Pumpkin Paisanos

Pumpkin Pies and the FBI

Copyright 11-26-20 / 3,472 words
by Jon Kramer

Nonfiction. These events took place over several decades.

I learned how to make pumpkin pie while Dad was on the run from the FBI. It was in the drafty old farmhouse on the Choptank River, many miles outside Cambridge, Maryland. Mom had rented the place because it was cheap, and remote. There was also a more important reason: Being secluded down a very long dirt driveway ½ mile from the road, and situated along a forgotten segment of riverbank, the Choptank House afforded many concealed access routes when Dad decided to risk sneaking into our lives for a brief visit before disappearing again into the night.

During those exceedingly difficult times – which stung all the more by the rapid plunge from living luxuriously aboard our yacht in the Bahamas to being flat broke on Welfare in rural Dorchester County – Mom was effectively a single parent with four rowdy kids to care for on her own. Being abundantly poor, we had little choice but to grow what we could, forage for food in the woods, and barter with the neighbors. We made all our meals from scratch.

These were the worst hard times, the hardest our family ever had. It’s nothing short of a miracle – by way of our mother’s amazing strengths and our father’s determination as well as the generosity of some dedicated friends – that our family hung together and weathered the darkest of storms. It took many years to pass. Some aspects never really did. Even so, when I look back now, I realize it was these times that solidified the granite-hard bedrock of our family. There’s never been a greater bond than that which our family forged and which I still share with my two brothers and sister. There is a Kramer Island.

Despite the hardships – and there were plenty – there were also important lessons in strength, self-reliance, and working with the land that we unwittingly acquired during those impressionable years. Many gems were mined in those days, we just didn’t know the value until years later when we each polished them in our own way.

One such gem I learned then was the labor that goes into making a good Kramer Family pie crust. Remember now – this was in the mid 1960’s when we were all kids. To a hyperactive boy of 8 years, using two butter knives to “cut” shortening into flour seemed absurdly ludicrous and time consuming, not to mention boring. Why can’t we just throw it together and mix it up with the mixer? I asked Mom.

Because that’s not how it’s done, honey. she’d reply gently, hoping that would satisfy my curiosity. It didn’t. I had a hard time believing that one had to spend such onerous amounts of time patiently mixing ingredients by hand when modern science had long since invented the MixMaster.

One day, when Mom wasn’t home, I decided to try making a crust my way. I threw all the stuff into the MixMaster bowl, plugged it in, and let’r rip. The machine went wild! It was spasmodically flying around, gyrating and jumping all over the counter until, thankfully, it yanked the cord from the wall and quit. Flour was everywhere. At that point I was more freaked out than curious. I felt lucky that the machine had not actually broken anything, especially the glass bowl. What I learned most during that experiment was: Mom knows best! No denying that. From then on, I never questioned the notion of how you make a good Kramer Family pie crust.

Mom’s pie crusts were always light, flaky, and flavorful. Perfect for pumpkin pie. And since pumpkins grew easily alongside the chicken coop, we made plenty of them into pies. From those days in Cambridge I was hooked – on the pie, if not the crust-making.

I learned other important things from Mom as well: How to bake the pumpkins and taste them to judge what amount of sugar was needed for sweetness. It’s a purely intangible talent which I call the Taste Test. Every one of us has it – it’s our own unique criteria for how satisfying a flavor is at the moment. I figure it has a scale that goes from 0 to 100. The Taste Test is very dynamic and can change one day to the next, based on the weather, the environment, our hunger, and even our mood. Probably especially our mood! One day the soup scores 95, the next it scores 50. Or the cake you just baked goes from 75 one day, to 95 the next. There’s nothing scientific about it. You just take a bite, or a sip, or a lick of your finger, and your senses immediately report back their conclusions – good, bad, or ugly.

The most important aspect of cooking in our family is taking the Taste Test information and translating that into what happens in the next step: what herbs and spices should be added to get the final product as close to a score of 100 as possible. This is a talent hard-acquired over years of trial and error. That’s why there are such things as celebrity chefs, and gourmet chefs, and, well, all kinds of chefs! These folks know their business. They know how to use the Taste Test to all our benefits.

I also learned that not all pumpkins are equal. Just because they might look the same, pie pumpkins are different. They’re small and deeper colored. Big pumpkins – such as are popular for carving – are not the best fit for pies. They’re edible, for sure, but the taste is bland. You need a lot of sugar and spices to jazz it up and the result tastes like something from the frozen food section.

Since those early days on the Choptank, I’ve made a zillion pumpkin pies and every one of them is a little different. I like to throw in extras – such as pecans, or rhubarb, or blueberries, or especially, cranberries. I am happy to report the jury of my peers – family and friends – has always given Uncle Jon’s Pumpkin Pie a two thumbs up rating.

Since he was on the run from the FBI, Dad’s appearances at the Choptank House were, by design, very unpredictable. The first time was many months after we had moved there. By that time my siblings and I had pretty much accepted that Dad was gone, though we didn’t have any idea for how long. Mom said he was “off on a business trip”, which was, in a way, true: He had been charged with embezzling a large sum of money from the Plumbing Fixture Manufacturers Association (PFMA) advertising fund which he had controlled. He posted bond after his arrest, but once he discovered the DA was fast-tracking his trial, he skipped out and became a fugitive. He needed time to prepare an adequate defense. He especially needed to safely secure the secret tape recordings he’d made of the price-fixing meetings, which eventually was key in the whole thing.

One evening, after Mom had driven us all to town, we came home to the Choptank House late. I remember my siblings and I coming into the living room and being startled when we encountered a bearded stranger sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette in the dark. Diane screamed. At first, we didn’t recognize him. But when he spoke, Hello, kids.., we all cried for joy and piled on top of him.

I found out later that Dad had taken an incredibly daring risk to see us. And while it included evading the FBI agents that monitored our daily life, it was not the cops which posed the greatest danger. It was the river: He swam all the way across the Choptank River – at night! He stashed his bags in the woods and took off from a remote point on the far side. The river at that point is over 6 miles wide. It has a strong tidal surge in the channel and the boat traffic corridor is not very wide. He had to dodge all the boats, who had no idea he was there, of course. Worse, however, were the stinging sea nettles. Nettles are ubiquitous in the Choptank, making any prolonged swim very hazardous, even life-threatening. Using long-sleeved shirts and pants, he created something of a suit to cover most of his body. He slathered Vasaline over the exposed skin and that protected it for a short while. Even so, the Vasaline soon wore off and sometimes nettles got trapped under his shirt. He suffered uncountable stings that night.

Dad timed his swim to coincide with the tide going in and out. Initially he was swept out toward the Chesapeake Bay on the outgoing tide, but, as planned, was swept back in again when it reversed. He estimated his total swim was 12 miles, possibly more. It took him all night. The next day he instructed Mike where he’d left his bags and Mike sailed the tiny Sunfish sailboat over and retrieved them.

I don’t remember how long Dad stayed that time – probably only a few days – but that was when he and Mom told us the truth of the situation, or at least as much truth as we could understand. Above all, it was impressed on us that we mustn’t tell anyone we saw our dad. It became a game – us against the FBI Boogey Men – and we were winning. We all aimed to keep it that way. And we did.

There is nothing quite like watching squash vines grow. Their huge, bright-yellow crepe-paper flowers are otherworldly. Each blossom will last only a few hours before shriveling up and falling off. Did you know that squash flowers are sexually dimorphic? There are male flowers, which produce pollen, and female flowers that do not. They look and smell very similar. Pollinators crawl into the male flower wherein lies a bonanza of pollen. Then they leave and go to the next flower, and the next, on down the line. Since the female flowers look just like the male ones, a bee or moth will inevitably climb in looking for treasure while inadvertently fertilizing the female blossom, which then becomes the fruit.

Pumpkins are in the squash family and are native to the Americas. They’ve been a vital staple of American Indian cultures for centuries. Squash the world-over is prized for both its food source and utility. In native cultures gourds are made into implements, containers, art, and even musical instruments.

All squash are members of the genus Cucurbita (Latin for “gourd”) which originated in the New World. There are many species, many more subspecies, and many more varieties. Historically, when we think of plants and foods discovered by Europeans exploring the New World, corn is usually the first thing that comes to mind. But Native cultures domesticated squash some 8,000 – 10,000 years ago, long before maize (corn) became a staple. There are over 100 varieties of squash, divided roughly by the times they are harvested: winter or summer.

While attending college in the early 1980s, I – along with several socialist-minded friends – worked at the university Food Coop. The Coop employed a barter system of labor-for-food, based loosely on the utopian model of Communism: “each according to their abilities, and each according to their need”. Stand at the counter making sandwiches for a couple hours and you’d have enough credits to enjoy a decent meal yourself. Despite the obvious benefits of working at the Coop, the grubbing life of a later day Hippie was not without want of cold hard cash. Since the Coop only paid in credit, and didn’t stock the carabiners or ropes so desperately needed by climbing bums like us, we were always on the lookout for opportunities to make a few bucks.

One fall day, in advance of Halloween, I noticed there were no pumpkin pies in the offerings of Coop foodstuffs. I was subsequently informed there were no plans to carry more because the local squash farm had sold out its supply. Suffice to say it took not more than a few creative minutes for Doug, George, Janet, and I to hatch a plan to fill the culinary gap vis-a-viz our own little pumpkin pie venture – the Pumpkin Paisanos. We recognized the need and were quite capable as underground Capitalists to fill it while pocketing a few greenbacks.

There was a slight problem however: we had no money with which to buy pumpkins or any other supplies, for that matter. Our Pumpkin Pie Empire was thus in jeopardy of sinking before it even started. But we weren’t in collage for nothing and soon the pathfinding skills of higher education proved useful: We decided that some relief could be counted on by our parents who had flour, sugar, and spices in sufficient reserves to seed our venture. Pie crusts aplenty. However, there was still the problem of acquiring pumpkins to make the filling.

At the time I lived in the family house way out in Burtonsville – about 15 miles from campus. Doug sometimes stayed over at our place and we’d ride our bikes to campus and back. The route home wandered between several farms where, we noted, more than a few pumpkin patches lay in plain sight. One night, Doug managed to acquire a couple large ones and proudly produced them the next day. But I was forced to burst his pumpkin bubble when I related what Mom had taught me many years prior: Jack-o-lantern pumpkins would not make the quality of pie the Pumpkin Paisanos were going to become known for.

Luckily, while biking home on a different route, we spied a fine patch that held the small, sweet squash ideal for pies. That night the necessary basics were requisitioned with a little foraging by scruffy undergrad scofflaws seeking donations pro bono.

The Great American Pumpkin Dream was about to become a reality.

Over the next weekend we converted the Kramer home into a pie factory. The goal was 40 pies in 2 days. We mastered the mass pie-making art, but soon enough family tithes were demanded by Billy and Diane for having been shut out of the kitchen, and Mike for just being our older brother. Remuneration was of course also due Mom and Dad and other patrons who supported the venture. This resulted in serious pie attrition. But what could you do? It was the price of doing business.

The following Monday morning we paraded triumphantly into the Coop with 24 pumpkin pies, a proud richness we intended to parlay into cash. Naturally, we had not really talked with anyone about our plan to sell pies through the Coop store. As recognized Workers, we decided there was no real need to involve management. This was, after all, a Worker’s Coop – not a dictatorship! Besides we, being esteemed Workers, technically owned a part of it and had a voice in how things were run. Beyond all that establishment jazz, we were Hippies, and it was downright blasphemous to ask permission. Just do it! So we set out our wares in a nicely prominent display, spruced up with a little Halloween cheer via some gnarly gourds. The cashiers were dutifully notified that all pumpkin pie sales belonged to the Pumpkin Paisanos. We would collect our due at 4pm, the coop closing time, and give an as-yet undetermined cut to the Coop. The plan was simple, and efficient. Bound to piss off a few people.

Almost immediately things were thrown into disarray when we learned that Public Health Department certification was required to sell anything in the way of edible merchandise in the Coop. Said document was not forthcoming from the Paisanos for various reasons, not the least of which was the months-long application process. The store manager, Madge– a squiggly little woman in the throes of militant feminism – was only too happy to kick our sorry asses out the door, pies included. She didn’t like George or I anyway and was delighted to stomp on our nascent dreams.

Now what?…we wondered while standing in the busy hall outside the coop entrance. It looked like we’d have to take all the pies home and give them away or something. We opted for the something.

Although the Coop itself was essentially private property, the hall outside was part of the Student Union. And while we didn’t have a license to sell anything in the Union, we knew quite well the quagmire of bureaucracy that was the University of Maryland and figured we had a pretty good chance to sell at least some of the pies right then and there before being shut down by campus cops. The best part was, the Coop had no authority outside its doors. So, being opportunistic entrepreneurs, we made up a hasty display using milk crates absconded from the loading dock and set up shop right outside the Coop’s entrance. Madge was livid.

The people loved it and the Pumpkin Paisanos did brisk business. Our transient enterprise was, as expected, viewed as illegal by the Coop manager and she immediately called Campus Security. The “officer” who showed up was not much older than we were. He was, in fact, a student himself – studying law. In the spirit of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant – which was popular at the time – we provided him a slice of pie compliments of the chefs. Being pragmatic, he debated proper jurisprudence while consuming the evidence. Ultimately, he decided the proper thing was to consult his superiors, and possibly even the University Bylaws, before acting hastily. He went in the Coop and reported to Madge that he was headed to the Admin Building but would be back later. How much later? she demanded. “In a little while,” he said. We never saw him again. In two hours we had sold out.

Mom never forgot how much I love pumpkin pie. On one occasion in the late 1990s they had been staying in my small one-bedroom apartment in Uptown Minneapolis while I was away in Africa documenting elephants in the wild. I got back a few months later in the middle of a late fall day, the leaves having just departed from the trees and blowing along the sidewalks. The taxi dropped me at the front of the building, and I shuffled zombie-like down the hall to my tiny apartment. I’d been traveling for 22 hours and was dead on my feet. But as I went down the hall, I was awakened by a series of wonderful cooking odors. By the time I got to my door I was salivating.

My folks were there to greet me. Although they were heading out that day, they’d prepared a delicious meal of ham and scalloped potatoes for us all to share before they left. And to top it off, a pumpkin pie was baking in the oven. I think I cried when they presented me with that meal. I was so thankful as the three of us sat down in my small living room and dug into the main course.

After a half hour Mom asked me to check the pie. I did so and declared it done. I turned off the stove, grabbed the cookie sheet and pulled it out. In this little apartment there was no counter directly next to the stove, so I spun around to put the pan onto the counter behind me. As it happened, I went a little too fast and the pie took flight. I watch in slow motion as it flew magically through the air, doing a somersault on the way, and landed SPLAT! upside-down on the floor. I was stunned, Mom was momentarily horrified, and Dad roared with laughter.

Don’t worry, he said, we just washed the floor this morning! I scrapped it up the best I could, and we ate it. It tasted soooo good!

By now you are no doubt wondering what ever happened with Dad and the whole FBI thing. That story warrants a full book by itself. Maybe one day I’ll go for it. But to make a very long and painful story short, Dad finally did recover the tapes he had made of the crooked dealings in the PFMA. With them, he and his attorney prepared a stout defense. Eventually Dad was acquitted and became a witness for the government, testifying for the state against the executives of PFMA in an anti-trust lawsuit. Many of them went to jail. Meanwhile, after several traumatic years, our Dad finally came home – this time to stay.

In closing, for those of you who cook, here’s my Pumpkin Pie recipe.

But you’ll have to make the crust yourself!