Ho-Made Pies.

Okay, so Im done doing nothing, and now I'm on a top secret mission.

I'm not at liberty to disclose the nitty gritty, but I can say that it involves cram-jamming my brain full of new vocabulary. I had no idea my little pea-brain could hold so darn many new words. I think I've got upwards of 600 new vocabulary rattling around in my head!

I KNOW! Whodathunk!

It's tenuous, at best, and the endeavor has occluded me from propagating my ideas for you here in my dummy diaries, nevertheless, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, I cannot tell a canard. I will not prevaricate. My innate proclivity to wax and wane in a desultory manner still burns within me and, as Gad as my witness, I will continue to posit my inchoate tales mercurially. I am a reonteur, after all.

Allow me to start reconteuring at the very beginning. Which for me was in a hundred-year-old house on Tait Lane in Mt. Carmel Utah.

I don't know if that's where things . . . ahem . . . technically began, but that's where my grandma was born (out of wedlock) in the front bedroom off the parlor. She was born there, yes. And her mother was born there too, yes. But neither one of them stayed there. They moved to California and built a different life. Away from the little provincial town where all of the their family was going on their merry way.

They became city folk and then they married city folk and then their kids became city folk and married city folk.

All the while the house on Tait Lane just stood there, knowing who it was and what it was standing for. Probably waiting, like Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree, for all of it's inhabitants to come back. Probably wishing too that, while it was standing there waiting, it's walls could talk.

Oh, the beautiful rumors those walls could spread if only they could talk . . .

I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for the house on Tait lane. It wasn't completely silent and unoccupied. It was passed on to my grandma, who used it as a summer home for her children and her children's children.

(That's where I came in.)

But all of this was long before Mt. Carmel became home of the famous HO-MADE pies. In fact I didn't know nothing about the HO-MADE pies until I came across this billboard on my way into town last summer.

My first thought was that it was a typo. Or like maybe they started painting the letters and then realized that they couldn't fit the whole word on the sign so they had to abbreviate.

And then I thought that even if they meant to do it, there was no way on earth these peeps could possibly understand the connotations of such a sign out in the real world.

Not to be rude, but there ain't a lotta gangsta rappers in Mt. Carmel, UT.

Well, I did some digging, peeps, and I finally got to the bottom of it, so please lend me your ear.

So I was at my uncle Marty's funeral on Saturday, right?

There I was shmoozing with my gram . . .

And my fam . . .

btw, is it just me or does my dad's brother look like Clint Eastwood?

I was eating. And talking. And running into people from the olden dayz . . . like Colleen, who owned the only motel in Orderville, and who used to let all the orderville kids try to drown me in her pool.

Here I am telling her, HA, look at me! Still alive! and then I happen to mention to her that I want to meet the ho who makes the famous pies.

You coulda heard a pin drop in that kitchen because lo and behold, the ho was standing right in front of me at that very moment. And guess what? We're related.

The ho is my 2nd cousin.

Can you believe it!

She said she used to be in lub with my dad. Not to be rude, but that's when I knew she was the real deal.

Bless her heart.

You wanna see her? Huh? Huh? Huh?

This is Karen. Coulda been my ma, if my pa hadn't become a city folk.

Karen invited me to come into the actual kitchen where the ho-made pies are baked. Then she gave me an apple pie fresh out of the oven.

For the record, guess how much these pies cost if Karen wasn't ever in lub with your dad?

$20.

So, as the story goes, the H0-made pie idea was just phonetics for a long long time. They pie makers figured that the first "m" is silent anyways so why bother sayin' it. Then the modern era dawned and people started coming from miles around to raise an eyebrow about the name.

So instead of getting all high and mighty and hoity toity and haughty and prudent and austere and sagacious, they decided to run with it.

Thus the sign was born. But now they have a newer sign. A prettier ho, with mo cleavage. And mo leg.

Even though the whole premise seems a bit ribald and invidious, I kinda get it after seeing the competition across the street:

Anyways, it made me think of the time when I moved to Utah and suddenly started baking pies.

Do you think it's in the genes?