…that half of everything I built belongs to her family.”
His name was Thomas Avery. He was seventy-eight. He’d owned that restaurant, and six others, for forty years.
In 1958, when Thomas was ten, his father lost his job, and his family was about to lose their farm in Kentucky. My grandmother, Ruby, was their neighbor. She baked blackberry pies and sold them at the county fair. When she heard about Thomas’s family, she gave his mother her recipe and helped her sell pies at the fair beside her for three summers. The money saved their farm.
“My mother opened a little pie stand on the highway using your grandmother’s recipe,” Thomas said. “That stand became a diner. That diner became my first restaurant. Everything I own began with that pie.”
Before my grandmother died, Thomas had tracked her down. He tried to give her a share of his business. She refused. She said she’d only accept it if he gave it to her granddaughter someday instead.
“I’ve been looking for you for twenty years,” he said. “Your grandmother didn’t know your married name.”
He didn’t buy my recipe. He offered me a partnership instead. My grandmother’s blackberry pie would go on the menu at every one of his restaurants, under her name, and I’d receive a share of the profits.
I accepted.
My mother-in-law found out at the next family dinner, when Thomas called to ask how my grandmother’s pie should be served. My husband put the call on speaker. She didn’t say a word for the rest of the evening.
“Ruby’s Blackberry Pie” is now the bestselling dessert in Thomas’s restaurants. Every slice comes with a small card that tells the story of a farm wife in Kentucky who helped a neighbor.
