes betrayed a momentary hardness in recognition of these people who had mistreated hers for generations.

Miss Jackson died at age 84 having spent her life making pies. The pies were her creations, her children, that she lovingly made by hand, nourishing her community by giving them, no matter how hard times were, a few moments of earthly bliss.

She continued making pies in heaven where contrary to uninformed ideas, those denizens could retain corporeal form and enjoy food and drink. It was A and D day, short for Angels and Deities. A large pavilion had been set up and the angels, with their wings politely tucked in, sat at long tables enjoying a slice of pie. All wore sunglasses since ole Yahweh, in his shining brilliance had stopped by for a slice and wandered back to his office. Miss Jackson leaned against a pillar, eating a slice, listening to one of her favorite sounds, the clacking of silverware on plates and the contented sighs. Jesus, with his sunglasses on his forehead, walked up to her after finishing his slice to thank her for her efforts as He was endlessly thoughtful and polite. "Oh baby" Miss Jackson replied, motioning to her face, "you have crumbs on your beard." Jesus laughed, his brown eyes radiant, brushed them away. "Perhaps I was saving them for later" he replied with a wink.