My mother was, in large part, responsible for my lack of culinary skills. She always shooed me out of the kitchen when she was cooking dinner. Oh, I helped prepare the fresh foods–shucking the corn or shelling peas from their fat pods or snapping off the ends of string beans. But always,  my job –and my sister’s–was cleaning up and doing the dishes in that tiny 1930s kitchen, dishpan in the porcelain sink, rough sacking towels hanging nearby for drying and shining every dish and utensil. 

As a married woman, I learned eventually to make a standing rib roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding or roast leg of lamb and oven-browned potatoes served with mint jelly. But baking was not my forte.

One Thanksgiving, my husband and I and the three little children were going to drive up to Long Island from our home in Baltimore, Maryland, for Thanksgiving dinner with Mother and Daddy and my grandmother and aunts. They were all good cooks—Mother made wonderful, rich foods; Grandma made delicious bread and pies; Auntie concentrated on wild game and venison; Aunt Gertrude made mashed potatoes thick with cream and butter. 

I wanted to show that I had learned to cook, too. I decided I would make a pumpkin pie. 

My husband traveled, and I was on my own when it came to settling the children down for the night. I waited until they were safely in bed and asleep, then I took out Mother’s “Fanny Farmer Cook Book” and turned to page 600 for Plan Pastry.  First, I carefully measured out two cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/3 cup of butter, 1/3 cup of Wesson oil, and 1/3 cup of ice water. I mixed the salt with the flour, then worked in the butter with my fingers until the butter was no larger than peas, just as the recipe said. I added the Wesson oil and worked that in with a fork, and moistened the dough with the ice water.  Then I patted the dough into a fat bun, wrapped it in waxed paper, and put it in the refrigerator.  Next, I opened a big can of pumpkin and slid it into the pure white bowl that went with my Hamilton Beach Mixer I had received as a wedding gift five years before. I beat an egg and stirred it in. I knew Mother added her special spices to the ingredients, so I sprinkled in a 1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg.

I worked steadily in the kitchen. It was quiet and peaceful, with not a sound to disturb my thoughts. I moved deliberately, step by step, to make a nice pie for the family Thanksgiving dinner, and I didn’t want to be distracted. 

I set out on the counter my wooden rolling pin with the red handles that I had received at a wedding shower. I draped a big sheet of waxed paper alongside, large enough to accommodate the plump lump of pasty that waited in my refrigerator. I liked to admire our stylish bright-yellow refrigerator with a freezer compartment on top and sometimes polished it with the new cleaner, Glass Wax.

The trickiest part of making a pie is making the crust; I had been told.  You have to roll it out very thin and be careful not to tear the dough. I was going to follow the recipe. Roll out the dough on waxed paper, three inches larger than the pie plate so that it hangs over the edge. Fold the dough in half and lift it into the pie pan. Double the pastry edge,  making it stand upright, and press with fingers to make a fluted edge. Cool the pastry in the pie pan before putting in the pumpkin filling. Bake at 450 degrees for ten minutes and then for forty minutes more at 350 degrees. When a knife stuck into the center comes out clean, the pie is done.

I decided not to turn on the radio, although there was always good music on the late-night local programs that came from Washington, D. C. during the fifties—Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett.  I liked the quiet.

            I smoothed out the waxed paper, plopped the dough on the counter, and took up my rolling pin. I gave a good push, starting from the middle.  I pushed and lifted the rolling pin-up to keep the pasty light. Push and let up. 

“Skweek!” What was that sound? I stopped and listened. Nothing.

I rolled out again. “Skweek!”  The sound was coming from the little red handles of my rolling pin. I stopped still.  Then I heard “Skweek!”  I  looked around the kitchen once more. Puzzled, I walked around the corner into the living room, rolling pin in hand. Then I heard, “Hello!”             

Oh, my goodness, I laughed to myself. It’s Ernie!  Ernie wants to help me! The little green parakeet was sitting in his birdcage in the corner. He cocked his head and looked at me, and said “Hello” again.  

“Oh, hello, Ernie, did you say ‘Skweek’?”

Just as if he understood me, he said, “Skweek!”

Giggling out loud, I went back to the kitchen. Each time I rolled the rolling pin, it squeaked. And sure enough, with each squeak of the rolling pin, Ernie let out his answering reply.

I rolled the rolling pin, and it squeaked. 

“Skweek!”

I teased out the crust, rolled and lifted, and the rolling pin squeaked.

“Skweek!” Ernie said.

And so it went squeak by “Skweek!” unit the pie crust was ready.  I eased the crust into the pie pan, crimped the crust high all around the edge, poured in the pumpkin filling, and put it in the oven. 

I went out to the living room and took Ernie out of his cage. He hopped onto my index finger. I walked him into the kitchen and showed him the pie in the over. Looking right into his little beady eyes, I said, “Ernie, you helped me make my pie!”  

He bobbed his head, nodding in agreement. He looked at me. “Pretty boy!”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “definitely, Pretty Boy.”    

As I placed him back on his perch, I thought, it will be a lovely Thanksgiving pie, one that I can be proud of and one that I have made all by myself.

The next week, as we sat around the Thanksgiving table, savoring the pie, I told the story, and my family laughed at Ernie, but mostly at me, showing off that I had learned to make a pie at last, all by myself—well, not quite.