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State of the Apple Pie

I stepped into the finest restaurant,
A destination nearly all would want,
My expectations firmly in the sky,
From its long famous, luscious apple pie.

A pie I’d savored since I learned to crawl,
Jam-packed with apples, three full inches tall.
OK, the fat and calories should drop,
But oh, that crust with cinnamon on top!

Then Covid changed so much, like how we eat,
Thus it was three years since I’d had that treat.
I therefore simply could not wait to see
The slice of heaven they would bring to me.

But when the apple pie came on a plate,
I quickly saw its much diminished state.
From all its features—color, shape, and size—
That apple pie I did not recognize.

The pie they proudly thrust upon me there,
Had sunk from losing its excessive air,
And rather than crisp apples like before,
Was filled with slimy glop, and little more.

I asked the manager about that pie,
But to my shock he could not fathom why.
He termed this apple pie “the best we’ve had,”
And called the kind before it “really bad.”

He said each night the restaurant was filled
With city residents that pie had thrilled.
And told me that quick research of the news,
Would show their pie had garnered great reviews.

I promptly checked the MSM and saw,
Its experts dubbed that pie “without a flaw,”
But deep down others on the web instead,
Declared that pie much worsened, like I’d said.

The manager then signaled we were through,
Quite clearly scared someone might hear my view.
But there’s scant point to preach reality,
With folks of such perverse mentality.

For it would take right thinking gals and men,
To make that apple pie great once again.

.

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Russel Winick recently started writing poetry after ending a long legal career. He resides in Naperville, Illinois.

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28 Responses

  1. Cheryl Corey

    It sounds like the apple pie you remember was home-made, with perhaps a crust made with lard or Crisco (oh the horrors!). They obviously switched it out for some cheap, supposedly healthier crap. Every year I look forward to a church fair selling home-made pies just as you described, with a golden crust, layered with apples and cinnamon on top.

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Thanks Cheryl! Yep, it is getting harder and harder to find many of the great things we used to enjoy and perhaps take for granted, from apple pie to free speech and so much else. Thanks as always for your feedback.

      Reply
  2. Mary Gardner

    It wasn’t until that last line I saw the metaphor. On rereading your poem, I found it was obvious all along.
    Your poem has good rhyme and a good pace, moving along but never tripping. Thank you, Russel.

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Mary – you hit the nail on the head! The poem is entirely metaphorical and symbolic. The restaurant is our country, and the diminished apple pie represents the deterioration of our society at the hands of leftists in recent years. Even the recognition of the fat and calories in the pie gives the lie to liberals’ false claims that conservatives pretend everything in the old days was great, notwithstanding such bad things as discrimination. The manager who censors my view is the Left which actively does the same today, and the city residents are the urban liberals who buy the Left’s narratives, as does the MSM. And simply wanting to make a bad pie great again counters the narrative that something sinister is involved in that regard. Thanks for your apt observation!

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    There’s a general tendency today to debase the quality of products, and at the same time celebrate them as being “improved” and “better.” You wouldn’t believe what’s happened to Italian bread, and French croissants.

    Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    I agree with Mary: let’s make apple pie — and other, much larger things — great again! I enjoyed this poem. The only thing I would change is line 9; it wasn’t mainly covid that “changed so much” (though many people did lose their senses of smell and taste, and have other worse outcomes from the actual virus); it was the brutal and unnecessary lockdowns that closed businesses, caused a shortage of workers, robbed people of their livelihoods, stopped the supply chain, and thus ruined so many things for everyone. Even now (as the poem says near the end), there are still those who are afraid to hear these sorts of views. Thank you for the fun and insightful poem, Russel.

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Cynthia – you make a great point about Covid. Thank you! I’m so glad that you enjoyed the poem.

      Reply
  5. Sally Cook

    My mother made incredibly good apple pies, Her triumph was a cherry pie, laced with fresh cherries and fresh squeezed orange juice And yes, she used Crisco. She would accept no help,
    She made this the week before she died, and when she handed a double size piece, her smile was beatific.
    He painted her portrait and constantly tells me “your mother is smiling – you must be doing something right,
    I miss her too but that pie created an inseparable bond between them.

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Great story, Sally. I wish I had known your mother and sampled her pie. It sounds like the best of the best!

      Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Russel, “State of the Apple Pie” is one of the most pleasantly subtle political poems I’ve seen. The “state of the nation” and “American as apple pie” right through product quality decline denied because we now tend to grade things by reviews rather than by a reputation gained from experienced goodness. Playful and patriotic!

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Margaret – I’m truly delighted that you liked the poem. It sincerely means a lot, especially since I veered far out of my comfort zone here. Thank you so much!

      Reply
  7. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This fits with my “masters of deception” proclaiming the new pie to be the best, yet those who know best are left only with the memories of what once was really great. This is a fine piece of political work that strikes at the heart of “pie” regarded by the progressives as “better” when the cognoscenti know better. This is a “slice” of the new reality that needs to be castigated and thrown in the faces of the disinformation deceivers.

    Reply
  8. C.B. Anderson

    Apple pie or cherry pie is something I will choose over any cake, any time. What people will be believing soon is that no good apple pie can be made without using cockroaches as one of its ingredients. Having written that, I recall reading somewhere that the best possible pie crust is one made with bear fat. It used to be that the good old days were decades or even generations in the past, but now the good old days are those of only a few years ago. I amazes me how many Americans today will eat crap and call it sweet.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Kip, what you say reminds me of something that I have pondered frequently. I think the fact that we live in an out-of-control “information” age is the real source of debasement in all fields, not just cooking. Lots of stupid people feel impelled to come up with “new ideas,” all the time, simply because they want the pleasure of trumpeting them on all the new platforms and venues and websites that now allow for such trumpeting.

      Hence, somebody has a “new idea” about how to make a better apple pie. And since the dominant social class of left-liberals reflexively believes that everything “new” is probably “better” and “superior” to what is old, the assumption is that this “new” version of the pie is obviously preferable, regardless of how it tastes. And when this same tendency goes to work on traditional ideas about sex, marriage, education, child-raising, law, politics, and what have you, the result is the shit-storm of idiocy that we call contemporary life.

      Whenever anybody comes to me and says “Hey — I’ve got a new idea!” my response is this: “New ideas are like assholes — everybody’s got one, and none of them are especially interesting.” That usually deflates them.

      Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Yes, what now seem like the good old days were just three years ago, as depicted in the poem. Thank you Sir.

      Reply
  9. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Russel, this clever metaphor for the state of our country today has taken the term “as American as apple pie” and shown (with poetic passion) that the truth matters. If we all buy the lie and eat the cow pie (passed off as apple) America will soon be swarming with sheeple full of s%#t. There’ll be another toilet roll shortage and… BOOM! 2020 on steroids! I am so grateful to you for standing up in a crowded restaurant to tell all those with poop on their plate to toss it in the garbage. We should all be demanding the real deal with the right ingredients. Great stuff!

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Thank you Susan. Your words inspire me almost as much as your poems.

      Reply
  10. Mike Bryant

    Russell, this poem has really captured my imagination, and has me thinking… which is always dangerous…

    Walmart has an apple pie for only $5.87 !! When Susan makes apple pie it has five or six ingredients, but Walmart can include all the ingredients below for a very affordable price:

    INGREDIENTS: APPLES, ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID), VEGETABLE SHORTENING (PALM OIL, SOYBEAN OIL), SUGAR, WATER, MARGARINE (CANNA OIL, SOYBEAN OIL, MODIFIED PALM OIL, MODIFIED PALM KERNEL OIL, WATER, SALT, VEGETABLE MONOGLYCERIDES, SOY LECITHIN, SUNFLOWER LECITHIN, NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SODIUM BENZOATE [PRESERVATIVE], CITRIC ACID, ANNATTO EXTRACT [COLOR], TURMERIC [COLOR], VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D3), BROWN SUGAR, FOOD STARCH-MODIFIED, SALT, DEXTROSE, GROUND CINNAMON, NATURAL FLAVOR, SODIUM PROPIONATE (PRESERVATIVE), POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVE), GROUND NUTMEG.

    Just think how lucky we are to have all those food scientists working night and day to make our lives so much better!

    Of course it only gets 2.5 stars out of 5 on the reviews, but still… aren’t those extra ingredients for our benefit? Hmmmmm maybe not… our food contains many extra ingredients that are not used in Europe, while our life expectancy is four years less than theirs… hmmmm…

    Why are we eating all that S#$T ???

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Mike – This is just more proof that nothing measures up to Susan’s work.

      Reply
  11. Paul A. Freeman

    MAPGA – Make Apple Pie Great Again! In the UK, it was more a case of prepackaged meals and convenience food doing away with home baking. I recall fetching rhubarb from the fruit-and-veg-strewn garden for my mum’s rhubarb crumble. She also made a mean bread-and-butter pudding and spotted dick (a British dessert, not a notifiable malaise).

    The home cooking stopped when the effort to grow food outweighed the convenience and prices of food items in supermarkets, when both parents had to work and with the appearance of pre-cut French fries, not to mention instant mashed potatoes (see below), though my mum drew a line at the latter:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4MTgjNkfyI

    Then came the franchises with fast food, the pace of life getting faster, and bye-bye home-baking.

    A brilliant metaphor, Russel, and more profound than at first appearance.

    Reply
    • Russel Winick

      Thank you Paul. I appreciate your kind words. The bread and butter pudding sounds like a winner!

      Reply
  12. Warren Bonham

    The left has embraced the classic American slogan “land of the free” and applied it to traditional Apple Pie recipes. Now our pies must be sugar-free, dairy-free and gluten-free. They also need to be certified by various regulatory bodies to be free of hundreds of items that the free state of California deems to be cancer-causing. Unfortunately, all of this makes Apple Pie free of taste. We are so fortunate to be free enough to eat whatever we want, as long as our federal over-lords deem it advisable in their infinite wisdom.

    Thanks for the very amusing read!

    Reply
    • Mia

      Actually, on reading my own comment I now think it is an understatement.
      It is an excellent poem , thank you.And very subtle.
      It really makes me think of apple pie especially as I like to watch the apple tree blossom at this time of year whilst hoping for Bramley Apples to make apple crumble. You really need very few ingredients if you have good, wholesome apples.

      Reply

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