Dessert? Yes.

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

DESSERT? YES.

CHOCOLATE PIE, peach pie, cream puff. I can’t walk, but I can still eat.

Several weeks ago my mother drove up from Arkansas assigned with the task of getting her broken-footed daughter out of the house. She got me out all right.

The first place we hit was Dover — to sample the pie. Last November, at age 88, Norma Grubb won Good Morning America’s title of Pie Queen, the best pie baker in the country.

As soon as we sat down in the Sommerset Hall Café in Dover, the waitress asked, “Will you be having pie?” And she brought our pieces right away so there would be no chance of us missing out.

Half of the room was filled with diners from Topeka’s Aldersgate Village. Apparently a bus makes periodic trips from that retirement community to Dover.

I enjoyed the chocolate pie, and Mom liked the strawberry rhubarb. Also on the menu are apple crumb, peach, cherry, mixed berry, banana cream and Norma’s prize-winning coconut cream.

Norma Grubb

“Did you bake all the pies today?” I asked Norma Grubb as she was headed home.

“No, I only baked five cream pies,” she said. “Someone else made the fruit pies. Since this all began, I can’t keep up.”

After lunch in Dover, Mom and I ran an errand in Topeka then headed west on I-70. We cruised Main Street in Maple Hill and stopped to photograph the historic 1882 stone church outside of town.

In Paxico, folks were visiting on the porches of antique stores and the town seemed pretty active on that Wednesday morning. We came home on K-99 through Alma and Eskridge.

On Day Two, Mom and I picked up her cousin, the delightful Ila Mae Whitlock, at Elmdale and we ate lunch at Emma Chase Café in Cottonwood Falls. I can heartily recommend the chicken-fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes, green beans and wheat bread with apple butter.

Oh, and pie. Peach pie. I know — I don’t think I should be consuming these excess calories when I’m not able to do an aerobic workout. When this cast comes off, I’ll have to get back to jumping rope (or, um, perhaps a low-impact fitness routine.)

After lunch we drove around Ila Mae’s hometown of Elmdale. And we stopped in at Bummie’s Store for a cold drink. We visited with store owner Maria Baumgardner about life and local events.

Because Elmdale has been hit with a number of floods, our conversation wandered to that topic.

“The water was as high as this table,” Maria said of the ’51 flood.

Ila Mae told us her late husband, Merle, had said during the flood of ‘51, “Well, now we won’t have to hear about the ’29 flood anymore.”

But catastrophe stories linger for those who remember. Floods will always be compared, one measured against the next, because disasters alter our lives so dramatically.

The next morning when considering lunch, I told Mom, “I haven’t been to the Miracle Café in Reading for awhile. Wanna go?”

We enjoyed BLTs at the Miracle Café and then from Reading we took the Lebo Road across Melvern Lake. White pelicans dotted the lake like buoys.

In Hartford, we stopped to say hello to Theda Wolford in Bill’s Hardware. I needed a teeny screw for my camera and well, she had it, because Theda has everything in that store. Including Atom Pop Corn Popppers.

“I just sent one up to Maine,” Theda said when I asked her about those poppers, (which are manufactured in Bushton and have a loyal following.)

The European Bake Shop in Hartford is hands-down a Kansas treasure. While Mom zeroed in on the cinnamon rolls, I peered through the glass door of the refrigerated case.

“A cream puff, please,” I told Evelyne O’Connor, proprietor and baker extraordinaire. “No, make that a strawberry tartlet,” I said, then paused. “No, a cream puff.”

That cream puff was worth every calorie.

Copyright 2009 ~ Cheryl Unruh