Of Pies and Men

Friends, may I tell you about the night I just had? I'm not talking about the play here; we've been over that, so suffice it to say that opening night was everything you might expect a rural community theatre opening night to be... in a good way. No, I want to share what happened after the curtains had closed and the doors were locked and all good young children stumbled home to milk and cookies and bed.

I may? Thanks ever so.

Going out on the town after a performance is traditional here, just as it is elsewhere. In Sleepy Eye, though, there's no place like Uno's. In fact, there's no place at all. So after shaking hands with all the audience members in the post-finale receiving line, I declared, "I'm hungry!"

Tom, Dan, Ian, and Gordo [a.k.a. Chris, but known from here on in by his abbreviated last name since that's what he goes by in the real world] were intrigued, and Geri was all for it: "Let's go somewhere!" Now, "somewhere" in the context of late-night eateries means New Ulm, and "somewhere" in the context of New Ulm means Applebee's or Perkins. After a speedy discussion, Perkins was decided upon; people were hungry for pie. Ian and I scampered backstage to collect our clothing and organize our costumes, then zipped home to inform the 'rents and pick up the minivan. Well, we tried to zip, but then Ian forgot his keys inside and had to walk all the way back from the parking lot to the auditorium and search through his props, and by the time he had rounded everything up Geri was rethinking her enthusiasm for a late night and requested a rain check.

Fine; we still had a crew heading to Perkins. Tom and Dan went home to get wallets and meet their foreign exchange student, Gordo drove ahead to New Ulm since he and his wife live there, and Ian and I were finally successful with the whole zipping thing. It was maybe half past ten, and we were set to go.

But Kaeti called Ian asking him to pick up some cookie dough that he had ordered for her fundraiser, and he got distracted talking to her, and by the time the two of us made it out of the house to pick up Tom and Dan it was perhaps 11.30. The drive to New Ulm takes fifteen minutes.

The four of us walked into the restaurant at 11.45 and were immediately informed by the host that the restaurant closed at midnight. "You can get pie to go, though," he said oh-so-helpfully, eager for the sale. We glanced around for Gordo, knowing full well that we had most likely missed him. My chagrin at our tardiness intensified when the girl behind the pie counter asked if we were from the play. Apparently a man with the remains of eye makeup had been waiting.

Ian looked up Gordo's home number in the phone book. "We're here now!" he said. "We were really late. We'll bring you pie!" As he listened, his shoulders slumped.

"Tell him we'll leave it at his house," we suggested.

"We'll drop off pie then, okay?" He perked up again, hung up, and informed us, "Gordo has to be up at 5.30 tomorrow, so he and Becky are going to bed right now. But he said we can put the pie in their mailbox." We ordered our Peanut Butter Silk pie to go, requesting two extra take-away containers. Just before we went out the door, Ian looked up the address of Gordo's wife; we knew he had moved in with her after their June wedding. 1910 Jefferson #1.

Ian, Tom, Dan, and I drove across town to the apartment building at 1910 Jefferson. The lobby door was open, so we traipsed in, trying to keep quiet so as not to disturb the neighbors. The mailbox was awfully small, much too little for one piece of pie, to say nothing of two, so Tom set the containers outside the door to apartment one and draped a page of newsprint over them as a bit of camouflage. Meanwhile, Ian tore down a notice from the bulletin board - something about not smoking in the lobby - and carved the word "PIE" in it with a thumbtack. He stuffed it into the mail slot, and we left the building.

We made it back to Sleepy Eye and were eating our own pieces of Peanut Butter Silk when Ian said slowly, "You know... I don't know if Becky still lives there."

"What?"

He pulled out the most recent phone book, and paged through until he found Becky's maiden name. "5-- Fifth Street North." Oh.

"I don't ever think I've seen you laugh so hard," commented Tom an eternity later as I stifled yet another fit of giggles at the absurdity of the whole situation.

Entertainment and guilt set in simultaneously, though, and so at one in the morning, Dan and I hopped back into the minivan, dropping Tom off at his house before heading back to New Ulm to rescue the pie. We slunk back into 1910 Jefferson, tiptoed to apartment one, and removed the dessert and newspaper (couldn't really do anything about the notice inscribed "PIE"). We crossed town and parked on the five hundred block of Fifth Street, walking up and down until we found the right building, a blue (in the dark, anyway) house with a sizeable mailbox. And then we stood in the middle of a dark city block for ages, trying to think of how to word our note in order to properly convey the events of the evening. It was 1.37 when we departed, pie safely nestled on top of the ziploc bag Gordo had left in his mailbox.

On the way home, I avoided hitting:

-a white cat
-a skunk
-a blue car that was parked on the side of the road (and by "side" I mean "my side, somewhat in my lane") sans flashers
-a man wearing a navy flannel shirt and grey sweatpants who was riding a bike in the middle of the oncoming traffic lane with only a dim headlamp and a single wheel reflector marking his existence (this was at 2.01, mind you)
-a possum (and to miss it, I actually had to come to a complete stop on the highway just inside Sleepy Eye's city limits)

And that was my night. So, uh... sorry, Gordo. Hope you like the pie.